Day By Day #36

Day by Day #36

MORNING/MIDDAY PRAYER

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:19–21

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Devotional

Few truths in Scripture force us to take as deep and hard a look inside our hearts as does this passage from 1 John: There is no possibility of loving God without loving one another. In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky captures the necessity of making difficult, intentional choices if we are to obey this command.

He tells the story of a wealthy woman who asks an elderly monk how she can know if God exists. He tells her no explanation or argument can achieve this, only the practice of “active love.” The monk speaks glowingly of love for God, which comes as a result of love for others.

The wealthy woman then confesses that she sometimes dreams about a life of loving service to others. At such times she thinks perhaps she will become a Sister of Mercy, live in holy poverty, and serve the poor in the humblest way. But then it crosses her mind how ungrateful some of the people she would serve are likely to be. They would probably complain that the soup she served wasn’t hot enough or that the bread wasn’t fresh enough or the bed was too hard. She confesses that she couldn’t bear such ingratitude—and so her dreams about serving others vanish, and once again she finds herself wondering if there is a God.

To this the wise monk responds, “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”^a

Loving well is the goal of the Christian life. And as the wise monk knew, this is easier in our dreams than in practice. It requires that we grow into spiritual and emotional adulthood in Christ, the rewards of which are rich beyond measure.

Question to Consider

Briefly reflect on your relationships with a few people you routinely interact with. What “harsh and dreadful things” might love require of you in these relationships?

Prayer

Lord, I relate to the perspective of the wealthy woman more than I care to admit. Grant me the grace of patience to persevere in loving others, even when it requires “harsh and dreadful things” of me. May your love so fill me that loving in practice becomes my instinctive and natural response. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

MIDDAY/EVENING PRAYER

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Numbers 20:7–12

The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

Devotional

Moses worked and waited for almost forty years to enter the Promised Land. Having started with 603,550 men—not to mention all the women and children—his patience was repeatedly tested to the limit by a seemingly endless barrage of complaints and disputes. When the people cry about their lack of food and water and accuse Moses of bringing them out into the desert to die, Moses is furious.

At this point, he is also exhausted and has little capacity to manage his anger and resentment. So he lashes out and rebukes the people, calling them “rebels.” Rather than honoring and obeying God, he relies on an old strategy of striking the rock because, hey, why not, it worked once before (Exodus 17:6).

In his frustration with the people, Moses willfully disregards God’s instruction to speak to the rock and instead strikes it twice. One scholar suggests that, in striking the rock, Moses was actually striking out at God:

There was an element of sacrilege in striking the rock, for it symbolized God. God is often likened to a rock (e.g., Psalm 18:2; 31:3; 42:9). Paul, [in writing about the wilderness years], says, ‘[They] drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ’ (1 Corinthians 10:4).”^b

Question to Consider

Moses commits an act of rebellion when he disregards God’s instructions. He still does God’s work, but from a place of frustration and on his own terms. In what ways, if any, do you recognize this pattern in your own life?

Prayer

Father, sometimes when things don’t go according to my plan, I respond a lot like Moses by taking out my frustrations on others or taking matters into my own hands. Help me to slow down and look to you. Fill me with the power of the Holy Spirit so that in difficult moments I can still do your will and treat others with tenderness, patience, and kindness. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

^a Quoted in Laurel A. Dykstra, “A Harsh and Dreadful Love,” Sojourners (www.sojo.net), September/October 2008.

^b Quoted in Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 151.