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.

---

WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK – Day 22

HEAR AND BE BLESSED
Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you…

See, just as the LORD my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

PASSING THE TORCH

 As Moses is preparing the Israelites to enter the land promised to them, “these are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan – in the wilderness…in the land of Moab:” (Deut. 1:1, 5) And then the book of Deuteronomy proceeds to repeat for the people the abridged version of the law of God as laid out in the previous four books: God’s statutes and ordinances, which they are to observe diligently.

It is sound instruction from the man who has led them out of their slavery in Egypt, and mediated and advocated for them with God throughout their forty years in the wilderness.  

Now Moses is getting ready to leave them. He will not accompany them into the promised land; he has been told to pass the torch to Joshua. And so Moses speaks his final words to the people, just as the LORD my God has charged me, I now teach you…”

Jesus says a similar thing to his disciples after his resurrection, when he is preparing for his ascension into heaven.  He meets with his disciples in the upper room and says to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:21-22) And so the torch is passed onto the disciples. They are in charge of passing on the entire law as fulfilled in Jesus, the abridged version relayed in one word: Love. And so throughout the generations, the torch is passed now onto us: Watch yourselves closely, don’t forget what you have seen, observe diligently the statutes and ordinances God has give you, tell these thing to your children and grandchildren. 

 PRAYER

Almighty God, may we heed the wisdom of your statutes and ordinances, living out the law of Love that we see in your Son Jesus the Christ.  Help us to be faithful to that witness. Amen

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION

 Name one thing you did today to share the Love of Christ.

---

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.

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

^tThe HarperCollins Study Bible, HarpurCollins Publishers, 1989, p. 2293

^lCatherine of Siena, The Dialogue, as quoted in A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People, Job & Shawchuck, The Upper Room, p. 123.