Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9
Journal: How are you trying to control life these days? How are you trying to live by your own
efforts? What would it mean to surrender
to God, and to his will, instead?
Reflection:
In our own daily lives, in our efforts to do
right, what is decisive is that we accept and live by and surrender ourselves
to a strength which is not our own, to the piercing white light of God’s love.
When we experience this
love we turn away from the notion that we initiate and God responds; that we,
by our religious efforts, can set something in motion that God must obey in
response. To believe that by an effort
of will we can mount nearer to God or add one cubit to our stature is as unchristian
as the belief that we have no task as Christians for the mundane affairs of
this world. Both beliefs have the same
root—the pride that seeks to climb its way to God—and produces the same kind of
confusion as the ancient attempt to build the tower of Babel.
The direction to which our
wills must be put is in obedience to God’s will in response to the breaking in
of the Spirit. Then something decisive
happens for this earth. (Yielding to God by Philip Britts)
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Dear
heavenly Father, there are some lessons in this life of grace I seem to have a
hard time remembering, or at least accepting. My limits and insufficiency are
certainly two of them. The magnetic pull of the “cult of competency” is always
lurking. Forgive me for not wanting to need the gospel, your Spirit, and
community as much as you say I do.
So, Father, as this day begins, I forsake the illusion of my competency and
cast myself on you, the God who raises the dead—beginning with Jesus. I’m not
facing deadly perils, but I am facing people I love that I cannot fix,
injustices in the world that I cannot right, old lingering wounds that I cannot
heal, stubborn addicts that I cannot rescue, an aging process that I cannot
reverse, cold marriages that I cannot thaw, and my own heart that I cannot
change.
Grant me grace to accept my limits and faith to trust you more; and a greater
willingness to let friends enter my struggles and carry my burdens. I know you
to be the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; I want to know you that
way much, much more. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ kind and grace-full name.
~Scotty Smith
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