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Saying Yes to God’s Purpose
We have just entered the liturgical season of Pentecost, the birthday of the church. The Pentecost Read More
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Deborah Van Deusen Hunsinger | Read John 20:19-23
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Sign Up TodayChristians today depend completely on the testimony of those
who have lived by faith for generations before us. Like
Thomas, we have not seen the resurrected Jesus with our own
eyes. Yet, if believing depends solely on seeing, the living Word
of God would never have reached across the more...
Gracious God, reconstruct our life stories in ways that will permit our testimony to be convincing for the generations that come after us. Lead us to live in such accord with your word that our humble witness may be a small but trustworthy parable of love for those who are as yet unborn. Amen.
Psalm 16 and Acts 2 fit together, since the latter quotes the former. Both celebrate God’s presence in human life and the powerful expression of that presence. In his Pentecost sermon Peter sees a messianic application of the psalm to the resurrection of Jesus. First Peter affirms that resurrection creates community, stressing the faith and love of Christians that arise without the experience of physical contact with Jesus. For later generations, belief and commitment are born out of the witness of others.
• Read Acts 2:14a, 22-32. When has a life experience made you, like Peter, feel that your faith was a sham? How did you move past that experience into renewed hope?
• Read Psalm 16. When have you perceived God as refuge? How has your faith in God steadied your life? What is your “goodly heritage”?
• Read 1 Peter 1:3-9. What act of power and grace on God’s part allows you to reconfigure or reinterpret your life story?
• Read John 20:19-31. When have you employed the power to release others from their sin? to leave them in their sin?
Respond by posting a prayer.
I join many of those who will pray for you as you seek to discern what you are called to be at this moment. May God grant you the courage to fulfill that calling. May we all open our eyes and see the misery, open our ears and hear the cries of God’s people, and, like God through the Lord Jesus Christ, be incarnate amongst them.”
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