Printable version of today’s devotional guide

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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TUESDAY OF FOURTH WEEK – Day 28

LIGHT DISPELS DARKNESS
1 John 2:7-11

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

INTO THE LIGHT

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus the Christ, or a Christian? Tony Campolo wrote a book distinguishing himself as a Red Letter Christian. So what is the difference between a Christian and a Red Letter Christian. And there are other Christians too, there are Evangelicals and Pentecostals and Charismatics; as well as all of the denominations that fall into any one of those categories. Each person or denomination bases their belief on something, or a collection of somethings, that they have read in the Bible, or heard that is in there. The Bible is our leading authority on the truth of God. And even though faiths differ, each one thinks that they have the truth of the gospel: “It says it right here in the Bible,” they proclaim.

According to my Study Bible^t this letter of John was written over a dispute claiming “Jesus the Christ was a spirit, not a physical human being.” John writes with the assurance that God is Love, and that anything that is not of love is not of God – and is therefore darkness.  In this passage John asks us to go back to the very beginning: God called light into being, (Gen. 1:3) and the light came into the darkness. And God called it good.

Then comes Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world.” (John 8:12) John says you can’t hate and be in the light, because God is light, and God is love. John refers to the old and new commandment as one and true. Jesus says the greatest commandment is two: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) Jesus is the light of the world, the light came into the darkness, and God called it good. We call it Love. They’ll know we are Christians by our Love.

PRAYER

Whatever our faith tradition, Almighty God, let it be one in which your light and love for all creation shine forth. Amen.

 FOR FURTHER REFLECTION

Recall a time in your life when God dispelled hatred with understanding.

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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). The HarperCollins Study Bible, HarpurCollins Publishers, 1989.
Prayer of Illumination adapted from, A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People, Job & Shawchuck, The Upper Room, p. 125.
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.
^llHenri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1992.