week 26

Psalm: Psalm 93
Old Testament: Daniel 7:9-14
Gospel: John 18:33-37
 Epistle: Revelation 1:4-8

If you can believe it, we only have one more week until Advent arrives.  Now, not only do we have to wait for Christmas, we have to wait to our time of waiting.  We will be discussing how advent is a time of waiting in the next four weeks.  Thanksgiving came early this year so although it seems like the “Christmas season” has started and we are bombarded with commercials and songs celebrating the holidays, let us strive to live by a different ideal than the world.  I must admit, however, that we have already put up our Christmas decorations and getting in the mood for the Advent season.  Also, if you can believe it, I have been writing my blogs on the Lectionary for a whole year now.  It has been a labor of love and one I think I will continue for another year.  I will at least write during Advent.

week 25

Psalm: Psalm 16
Old Testament: 1 Samuel 1:4-20
Gospel: Mark 13:1-8
Epistle: Hebrews 10:11-14, 15-18, 19-25

This week we have the longest Psalm of the year from the Lectionary readings, I believe.  It is 50 verses long, so be thankful I’m not taking it verse by verse.  But, Psalm 16 is a desperate plea for the Lord to deliver David from the hands of Saul.  He writes that the Lord is his strength and rock and the one who rescued him when he cried out. The great thing about the Psalms is that they are collected for us to pray as well.  Most Psalms don’t give a context like this one does and that is because they don’t really need one.  They are powerful prayers and with 150 of them, there is more than one for every season of our lives.  In that sense, these Psalms are the prayer book of the Church and of each one of us who chooses to pray them.  As a side note, Psalms and songs can mean more when we do have the context in which they were written.  A professor at seminary has put just such a book together about some of the great hymn writers and I encourage you to check it out. (http://www.amazon.com/The-Birth-Hymn-Biographies-Publications/dp/083419645X/)

week 24

Psalm: Psalm 127
Old Testament: 1 Kings 17:8-16
Gospel: Mark 12:38-44
Epistle: Hebrews 9:24-28

Welcome to another Sunday.  Out here in Kansas, we are finally feeling the effects of fall and we actually had some icy-rain mixture on our car after church.  No snow yet, but it’s still cold.  I want to start this week with the Psalm because I know my mom wouldn’t want me to pass this one up.  I can still hear her saying “Blessed is the person whose quiver is full of children.”  And since she wanted to have like 7 kids, I guess she really thought this was true.  Of course, we don’t take verses like this as prescriptive, as in, if you don’t have a lot of kids, you won’t be blessed.  Rather, we should take them as descriptive: children are/can be a blessing, thus we can observe that those with many children are blessed.  Hopefully that makes sense because sometimes I think we fail to understand just what type of statements we are reading in the Bible.  One person might have 10 children, yet still have a pretty rough life.  Whereas others might live celibate lives or marry and not have kids and live perfectly blessed and content lives. 

week 23

Psalm: Psalm 146
Old Testament: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Gospel: Mark 12:28-34
Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-14

Ok, whenever I have to work on Sundays, it is always hard to get the blog written by the end of Sunday night.  First, let me mention that this week, Thursday, was All Saints Day, which I failed to write a post for, but still think it is an important day to remember all those saints who have walked this life before us.  Also, Halloween, in addition to my dad’s birthday, is also Reformation day.  So next year, maybe you can hand out copies of the 95 Theses along with the trick-or-treat candy.

 

Let’s move on to the Scripture.  It’s been awhile since we have discussed the Psalm, but I think this week it speaks to where we are as a country with the election coming up in 2 days.  The Psalm is a psalm of praise.  The writer praises God because he is the ruler of all the earth.  God is the one who takes care of orphans and widows and executes justice.  Two lines really stick out; verse 3 says, “Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.”  The final verse of the Psalm tells us who to trust in place of the princes: “The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.”  In the time of Israel, kings came and went, and plenty of them were not that great.  Does this sound familiar?  America goes through presidents as well, some good and others not so good.  But through it all, God still reigns over the earth.  This reminds me of Isaiah 6 where it says, “In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on the throne…”  The king might have died, yet the Lord still sat on throne.  Let this provide us some hope in the coming elections.  Kings, presidents, and even nations come and go, but God is always on the throne.