Wednesday Devotion
Our staff gathers each Wednesday morning for a time of devotion, review of the calendar, and other topics. We take turns leading the devotion. Today was my day!
Opening Question:
Who is an example of humility?
(The Daily Question, gratefulness.org, May 5, 2019)
What is the church? Two thoughts:
The church is best understood as a creation of God, a community of corporate social agents called to bear witness individually and corporately in word and deed to God’s intention for human life, that is, to be a radical community for others, a countercultural community biased toward and acting with God on behalf of the oppressed, the hurt, the poor, the have-nots, the marginal people of the world.
John H. Westerhoff III, Will Our Children Have Faith?. The Seabury Press (New York), 1976.
The church can never exist for itself; it is never an end, only a means. Its mission, its end, is to be a community where Christian faith is proclaimed, experienced, understood, lived, and acted upon in history.
“As Brené Brown puts it, “I went to church thinking it would be like an epidural, that it would take the pain away . . . But church isn’t like an epidural; it’s like a midwife . . . I thought faith would say, ‘I’ll take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying was, ‘I’ll sit with you in it.”
Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. Thomas Nelson, 2015.
Prayer for the Day
Help me tend to my path, O God, to make it clear and compelling to those who will follow.
(adapted from, “The Daily Question”. gratefulness.org, May 3, 2019)