Skip to main content

Rejoice


Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.
   "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm— my great army that I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.  Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed. (Joel 2:23-27)

           A friend shared an organized opportunity for prayer for the next 6 weeks that I thought would be a good change of pace for my prayer life. Each day of the week, the prayers lift up a different area of influence:
Monday: centers of commerce
Tuesday: centers of communication
Wednesday: centers of education
Thursday: centers of government
Friday: centers of spiritual activity
Saturday: one’s family
Sunday: the local church
          They also have weekly themes:
Week 1: Rejoice
Week 2: Repentance
Week 3: Righteousness
Week 4: Restoration
Week 5: Reconciliation
Week 6: Revival
          It should be no surprise that I’m going to spend a little time focusing on the Bible verses, themes, or foci chosen for each day or week. I don’t know if I can spend the whole week on these things, but we’ll see. 
         As I prayed through and meditated on today’s passage, some standard centers of commerce came to mind: the medical practitioners facing COVID-19, the essential workers, those who were displaced from their jobs or had their businesses destroyed by gubernatorial fiat (I call them the Living Dead,) and for those whose businesses have been destroyed by the locusts known as rioters and looters. 
          As I prayed, the idea that crystalized in my mind was the fact that each person is a center of commerce. We tend to think in terms of brick and mortar, or online businesses, but from the perspective of capitalism, each person has their own capital – their bodies, their minds, their skills, and their time that they can offer to someone else in exchange for money, goods, services, etc. With what is going on in the world, now may not be the most opportune time to put those things to work, but it may be the most necessary time to do so. 
          Tomorrow, I’ll consider the locusts. I have some research to do first.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more