25 January 2026 - the people in darkness have seen a great light

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.

It had been a long time since the people in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali had been taken into exile in Assyria. No doubt they had come to think of the darkness of that exile as a permanent darkness, and of themselves as forgotten by God. Yet, by beginning his mission where he did, Jesus signaled that they had not been forgotten, that they were not abandoned or forsaken. One question we should consider is what the mission of Jesus had to do with that exile. In what way did what he desired to accomplish assuage or address the wound left by Assyria? It did not seem that the mission of Jesus did or could bring exiles back from distant lands. So we should not miss the significance that it was there that Jesus announced that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. His plan was not to restore Israel at a national level, but to gather around himself a new and spiritual Israel that would eventually include descendants of all of the scattered tribes. But, due to the consequences of sin, the fruit of this new kingdom would be something greater than what was lost. The way that Israel had been scattered and intermingled with the Gentiles meant that in order to gather Israel the Gentiles too would reap what we may call collateral benefit.

For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters,
by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.

We can see that Paul understood the unity of the kingdom as one of its central aspects. For this reason he instructed the Ephesians to be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (see Ephesians 4:3). It was for this reason that he was so critical of rivalries and discord in the Church. He saw that, as the Body of Christ, they had a new and deeper basis for unity than ever before. Where it had been possible for some tribes to be taken into exile it was metaphysically impossible for the body of Christ to truly be divided. Thus we say in the creed that the Church, in addition to be catholic, holy, and apostolic, is also one. But the Church is also different from Israel in that it requires, not living in a specific place, but thinking and act in a new and spiritual way. Those who perpetuated rivalries were failing to live up to this standard, failing to fully live within the Body of Christ to the degree that they did not share the heart of Jesus for unity. 

Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

We tend celebrate the idea of unity and excuse ourselves from the discussion about rivalries. But it is not so easy. There are some positions that are fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Christ. In such cases we are not meant to look the other way and pretend nothing is wrong. But more than that there is a wide diversity of acceptable opinion on matters both political and theological within the Church. We must hold fast to the truth while not creating divisions that ought not exist. The key to doing so is to maintain the centrality of Christ in our hearts and minds. He is the basis of our unity. His grace is our only hope for maintaining it. For that matter, he is our only hope of restoring the many instances in which that unity was broken, in particular, our separated brethren of other Christian denominations.

“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

We can see from the calling of the first disciples that the kingdom of heaven was meant to be a swelling current that gathered people together around Jesus. First the people themselves came to him, and then they helped bring more along with them. Step one was Jesus. Step two was becoming a fisher of men. But not just any gathering would do, nor would any kind of unity suffice. Only the kingdom was enough because it was Jesus himself who brought light to the world, light which was otherwise absent. Light was not merely a pleasant metaphor in this case. It was in fact the only lasting antidote to sin, suffering, and ultimately even to the darkness of death. Only thus can we truly say that "on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen".

What is the upshot of the saving light of the Lord for us, or what difference should it make in our lives? How do we know if we are abiding in his light? Judging by the words of the psalmist we may infer that the more we truly recognize the light of Christ the less any lesser things will have power to make us afraid.

DC Talk - In The Light

Songs In His Presence - His Name Will Be Called

 

24 January 2026 - family matters

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, 
for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

The relatives of Jesus heard about the crowds and about the adverse effects his popularity was having on his life. Unable even to eat? He must Be in over his head, they thought, swept up in something that had become too big to manage. Had he come to believe in what must have been his own hype? After all, they were his relatives. They had known him, and thought they knew him. They continued to assume that he was normal. Others with less intimate connections to him might imagine him to be something more, but his relatives knew, or thought they knew, that he was no different from they. 

If Jesus was misunderstood by people who thought they knew him before he began his mission it is likely that Christians will be misunderstood, first, upon their initial conversion, and then again and again as they deepen their commitment and take Jesus and his Gospel more and more seriously. The paradigm of normal, the only one the world apart from Jesus has with which to work, is not applicable to the followers of Jesus. A fundamental idea of the Gospel is that the world was not OK as Jesus found it. He came because it needed saving. And he extends that mission into our own day through us. But people who haven't accepted the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world (though, who could miss it?) often take offense at the idea that it needs fixing. People have even more reason to be offended by us than by Jesus himself, because we are clearly flawed, imperfect in all of the same ways the world is imperfect. How could we possibly claim to help? If anything, it is probably even harder for anyone to imagine that this claim could be valid in spite of the flaws of its advocates. 

Knowing that we will be misunderstood and even opposed as followers of Jesus is ought not cause us to give up in advance. Rather, we should set to work with realistic expectations, so that we are not surprised or deterred when we encounter such results. People may try to stop us, even thinking they are acting for our benefit. But we must persist. We must be willing to be seen as fools for Christ if and when the situation demands.

We may well lose friends, not necessarily through any hostility on their part, but simply because they no longer understand us or our priorities. They may not regard us with hostility. And yet our different goals may cause us to drift apart. But part of the promise of the Gospel is friendship in a new and deeper form, first with Jesus, and then through him with his other friends. Such friendship is even sweeter than that between David and Jonathan.

“I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother!
most dear have you been to me;
more precious have I held love for you than love for women.

Thus is the promise of Jesus fulfilled that "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold" (see Matthew 19:29). We recognize that when we do leave family or friends we are responding to the love that Jesus himself first showed us. Knowing this we can be reassured that nothing truly important is ever lost when we take Jesus at his word.

Passion - Heart Abandoned

 

23 January 2026 - consider your calling

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted 
and they came to him.

Jesus was like a new Moses or a new Solomon, summoning these Twelve in order to be the foundations of a new and spiritual Israel. They were not merely representatives of the twelve tribes, since membership in God's covenant community was now going to transcend the tribal and the national. The Israel of the Old Covenant had been specially chosen and blessed with favor in order to be a light to the nations. It is important to recognize that it was not chosen based on any particular merit.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples (see Deuteronomy 7:7).

Neither did he choose the Blessed Virgin on the basis of some accomplishments of hers. Neither did he summon the Twelve for their particular skills or competencies. 

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; (see First Corinthians 1:25-27).

God was pleased to make sure that his own power was evident, working through human weakness. Thus, those who recognized it knew they were not being taken in by merely human creativity or cleverness. They were not being persuaded by savvy business sense. From the outside, the Church seldom looked very impressive, was always replete with very human flaws and failings. And yet there was something within the Church that had the power to transform lives. There was something protecting the Church in order that the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles would remain available to all throughout the generations. The foundations chosen by Jesus were entirely natural. He wouldn't have needed to look far to find more educated or erudite men to carry his message to the world. But from the Twelve he did choose he established a supernatural edifice against which even the gates of hell could not prevail.

The key thing for Apostles to be successful was that they remember why they were called, "that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons". They had to remember that he was the source of their ability to be effective in spreading the Gospel, he the vine, and they the branches. They had to prioritize his word above their own words and seek to impart the spiritual freedom that he longed to give. They had received the authority of Jesus himself, but not in order to use it for their own projects. The authority of Jesus was always for the sake of service, always meant to be ordered to salvation.

Look here at this end of your mantle which I hold.
Since I cut off an end of your mantle and did not kill you, 
see and be convinced that I plan no harm and no rebellion.

Since those anointed by God represent more than they are in themselves it behooves us to demonstrate respect and even reverence toward them. This doesn't mean we look away from grievous failures or turn a blind eye to criminal behavior. But it does mean, at least, that we don't allow the fact the ministers within God's Church are human to bother us excessively. They are human. They do have faults. They are not perfect. But they are the Lord's anointed, and divine power works through them, such that, without them, we would be, at best, deeply impoverished. We have to trust that the Lord is still able to work through human weakness, even when they weakness is lamentably familiar. After all, if he can no longer do so, what hope do we have that he can work through us? Our hope is the fact that we too have been called and chosen and anointed. This divine election really can allow us to transcend our very real limits, that all our faults and failures might not prevent us from living our lives for the glory of God.

Bernadette Farrell - God Has Chosen Me

 

22 January 2026 - popularity contested

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”

The extreme effectiveness of both David and Jesus on their respective missions brought, at least at first, more hardship than personal benefit. For both, it aroused the envy of the powerful.  Jesus was no longer able to move about freely due to the adoring crowds, and was even at risk of being crushed by the effects of his popularity. David was also prevented by his popularity from moving about freely, instead being forced to hide from the angry king. In the case of David, Saul was provoked into plotting his death. So too with Jesus and the Pharisees.

It is clear in both cases that the popularity they experienced was not worth pursuing for its own sake. Those who were jealous of that popularity missed the degree to which it was a hassle. And yet they desired it because they feared that without it their own positions might become irrelevant. The popularity of both David and Jesus might well lead them to the kingship. Yet they only possessed this popularity because of their faithfulness to their mission, not because they sought it for its own sake. We can see this clearly in the ongoing fidelity of David to Saul while he was king. And we can see it in the way that Jesus did not want anyone to make known the Son of God, lest others accept a skewed vision of what that meant. Because they weren't obsessed with their own status they were ultimately far more trustworthy than their opponents who obsessed about theirs.

Success and popularity are not goals worth pursuing for their own sake. In reality, the tradeoffs are often not worth whatever payoffs there may be. Of course we do want to be successful, since the alternative, being a failure is highly undesirable. And we do want people to like us, since that too is better than the alternative. But when we begin to obsess about either of these as ends in themselves we become twisted. We become both harder to love and less effective in our other ambitions. Maybe if Saul had been a little less proud he would have been a little more effective on the field of battle, though that is speculative. Instead of focusing on these lesser goods we should make the mission our top priority, just as did both David and Jesus. We should seek first the kingdom and let God add whatever else besides that we may need. Seeking the kingdom first implies doing what we ought to do for others without being obsessed about our own reward, just as Jesus did with the crowds.

He had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases
were pressing upon him to touch him.

Elevation Worship - See A Victory

 

21 January 2026 - confirmation bias

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

They watched Jesus closely
to see if he would cure him on the sabbath
so that they might accuse him.

Can we even imagine that the Pharisees were actually looking for an (in their view) improperly timed miracle in order to accuse Jesus? We have already seen that Jesus made the case that the his mission take precedence over the normal demands of the sabbath. Rather than taking that argument to heart the Pharisees naturally assumed that this would be an easy place to find fault. They had made up their mind about Jesus in advance and were now looking for confirmation for their bias. It sounds so extreme as to be unrelatable. And yet we too are sometimes guilty of excessively rigid thinking supported by confirmation bias. The Pharisees had the law and the prophets to guide them. Yet they twisted those teachings and inverted the hierarchy of priorities contained therein. It is true that, in Jesus, we have the fullness of revelation, whereas what the Pharisees had was partial.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (see Hebrews 1:1-2).

Yet the fact that the Church possesses the fullness of revelation does not mean that her individual members don't twist bits and pieces of it to suit their liking or serve their fancy. In fact, it is easy to succumb to such temptations, since distracting ourselves with the business of others is much easier than focusing on our own growth in holiness. It is easier to exempt ourselves from obligations and instead act as though our gossip about others is accomplishing something useful.

For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies (see Second Thessalonians 3:11).

We sometimes only see the bad done by our opponents, as the Pharisees were able to ignore the intention of Jesus to save a life. The were in fact so fixated on destroying a life, that of Jesus, that it didn't enter into their moral calculus. They were only willing to acknowledge facts that supported their preexisting bias. Thus, their priorities had become inverted. The protection of life, which should have been at the top of their priorities, was now of less importance to them than being seen to be correct. Without consciously realizing it, they had, in effect, made themselves idols, and were trying to make sure they were the ones who received worship, in the form of popularity, rather than Jesus, the true God, worthy of all praise.

In order to pursue the truth we need to hold our own self-image more loosely. We need to be like John the Baptist, ready to decrease so that Jesus might increase. We need to be willing to be wrong so that we can grow in truth. We need to be willing to have imperfect behavior corrected so that we can grow in holiness. It is insufficient to approach these challenges with a negative self-image, however, since that would make us likely to give up. What we need is courage, courage like that shown by David against Goliath.

You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar,
but I come against you in the name of the LORD of hosts

Maranatha! Music - The Battle Belongs To The Lord

 

20 January 2026 - in grained beliefs

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed him in the midst of his brothers;
and from that day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David. 

Although Solomon was, in a way, the son promised to David, it was true that he was only a partial fulfillment of that promise, and ultimately died in a disgrace. Jesus was the true son of David, the one on whom the Spirit descended at the baptism and remained throughout his life, the one who would truly fulfill God's promises to Israel, and through Israel, to the world.

Have you never read what David did
when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?

Just as David was destined to be king by the edict of the Lord through Samuel, but was opposed by Saul and his men, so too was Jesus destined to reign as the King of kings and Lord of lords, but was opposed by the Pharisees. This is like what was described in the second Psalm:

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us (see Psalm 2:1-3).

Jesus, even more than David, was on a mission of divine origin. Just as David and his men were permitted to eat the bread of offering for the sake of their mission, the disciples of Jesus eating grain on the sabbath was permitted for the sake of his. The spirit indeed rushed on David from the time of his anointing, as we read in the first reading, but Jesus was the one to whom the Father gave the Spirit without measure (see John 3:33). What David and Solomon both represented in limited and fragmentary ways Jesus perfectly fulfilled. He was, as he said elsewhere, one greater than Solomon. As he himself said he was even greater than the temple, the service of which was itself a valid reason to set aside the usual demands of the sabbath.

Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

Jesus, unlike the Pharisees, understood the reason that God had established the sabbath, since he was, as it were, in on the decision. The Pharisees looked at the sabbath and only saw the negatives, every possible 'Thou shalt not' that could be imagined in its regard. They saw the rules as arbitrary, useful for virtue signaling for themselves and damaging the reputation of their opponents. This was actually something that began as a good impulse but that had gone horrible awry. They correctly perceived that God cared deeply about seeing the sabbath honored. But he did not wish to see it honored in the way these Pharisees attempted to do so. He longed to see its true meaning fulfilled. Thus the rest required for the sabbath was meant to create the space for the flourishing of relationship between God and man. And since the mission of Jesus was, in a fundamental way, about restoring that relationship, the sabbath could only become what it was meant to be if he first did what he was meant to do.

The sabbath was not made for man in the sense that the Pharisees could take the idea and use it to criticize the ministry of Jesus. It was made for man fully alive in the sense meant by Irenaeus. It was made for man as measured by Jesus, the perfect man, who alone could unlock its true meaning, and who alone can give the true rest that was its promise.

Phil Wickham - House Of The Lord

 

19 January 2026 - majoring in the minors

Today's Readings
(Audio)

“Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast,
but your disciples do not fast?”

We hear questions derived from similar motivations all of the time. And, if we aren't careful, we perpetuate the problem ourselves. We take something that is frequently genuinely good like fasting and then make a universal law out of it. We take things that are admirable and treat them as though they are required in all circumstances. We establish a rigid order of wonderful practices, but with no room for the Holy Spirit.

“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast.

That Jesus considered fasting to be a genuine good cannot be in doubt since he himself stated that his disciples too would practice it in the future. But he also considered feasting to be good, and, at times, so fitting as to be virtually required. Such was that particular moment when the bridegroom of Israel had at least come to his bride.

For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (see Isaiah 62:5)

The revelation brought by Jesus had to be understood on its own terms. The Old Covenant was meant to point toward the time when Jesus would come to fulfill both the law and the prophets. Now that he himself was in in fact in the process of doing so the ceremonies and rituals of the Old were meant to give way to the New Covenant he established. Eventually kosher laws, the Jewish liturgical calendar, the requirement of circumcision, all of these had to give way to make room for a Church begin enough for both Jews and Gentiles.

Good, we think. We've never been at risk of insisting on requiring the practices of the Old Testament. And yet we too stand at risk of trying to fit Jesus into our own preexisting paradigms. This happens when we make our own ideologies primary, and we try to make Jesus and Christianity fit in as best we can. We can see how those in the Liberation Theology movement made him out to be a Marxist. But, closer to home, we do tend to try to fit Jesus into the mold of one political party or another, rather than molding our political parties in line with his teaching. We even risk taking things that Jesus did teach and giving them disproportionate importance, as though he only talked about the social Gospel, or alternatively, as though he was only interested in abstract and spiritual matters. Any time we try to take the hierarchy of goods into our own hands we run this risk. We should instead always be prepared to subject our own apparently good ideas to the standard supplied by revelation.

I have brought back Agag, and I have destroyed Amalek under the ban.
But from the spoil the men took sheep and oxen,
the best of what had been banned,
to sacrifice to the LORD their God in Gilgal.

King Saul thought he had a better idea than God, one which he could plausible state was for the sake of the service of God. These things he was supposed to destroy he would instead offer as sacrifices to the Lord. What could be wrong with that? In this case, virtually everything. Partial obedience in this way was actually disobedience.

Does the LORD so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as in obedience to the command of the LORD?

The point was not about the things themselves, things which Saul implicitly gave primacy. The point was putting the Lord first, which is precisely what Saul failed to do. He learned the hard way that he did not have a better idea than God about how God ought to be served. The Lord, for his part, then rejected Saul as ruler in order to find someone who more closely shared his heart. David was certainly an improvement. But it was not until Jesus that we would see someone live out perfect obedience to God. Only the priorities of Jesus were perfectly focused on the Father. Thus he is our only viable source if we want to get such things right ourselves.

I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.

Matt Maher - Isaiah 61