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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THURSDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK – Day 16

 BARREN BUSHES
Jeremiah 17:5-8, 10

Thus says the LORD:

            Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

            Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit…

            I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

 IN WHOM DO WE TRUST?

 To trust is a dangerous and scary action. To trust means to believe something is true. To trust means having faith in something. To trust also means to have confidence in someone, to be able to rely on them.

James M. Efird, in Jeremiah Prophet Under Siege,^ll says that Jeremiah prophesied in a time “when no one could trust anyone else.” He goes on to say that “There can never be a possibility for a good life for anyone unless people can basically trust other people. But in the land of Judah at that moment in history no one could trust anyone.”

I wonder how far we have advanced as a society when,  2500 years after Jeremiah spoke, we still (or once again) live in a society where no one trusts anyone.  So much of our media is slanted one way or the other that no one seems to know what the truth is anymore.  We don’t trust politicians, we don’t trust religious leaders, we don’t trust family members. Yet, our text says, Blessed are those who trust in the LORD.

So what can we do to gain back our ability to trust?  I believe it begins with prayer.  And prayer begins by developing an inner life. And developing the inner life begins in solitude.

According to Charles de Foucauld,^lll “the soul will bring forth fruit exactly in the measure in which the inner life is developed in it.” Jeremiah claims that those who trust in the LORD are blessed, that even in a year of drought they do not fail to bear fruit, and that the LORD tests the mind and searches the heart according to the fruit produced.  So, pray to be blessed, bear good fruit, and trust in the LORD our God.

 PRAYER

Lord God, help me to develop the kind of life where I can trust in your guidance. And send me a faithful witness that I can trust to lead me in your way everlasting.  Amen

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION

 Name something you have done to bear fruit for the kingdom.

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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.