Printable version of today’s devotional guide

Introduction To This Guide:
These daily devotional guides are provided to encourage you to listen and reflect on how God is speaking to you during this Season of Lent. The question at the end of each day’s contemplation is intended to foster further reflection and prayer throughout the day.  In addition, space is provided for you to document your thoughts on how you hear God speaking to you at this time. May you be blessed and transformed through the Holy Spirit as you ponder God’s word during this most holy of seasons. ++ Provided by:  Community Missions Inc., 1570 Buffalo Ave., Niagara Falls, NY 14303, Phone: (716) 285-3403, www.communitymissions.org

Where Do I Begin?

Begin each day with the Prayer of Illumination to help, prepare your heart to hear God’s word for you.  Read “to be formed and transformed rather than to gather information…Read with a vulnerable heart.  Expect to be blessed…Read as one awake, one waiting for the beloved.  Read with reverence.”*

Let us Pray a Prayer of Illumination:

All-Seeing One, above me, around me, within me —
guide my vision as I engage with your sacred words.
Look down upon me, look out from within me, look all around me.
See through my eyes, hear through my ears, feel through my heart.
God of Wisdom, touch me where I need to be touched;
    and when my heart is touched, give me the grace to lay
    down this Holy Book and ask significant questions:
Why has my heart been touched by you?
How am I to be changed through your touch?
All-Seeing One, I need to change, I need to look a little more like You.
May these sacred words change and transform me.
Then I can meet You face to face…when I shall be healed forever.
Your Word and the touch of your Spirit bring healing…
    a healing that will last.
O Eye of God, look not away.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me. Amen.

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SATURDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK – Day 18

 COMPASSIONATE LOYALTY

Micah 7:18-20

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of your possession?

He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in showing clemency.

He will again have compassion upon us;
he will tread our iniquities under foot.

You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.

You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and unswerving loyalty to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our ancestors
from the days of old.

PARDONED AND FREE

 Who is a God like you…? the prophet asks in awe and wonder, who indeed!  Who is this God that allows God’s people numerous millennia to get to know, and learn to love their God? Who is this God that obliges us to suffer the consequences of our sins, but only for a time; eventually having compassion and pity on God’s people and lifting them out of their murky existence.  Who is this God whose steadfast love is unsearchable and unconditional, even in the most trying of circumstances?!  Who is this God who casts all our sins into the depths of the sea and remembers them no more?

Who is this God who does not break the covenant, even when people repeatedly break their covenant with God?  Who is this merciful God that commands that we love our neighbor, bring justice to the oppressed, and take care of the orphan and widow? 

Who is this God with unwavering loyalty to humanity, sends God’s only Son as a sign of God’s new covenant with them?  Who is this God who gave this Son so that whosoever believes in him shall have eternal life?  Who is this God that allows us to kill and destroy God’s Son because we cannot bear the darkness of our own souls that his witness reveals?  And who is this God that raises God’s Son from the dead to prove to all who believe that he is indeed the Messiah, the one sent by God to show God’s love and forgiveness to all, and to set all people free.

Indeed, it is the one true God who swears faithfulness…and unswerving loyalty even today, as God swore to the ancestors in days of old!

 PRAYER

Almighty and compassionate God, thank you for loving and forgiving me.  Help me to see my sins of which I still need to repent, and lead me in your way everlasting. Amen

 FOR FURTHER REFLECTION

 How has God shown unwavering love and faithfulness to you?

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Notes:

This week’s devotional resource was written by Rev. Wendy Depew Partelow, President of the American Baptist Churches of New York State Board of Missions, and edited by Rev. Mark H. Breese of Community Missions. The content was created specifically keeping in mind the populations served by Community Missions.

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

Scripture Verses are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), HarpurCollins Publishers, 1989.

The choice of Daily Scripture texts are taken from Lent & Easter, Wisdom from Thomas Merton, Linguori Publications.

^l Paula Ripple, Growing Strong at Broken Places, as quoted in A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People, Job & Shawchuck, The Upper Room, p. 255-6.

^llJames M. Efird, in Jeremiah Prophet Under Siege, Judson Press, Valley Forge, 1979, p. 100.

^lllCharles de Foucauld, Meditations of a Hermit, as quoted in A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People, Job & Shawchuck, The Upper Room, p. 111.

ⁱRichard J. Foster, Prayer, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992., p. 2-3

ⁱⁱHenri J. M. Nouwen, Beloved: Henri Nouwen in Conversation, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007. p. 46,48,18.