2 August 2026 - he makes me lie down in green pastures

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.

He was planning some personal time for recovery from the physical and emotional demands of ministry. Many of us tend to become aggressive when our downtime is threatened. But not Jesus. He recognized the desperation that drove them to pursue him even in that deserted place. As with other times, his heart was moved with pity for them. In an earlier encounter he had described the crowds as sheep without a shepherd. Now that they had found in Jesus a truly Good Shepherd they were unwilling to let him slip away. And Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, was absolutely unwilling that they should need to do so. He always responded to the needs of his sheep, even when he might have preferred to do otherwise on a personal level. He was thus the opposite of most the leaders known in the history of Israel, who were meant to be shepherds, but mostly sought to feed themselves rather than the sheep. Thus Jesus fulfilled a promise of God made through Ezekiel.

Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them (see Ezekiel 34:10).

The sheep were in need, so he cured their sick. When it grew late and they grew hungry he refused to send away those who had made such an effort to be near him. This surprised his disciples, who assumed that there was no other option but to send them away. After all, they neither had enough for the crowds nor the means to acquire it. The disciples demonstrated normal human limitations. On their own they could not create the conditions in which the sheep could remain with the shepherd. They were not self-serving in the way that the previous corrupt leaders of Israel had been. But they believed had to content themselves to do the least harm in conditions where they could not themselves tend the sheep. As such, the sought to acquit themselves of responsibility for something that seemed beyond their power, nevermind the fact that it would force the sheep to a world that had taken advantage of them and could not satisfy their deepest needs. But from the perspective of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, his disciples needed to understand what to do with sheep who needed more than they had to give. He needed his disciples to understand this because, spiritually speaking, it would always be the case. They never possessed that for which the crowds spiritually hungered. Which is not to say they had nothing to contribute, or even that such a pittance as they did have to give was not required in the plan of Jesus.

“Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”

Could Jesus have started from zero and still fed the crowds? Absolutely. But instead he chose to involve the boy who had these scant resources and the disciples who found him. He could have multiplied the food and then distributed it himself. But he clearly preferred to involve the gifts, talents, and treasures which he himself had sown in the natural order of creation. They were not enough on their own. But when people learned to bring what they did have to Jesus, however insufficient it might have seemed, they would discover an abundance to meet any task to which he called them. 

One problem of the Church is that even when we manage to identify the loaves and fishes we tend to try to make up for their insufficiency through strategy. Perhaps we attempt to make the portions sufficiently small that everyone can have some microscopic amount. But trying to make do with the merely human is always going to end in situations where it can't be said of the crowds that they "all ate and were satisfied".

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing, broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples,
who in turn gave them to the crowds.

As much as the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves provided a model for his disciples to follow in their later ministry it said still more about the heart of Jesus himself. His ultimate concern was not so much the hunger of the crowds but rather that they not need to depart from his presence. Thus the miracle pointed toward the greater miracle yet to come in which he would multiply his own precious Body and Blood in order to give the world, not merely as nourishment, but as his very abiding presence within them. People who ate the manna in the desert at the time of Moses still died. And people who ate the bread Jesus multiplied in that deserted place would still die. But people who fed upon the bread of life, Jesus himself, would live forever (see John 6:41-51). In a small way, even the multiplication of the loaves of physical bread was the result of a sacrificial self-gift on the part of Jesus. But the bread of the Eucharist was given precisely through the gift of his flesh for the life of the world. It is to those thus joined to Christ that the words of Paul to the Romans apply.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor present things, nor future things,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 

Songs In His Presence - Abide, O Lord

 

1 August 2026 - the splendor of truth?

 

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

This man is John the Baptist.
He has been raised from the dead;
that is why mighty powers are at work in him.

There was something so compelling about John the Baptist that it made it impossible Herod to fully accept that he was dead, even in spite of the fact that it was at his order and in his presence that the man was killed. John spoke with a voice filled with truth that refused to compromise or accommodate itself to the circumstances. Herod liked to hear John speak even given the fact that he never let him forget about his unlawful marriage. Therefore we can imagine how easily John might have changed his message to gain the friendship of Herod and, eventually, release from prison. If it was any of us imprisoned for the truth we might well think that a temporary compromise to gain our freedom would not be so bad, only a temporary betrayal of what we knew to be true in order to escape from difficult circumstances. We would go to lengths to justify it, thinking of all the good we might yet do with freedom. And John surely must have thought of all that he might yet do for his followers. But nothing he could place in the scales could outweigh the importance of faithfulness to what he knew to be true. Moreover, it wasn't merely a secret acceptance along with an absence of public denial. It was repeated public affirmation, testimony to the truth. It was for this reason that he was killed. It was as though he understood the connection between truths and the God who is Truth. Thus his death can be understood as a kind of martyrdom to the one who is himself the way, the truth, and the life (see John 14:6). 

Although he wanted to kill him, he feared the people,
for they regarded him as a prophet.
But at a birthday celebration for Herod,
the daughter of Herodias performed a dance before the guests
and delighted Herod so much
that he swore to give her whatever she might ask for.

John was someone who never compromised. But Herod demonstrated how quickly a compromise can snowball out of control, far beyond anything he originally envisioned or intended. We know that he liked to hear John speak, that he did not want to kill him, and that he could not entirely discount the possibility that he was rightly regarded as a prophet. He had absorbed some of the holy fear with which the people regarded John. However, he did not remember any of that when he saw the daughter of Herodias dance. The momentary sensual delight overrode his judgment, making him willing to subject his mind and and his will to his feelings in a way that proved, as it so often does, disastrous.

“Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.”

We too are often willing to give away half of our kingdom, that is, our freedom and agency, for the sake of brief intense feelings. We allow the moment to overwhelm us with its poignancy and so forget the things that matter more over the long-term. This is simply going to be what happens unless we have a sufficiently firm and unbending commitment to the truth already, in advance, before it is tested. Ultimately this lack of commitment to the truth can lead to a life of compromise, in which we do things that distress us, and make us sad, but to which we can no longer find viable alternatives.

The truth cannot be killed, nor can it be silenced forever. The upshot to this reality is that long as we live we have the opportunity to finally and definitively renounce compromise and find freedom from a life in which our fears and desires rule us, rather than we them. Instead of giving away our kingdoms we should remember that we are meant to be a royal priesthood, kings and queens because of the royal dignity of Jesus who lives within us. So let us rediscover and recover this identity so that we may live it to the full.

 

Casting Crowns - Voice Of Truth

31 July 2026 - homecourt disadvantage

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue.

It first they seemed to be impressed by "the gracious words that were coming from his mouth" (see Luke 4:22). But it seemed that they wanted more than words. They had heard of the mighty deeds done at Capernaum and wanted to see him work similar wonders in Nazareth. But this initial demand issued not from genuine need, but rather from a sense of entitlement. They believed that as the place from where, as was thought, Jesus came, they deserved at least as much as anyone else. But Jesus was unwilling to give them spectacle that they didn't need just because they felt they deserved it. The fact that he was from Nazareth didn't imply anything special for them if they were unwilling to let him change their hearts. Jesus was intentionally provocative to those who presumed on God's mercy in this way.

I will treat this house like Shiloh,
and make this the city to which all the nations of the earth
shall refer when cursing another.Now the priests, the prophets, and all the people
heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the LORD.

The fact of the presence of the Ark of the Covenant in Shiloh was not enough to save a rebellious and unrepentant people from divine judgment through defeat at the hands of the Philistines. And neither the temple nor the Ark in themselves would be enough to turn the wrath of God away from the people in the time of Jeremiah unless the people listened and turned back, "each from his evil way". Thus the presence of God in the midst of his people is never meant to justify complacency. It is never meant to be presumed upon like magic that we can manipulate even in the midst of moral compromise. True mighty deeds of God come about when we realize the depth of our need for him. However impressive such deeds may appear to an observer, they are always even more transformative at an inner level.

Is not his mother named Mary
and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?
Are not his sisters all with us?

When Jesus didn't act in such a way that privileged the people of Nazareth merely because of their proximity they began to turn that proximity into a verbal weapon against him. We sometimes do something similar when we don't receive what we want from the Lord. We may reflect and comment on the fact that we've only ever seen ordinary things as a result of our proximity to him. We've lived near his Eucharistic presence for how long with nothing to show for it? Needless to say if we have nothing to show for our proximity to the Eucharistic Lord the fault does not lie with him. We need to differentiate between the depth of our need for God, which is easy to forget, and what we deserve or believe we have earned, which is easy to assume. This becomes all the more necessary the longer we have lived as followers of Jesus. We never enter a mode of being where we can simply coast and let the momentum carry us, where faith is no longer necessary. We want to be like Jesus himself, consumed with zeal for the Father's house, and not with complacency. It is better for him to purify the temples of our hearts than to allow us to grow forgetful of the purpose of those temples, which is always the right praise of God.

But I pray to you, O LORD,
for the time of your favor, O God!
In your great kindness answer me
with your constant help.

 

Vineyard - Help Us Our God

 

30 July 2026 - carry that waiting

Today's Readings
(Audio)

  

The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.

The part of this analogy that is taking place now is only the collection. The classification of good and bad will not happen until the end of the age. However, we tend to fixate on trying to figure out which is which right now. We often try to shift the motion of the gathering nets so as to avoid those whom we perceive as undesirable. We are often all too willing to take the task of throwing away of the bad upon ourselves. We attempt to create a pristine environment for ourselves within the net even before the boats reach the shore. No wonder that Jesus told so many parables about the impossibility these attempts and the futility of these efforts at preselecting only those qualified for the Kingdom. 

 

We learn this lesson from many of the parables of Jesus. We can't know with certain which are weeds and which are wheat until harvest. It is not possible to observe the action of the leaven when it is first mixed. The growth of the tiny seed goes unobserved at first and is not immediately identifiable with the large tree it may one day become. It is not until the last day that the sheep and the goats are divided. The wise and foolish maidens interact until just before the coming of the bridegroom. The point is not that we are meant to try to remain hidden. It is rather that much of what happens in the process of Kingdom growth is necessarily obscure to us. We are meant to be light and salt for the world. But none of us do this perfectly all the time. Even we ourselves can't have absolute certainty about whether we will be the good that is put into buckets or the bad that is thrown away. The reason we can't is that it is not yet the end and we can still change for better or for worse. One thing that is both certain and obvious is that none of us is perfect while this mortal life lasts. Thus we want to be and remain in the hands of the potter who will continue to help to reform and refashion us until we become all that he, the divine artists, knows we can be.

Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand, 
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.

In virtue of repeated exposure to these parables we have become, in a sense, scribes who have "been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven". We can now see the direction that all that came before was tending, the Old Covenant that Jesus himself fulfilled. So we bring forth the old to point ahead to Jesus. But we must also bring forth that which was unique to the message of Jesus, the new, the good news of what God did for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and what he desires for us for all eternity. The new and the old are thus too halves that are only fully intelligible together. When we keep our Kingdom instruction in mind we are less likely to succumb to temptations to choose false alternatives, such as this one against which the psalmist warns:

Put not your trust in princes,
in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.
When his spirit departs he returns to his earth;
on that day his plans perish.

 

 Hillsong Worship - The Potter's Hand

29 July 2026 - now and then, here and there

 

Today's Reading

(Audio)

 

Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.

Martha seemed to mean that she knew Jesus had no limitations to expressing his power in a way the was preventative, that avoided evil in the first place. Neither did she assume that when he did not exercise this power in response to her specific circumstance that it necessarily meant his power was necessarily any less. But she she did seem to question the degree to which he cared for her and her family specifically. That uncertainty did not lead her to give up on Jesus entirely. She still recognized that God would give him whatever he asked. It was just that it had now become obvious that he wasn't always going to ask for what mattered to her. 

Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.

Given the fact that Jesus could have saved Lazarus but did not do so Martha could only infer that it was not to be during her mortal life. To be sure on the last day, so distant from Martha as to be little more than dream, he would rise. But would it not have been the case that if Jesus cared for her, Mary, and Lazarus in their lives here and now, and not only in the future, that he would have already done what she knew he could have done to save him? If all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose why do some of those things seem to be obviously and entirely negative? It is not enough to say that the last day will more than make up for it, though clearly, it will. The point is that if the statement "All things" really means "All" it must include even those which seem to us difficult to square with divine providence. "All things" must even include the evils that we know that God, in the mystery of his wisdom, does sometimes permit. Yet sometimes we so surrender to that mystery as to assume that God is really indifferent to things that occur in this mortal life, to our daily joys and sorrows, caring instead only that things will be sufficiently good in the end.

Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”

Jesus revealed to Martha what she had not dared to hope. She might have agreed that he would be the resurrection and the life on the last day, that at his voice those who slept in the tombs would awake to life, but she would not have been able to believe or imagine that he was the resurrection and the life now. Her grief had already made her abandon hope that she could experience life from Jesus in the way she desired until the last day. He apparently hadn't helped in the first place. So why would she imagine he might do so now? Indeed, from her perspective, it would have been almost unfathomable to imagine that he might he stayed away for a time just to perform this miracle. After all, wouldn't it have been better to save Lazarus in the first place and spare them the grief? If the purpose was only to restore him to a mortal life in which he must eventually die again one day would not sooner be better? Yet there was something greater that came about because of the choice of Jesus to do this. It was precisely the revelation that he was the source of life now, and not only later, and that by knowing him we could share in that life. It didn't always take the form of miracles, and when it did, they weren't always the ones for which we asked, but it remained available and possible nevertheless. It remains so now. We don't in fact have to wait for the last day to experience the gift of supernatural life from Jesus. And it is precisely this life within us that helps to anchor us as we navigate the trials and challenges of this life. Rather than giving up when God doesn't give us exactly what we want exactly when we want it let us so with Martha, "Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world".

 

 Pat Barrett - The Way (New Horizon)

 

28 July 2028 - pro-seed with caution

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

"Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field."

This parable was not primarily about predestination. It is true that some of the plants we now see growing will prove to be from the good seed sown by the Son of Man. And yes, it is true as well that some plants will prove to be weeds fit only for burning. But the actual point Jesus made was that it is basically impossible to identify which is which before the harvest at the end of the age. Therefore this parable has more to do with dealing with this unavoidable ambiguity in the world in even in the Church herself before that time. 

 

The fact is that attempting perfection in the sense of constructing an earthly Church consisting only of those who are perfectly pure is impossible. We may mean well, but even we still sometimes exhaust the soil to a greater degree than we bear fruit. We may simply be branches in need of pruning. But it is yet possible that even we ourselves may not be among those who will shine like the sun of the Kingdom of the Father. Since no one can have absolute certainty about himself while he yet lives how much less so regarding the destiny of others? No one can be excluded as worthless or without hope until the last day reveals it. We tend to be eager to go weed hunting in the world as a way to distract us from ourselves, people with boards in our eyes on the hunt for those with specs in theirs. It is a deeply flawed approach that not only won't benefit the Church or the world but will ultimately injure us and keep us from the growth that we still need.

The weeds are the children of the Evil One,
and the enemy who sows them is the Devil.

It is true that there is evil in the world that goes above and beyond mistakes and innocent errors. There is in fact a force hostile to God at work, trying to sabotage his works. We do well to remember this rather than approach life with a naive optimism, only to be disappointed when not everything is sunshine and roses. But while remembering it, we keep in mind that the evil we face cannot be identified with any specific individuals, even those who seem openly and directly hostile to us and to the plan and purpose of God. Our warfare is not finally against them, or any who are flesh and blood, but rather against the devil who has co-opted their freedom and is using them for his purposes. Our warfare requires love for our earthly enemies in order to defeat the spiritual powers who oppose us.

"To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head" (see Romans 12:20).

It is impossible to ignore the constant thread of salvation history in which God called his people back from their sins to himself. No one was ever so fixed in his position that an appeal might not win him back to the side of goodness, truth, and beauty. We see such a response from Jeremiah on behalf of the people, many of whom seemed to be weeds, but with whom he yet identified himself.

We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness,
the guilt of our fathers;
that we have sinned against you.
For your name's sake spurn us not,
disgrace not the throne of your glory;
remember your covenant with us, and break it not.

Jesus, too, only makes sense in when recognize that he came to offer us a choice, one which he ensures we have sufficient freedom to make. He did not come merely to categorize the righteous and the wicked. Rather, he came to invite all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth, just as his Father desired. How different the mission and ministry of Jesus would have looked if it was predicated on preaching to people only in order to seal an eternal destiny they could not control. He never told anyone they were so good, so well situated, that there was not work that remained for them to do. He never told anyone that they were too broken or compromised to change. Rather, he always made sure that speculation about matters known with certainty only to God never got in the way of the work that remained to be done. It is only in this context that the plea in today's psalm makes sense:

 

Let the prisoners' sighing come before you;
with your great power free those doomed to death.
Then we, your people and the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
through all generations we will declare your praise.

Dan Feiten - Seed, Scattered and Sown

27 July 2026 - branching out

Today's Readings

(Audio)

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.

The Church started so small that it seemed it could never make a significant difference in the world. Jesus may have possessed divine power and authority along with heavenly wisdom but he and his disciples did not seem positioned to effect much beyond the backwater of Israel let alone transform the world. Yet the Church did become a bush so large that the birds of the sky could come to dwell in its branches, just as God intended for Israel. It was through God's covenant promise to Abraham that all nations of the earth were to be blessed, and the temple was meant to be a house of prayer for all peoples. Yet the expansion of these blessings beyond the boundaries of Israel were always hesitant, halting, and incomplete during the times before the coming of Jesus. But one might wonder. If Solomon was as close as Israel came to fulfilling its destiny to be a light to the nations, drawing people from the ends of the earth to hear his wisdom, wouldn't whatever finally did fulfill that destiny be, by necessity, large and obvious? Yet it was precisely in the mustard seed of faith Jesus entrusted to the followers, and in particular to his Apostles that this promise was eventually realized. They were successful because they took Jesus at his word. They were under-resourced, outnumbered, outmatched, but they didn't let this stop them or even slow them down once the Holy Spirit sent them forth on the day of Pentecost. Even then, supernaturally equipped, it might not have seemed like what they had was all that much when faced with all the resistance of the world, let alone enough to address all the needs its brokenness. But by being faithful to the small seed entrusted to each of them they changed the world. The period of history that their efforts ushered in would be entirely unintelligible if not for these mustard seeds to explain it. 

 

The disciples didn't let appearances stop them. It was a little like the scene in Star Wars were Yoda explained that the appearance of size was not the deepest truth, and then preceded to lift the crashed X-Wing from the swamp unto dry land by his power. Our faith, it is said, can move mountains, which are larger still than X-Wings. However it can only do this if we don't take for granted what we have been given, but rather choose to place our faith in the wisdom with which Jesus has apportioned to us the gifts and opportunities that constitute our lives. The mustard seed is inherently something that doesn't seem that valuable apart from the fact that Jesus said it is valuable, and the promise he attached to when it is faithfully sown.

He spoke to them another parable.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”

The yeast is a small fraction of the recipe yet has a disproportionate effect on the resulting loaf. Just so, even when the Church is a minority in the world it nevertheless has an effect beyond what scale would suggest is possible. Especially now, in an age where the faithful are a remnant, rather than a dominant cultural, force this is reassuring. But we should remember that the initial presence of the yeast in the dough is hidden. It is meant to be mixed in with the other ingredients. It is only over the course of time that there is any evidence of the batch rising and obtaining to a higher destiny of deliciousness. Our own role in helping to address the challenges of our times is similarly often invisible at first. But it does require that we not keep ourselves entirely isolated from the world around us. We can't simply remained sealed in yeast packets. We must be unleashed if we are too have the intended effect, even if, at first, we seem to be lost in a much larger mixture.

 

 

Newsboys - Secret Kingdom