Day By Day #18

Day by Day #18

MORNING/MIDDAY OFFICE

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Psalm 22:1–2, 7–8, 12–13

            My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

               Why are you so far from saving me,

               so far from my cries of anguish?

            My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

               by night, but I find no rest. . . .

            All who see me mock me;

               they hurl insults, shaking their heads.

            “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,

               “let the LORD rescue him.

            Let him deliver him,

               since he delights in him.” . . .

            Do not be far from me,

               for trouble is near

               and there is no one to help.

            Many bulls surround me;

               strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

            Roaring lions that tear their prey

               open their mouths wide against me.

Devotional

David, a man after God’s own heart, beautifully models the seamless integration of his emotions and his hunger for God. In the Psalms, we see that he holds nothing back, freely pouring out his fears, despair, anger, and shame. In fact, the wide range of his emotional ups and downs is sometimes shocking to our modern sensibilities. What does David understand about the integration of emotions and faith that we don’t?

In The Cry of the Soul, authors Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III offer a partial answer:

Perhaps a better explanation for why it’s so difficult to feel our feelings is that all emotion, positive or negative, opens the door to the nature of reality. All of us prefer to avoid pain—but even more, we want to escape reality.

Even when life is delightful, joy is fleeting and its brief appearance only opens our desire for more. Pleasure holds a wistful incompleteness because, even at its best, it is a poor picture of what we were meant to enjoy. As a result, we never feel completely satisfied with our present life, no matter how well things go. Anticipation inevitably carries with it disappointment and longing.

Emotion propels us into the tragic recognition that we are not home. . . .

There are times when lack of emotion is simply a byproduct of hardness and arrogance. The Scriptures reveal that this absence of feelings is often a refusal to face the sorrow of life and the hunger for heaven.^a

David is well known for being a man after God’s own heart. What few realize is how closely this was tied to his emotional awareness (his openness about his losses and disappointments) and his passionate heart for God (his longing to see him face-to-face).

Question to Consider

How might your prayer life change if, like David, you could bring to God what is actually in you and not what you think should be in you?

Prayer

Lord, today I bring you all of my emotions: my anger (list what you are angry about), my sadness (list what you are sad about), and my fear (list what you are afraid of). Help me this day to embrace the full range of my emotions, just as David did. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

MIDDAY/EVENING OFFICE

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Daniel 3:15b–18

“If you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Devotional

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego moved through their fears into an act of faith that transformed their lives and the lives of those around them. We often overestimate the size of the risks we face and underestimate the love and power of God to drive out our fears. Imagine what might happen if you could feel your fears, and then transform them in a positive direction. What might happen?

Peter Storey was a Methodist minister in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 1976 to 1994, when the struggle for South Africa’s freedom from apartheid was its most intense. Storey notes that, at that time, “most clergy, black and white, some fearing the authorities, others fearing their congregations, were silent.” Out of his decades of wrestling with fear and faith, he wrote:

Fear locks the door and immobilizes us. Fear imprisons the church in mediocrity and irrelevance. . . . Thank God that in spite of all the locks on all the doors, Jesus can still get into the church. He invades our places of fear and offers the gift that only he can bring: “Peace be with you!” . . . Jesus gives his peace—and this is going to sound so simple—by being there. . . . That is why we worship. . . . Oh, never, never lose that sense of simple dependence on the presence of Jesus in your life because sometimes it is all you that you will have.^b

This story teaches us that courage is not the absence of fear but rather the capacity to step over our fears through faith in Jesus.

Question to Consider

As you consider your fears today, do Jesus’ words, “Don’t be afraid,” come across as critical or comforting? Why?

Prayer

Lord, more often than not, I live from a place of fear rather than a place of peace and confident trust in you. Fill me with the peace you so readily offer amid the storms of life. Help me to be a non-anxious presence to those around me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

^a Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God (Dallas: Word, 1994), 21–23.

^b Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Nashville: Abington Press, 2002), 12.