Tuesday, February 4, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Martyr
Let the coming generation be told of the Lord that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born the justice he has shown.
Yesterday’s lectionary spoke of people sawn in two. In a movie we watched, The Wind and the Lion, several heads are cut off. Our lives are mainly protected from these horrors, but I sometimes imagine something much different.
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
I admit imagining more cruel and unusual punishments since January 20. It is a terrible thing not to trust your leader. I might not be fair, caught up in the headlines without knowing much of the background. Still in my imaginings, I feel like rejecting my own comfort and somehow standing before the “orphans and widows,” protecting others more helpless than me, even if only for a moment.
Brothers and sisters, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us.
My own cloud of witnesses takes on every political hue. The clouds in Texas tend toward blue in the morning and red in the evening. In Sunday School I made jokes with a conservative friend about the red and blue M&Ms mixed into our Gardettos.
I did the mixing myself. There were some white M&Ms in there as well.
Let us persevere in running the race set before us, while keeping our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
Jesus sets a strong model for me as I choose continually how to respond to my silent fear and trembling.
For the sake of the joy set before him … consider how he endured shaming opposition from sinners, at last enduring the cross and scorning its shame.
Families were torn apart by conflicting loyalties during the Civil War. No doubt every civil war in history caused broken families, and broken hearts. People often think they must choose an idea over a brother or sister.
The Mortal Storm in 1940 depicts a family divided. After ongoing debate the brothers and sister in the family choose different paths. Those more powerful, if only for a moment, abuse the less powerful, and in time sister Freya is killed. A few months before the film’s release King George VI spoke at Christmas to the people of Great Britain. He quoted lines from “The Gate of the Year” and made it famous. As the snow falls at the end of the “mortal storm,” an off-camera narrator shares from the poem:
I said to a man who stood at a gate,
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.
And he replied,
Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way.
Over and over the Scriptures tell us, “Do not be afraid.” When politicians sow fear like seeds, hoping they will germinate into helplessness, they betray our trust. I think instead of Psalm 22’s prophecy, and know it is far more true:
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
All the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.
To him alone shall bow down
all who sleep in the earth;
Before him shall bend
all who go down into the dust.
(Hebrews 12, Psalm 22, Matthew 8, Mark 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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