11 May 2026 - testimony

Today's Readings
(Audio)

I have told you this so that you may not fall away.

From this statement we can know that it is possible to fall away. It might seem as though this should not be the case, as though once we have known the mercy and love of Jesus that we could never forget him. We know that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (see Romans 8:1). But we also know that it is possible for those who are in Christ Jesus to not remain in him, else he would not waste words saying to us "Abide in me" (see John 15:4). Like even his own disciples, it is possible to make the mistake of putting ourselves first and leaving him. It is possible through our actions to choose the kingdom of this world to a degree that renders us unfit for the kingdom of God. In many ways this makes our condition worse than being without Jesus in the first place (see Second Peter 2:20). But it only remains worse if we do not repent. As long as we return to the Lord he can use even our sin to help dispose us toward humility and docility in the future. We can become even more unshakable in our devotion to him, more firmly united to his abiding presence.

They will expel you from the synagogues;
in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you
will think he is offering worship to God.

From the perspective of the world robust and orthodox Christianity does not seem normal. It seems rather more like a plague to be eradicated. It seems hostile not only to supposed legitimate moral freedom, but even to the healthy self-image of individuals. Humility is antithetical to the aspirations of the world. The word does not admit of the possibility of culpable error in oneself but only of mistakes committed through ignorance. But because we know ourselves, we know better than that. We know that we have at times known what we should do and failed to do it. We have known what we ought not to have done and yet did it nonetheless. Does it hurt our feelings to know that we are not only not all knowing but not even consistently good? Of course. But should we have artificial feelings based on false pretenses? If we do, it will make it almost impossible to find a cure.

The world outside of us is always at work normalizing something other than Christianity. Sometimes Christianity is directly villainized. Other times the world urges a mediocre and lukewarm version of Christianity that is not dangerous to its hegemony. But both of these poisons infect the very water we drink. It is hard not to internalize some of their implications even without realizing it. And the more this subtle process happens without notice the more likely we are to find ourselves more aligned with the world than with Christ and to eventually make the choice to leave him.

When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.

We need a voice, one in addition to our own memory, or the merely human voice of the shepherds who have charge over us in the Church. We need the testimony of the Spirit who can win the battle against the world from within us, not merely from the outside. He can remind us of what is true and help us to keep things straight when we are tending toward confusion. We might not be able to persuade ourselves that the world is wrong when it just seems so normal. Even the arguments we craft to convince ourselves might not be convincing enough, even when they are true arguments. We need the voice of the Spirit within us. Just as no one had ever spoken in the way that Jesus did, with authority, so too does the Holy Spirit speak with authority in our souls, in a way that is not possible for others, not possible even for ourselves.

And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.

If we want to testify to Jesus (and we should at least want to want that) then we need to be rooted in a principle that is more unshakable than ourselves. We need to possess a testimony that can give us certainty no matter how strongly the world opposes. It is often as though we expect that evangelization of the culture ought to always be easy and smooth. But this is more likely to be the exception than the rule. Easy evangelization might more often be merely self-congratulation among people who mostly already agree. But we are called to let the light of Jesus shine in the darkness. The darkness can and will overcome us alone. But it will not overcome him and us together, united in the power of his Spirit. Evangelization is not finally about human efforts or decisions. It is about preparing the way for the Lord and letting him do the work, as we see in our reading from Acts.

One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth,
from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened,
and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention
to what Paul was saying.

Songs In His Presence - Abide, O Lord

 

10 May 2026 - Spirit of truth

Today's Readings
(Audio)

I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.

Although they could not see the Spirit of truth, they would see Jesus, risen from the dead and, as Peter wrote, "brought to life in the Spirit". They didn't see the Spirit directly, but they witnessed the transformative effect he had in the life of Jesus, beginning from his baptism, and culminating in the resurrection. Thus, as Jesus revealed the Father who was invisible so too did he revel the Spirit. He did so preeminently by his resurrection. It is therefore appropriate that the creed calls the Spirit "the LORD, the giver of life". Because of this can understand that the situation described in Acts, when Peter and John prayed for and laid hands on those in Samaria to receive the Holy Spirit, that what they in fact experienced was like a spiritual resurrection. It was the being "born from above" about which Jesus spoke with Nicodemus.

I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.

The disciples experienced the sorrow of feeling as they had been orphaned when, Jesus, the one who revealed the Father was taken from them in his crucifixion. It seemed for a time that the talk about the unity of the Father and the Son was an unhelpful abstraction at best and a falsehood at worst. The world around them seemed to celebrate while they mourned. But this feeling was only their experience of reality. It was not reality itself. The resurrection corrected this misapprehension. It not only proved that Jesus was the one beloved and chosen by the Father. It opened the door for his disciples to be united to him through his Spirit. They not only saw the words of Jesus fulfilled and proven. They experienced the truth of the reality of his claims in their own lives. They began to participate themselves in the very reality about which Jesus had been teaching them, the life of the Trinity that he himself shared with his Father and with their Spirit. Far from being orphans, they were now sons and daughters, united with the Son to the Father in the Holy Spirit.

The world remains fixed in opposition to the truth because it is invested in falsehoods and addicted to sin. Thus it cannot receive the Spirit and does not want to do so. It would spoil all the fun, or so the thinking goes. Moreover, the world was not privileged to witness the resurrection of Jesus and thus continues to function as if death is the end. It therefore tries to impose its own ideas about making the best of things. The result of imbibing what the world is selling is the darkening of the intellect. It involves succumbing to the spirit of the age, which is a spirit of falsehood. It is this since it is the spirit of the devil himself who "is a liar and the father of lies" (see John 8:44). Since Christians will have to consistently contend with this spirit, directly and indirectly, from without and even from within their own minds, they need the Spirit of truth. The Advocate is not optional with an Adversary of this hostile, hateful, and deceitful. We can't rely merely on what we think and feel. We need God's perspective. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes it possible to for God's perspective to become our own. It is not just superimposed externally. Rather we choose it and cooperate with it. We know him not so much because we see him or understand him abstractly as because he remains with us and dwells in us. Thus the trajectory of degeneration on which the spirit of the age sets our minds is more than outmatched by the renewal in the Holy Spirit. We can no longer say with the world that we are not loved, that things are pointless, or that they are heading nowhere. We know that we are loved, the reason God made us, and that it is toward him that our lives are meant to lead.

Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope

Obviously it is impossible to describe the exact nature of the experience of the Holy Spirit, or what it is like to share in the life of the Trinity. But we should be able to say something. We know that Jesus is the reason for our hope. We know that it is him that made the difference in our lives. It is because he came back to us that we are not now orphans. It is because he gave us his Spirit that we see things differently from others. We might not be able to give the precise formulae from Nicea or recite the Athanasian creed from heart. But we can tell others the difference it makes to know and to love the adorable Trinity.

Elevation Worship - Resurrecting

 

9 May 2026 - if the world hates you

Today's Readings
(Audio)

If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.

If we can't win the approval of others it doesn't necessarily mean that we did something wrong. It might just mean that there are certain games that the world plays that we as Christians can no longer indulge. Approval in the world is not typically awarded to the virtuous or the excellent. Rather, approval is given quid pro quo in return for expressed allegiance, and is paid for in favors that are often unsavory. Others implicitly ask, "To what lengths will you go for me? Won't you compromise your stubborn values for my sake?". Needless to say, they don't take kindly to a negative response. But if we value the opinions of those still trapped in the corrupt systems of the world too highly we won't be able to resist trying to please them. 

I have chosen you out of the world

What can counterbalance all of the lack of acceptance and indeed often outright hatred from the world? Only approval that matters more can do so. And this we have from Jesus himself. On the one hand there are all those many people who refuse to except us because we refuse to play along. On the other, there is Jesus who has chosen us specifically, from all those many people in the world, to be especially his, peculiarly his own. The love of Jesus not only explains why the world hates us. But it makes that hate bearable. On our own the only option we might find in response to the hatred of others could be to express hatred in response. But because we have been loved by Jesus we remain free to love even our enemies, just as Jesus himself loved us even while we were yet sinners. 

If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

We can't do things so perfectly that we never provoke a response of negativity from others. Neither should we assume that it was our skill or ability that provoked a positive response. Sometimes we do fail and provoke others beyond what the truth requires of us. But a positive response from others never really comes down to a lack of skill of cleverness on our part. Rather their response really comes down to the word of Jesus. All we can hope to do with this word is express it clearly and without creating scandal by our example. When we do this, it is more than able to speak for itself, to persuade, to change hearts, transforms minds, and alter the course of lives forever, just as it did for us. The messengers should not think overmuch of their own importance. They should not fixate on receiving adulation from those to whom they deliver the message because of their presentation. Instead they should deliver the message, knowing that, if nothing else, this pleases Jesus. And pleasing him is what matters.

When it is the approval of Jesus that we seek we will be sufficiently detached from our own plans that the Holy Spirit can change our direction and alter our course when he desires. Imagine the wasted effort if the disciples insisted on trying to go on into Bithynia even when the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. If they had been looking to one another for approval they might have been dragged down by mutual disappointment at the failure of their plans. But they were only about pleasing Jesus, so they happily allowed him to reroute their journey. This not only saved them wasted effort, but even opened opportunities they might have otherwise missed.

During the night Paul had a vision.
A Macedonian stood before him and implored him with these words,
"Come over to Macedonia and help us."

Whom is God putting before us, imploring our help? Are we sufficiently free from the world's games to do it? If not, let's try to remember the fact that Jesus has chosen us. And that should matter more than anything the world has failed to give us.

Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.

Newsboys - It Is You

 

8 May 2026 - to be his friends

Today's Readings
(Audio)

I have called you friends

Jesus desires us to be his friends. He reveals to us everything he heard from his Father, making us more the mere servants, but rather, co-conspirators in accomplishing his Father's will. But he asks us to respond to his love for us by loving him in return. This means we can't stop at knowing what is important to the heart of Jesus. We must cooperate to bring it about. And what is this plan with which he expects us to cooperate? Is it finally a matter of arbitrary behaviors and rituals? No, rather: "love one another". But it is not love by any standard whatever. It is specific, "as I love you". What Jesus revealed to his disciples, and what he is inviting us to understand, is the magnitude of his love for us. This love is meant to be the starting place for our own response and effort.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain

We often get things precisely backward. We believe that we ourselves evaluated Jesus and chose to follow him after careful consideration and cost-benefit analysis. Then we assume that we earn his friendship by obeying commandments which we often do not fully understand or accept. After that, we hope that he will explain things and, perhaps, finally begin to love us. But he reveals his love first and only then asks us to respond and cooperate. He explains the plan for our salvation from the beginning so we can work with him to help bring it about. The fact that his friendship is in some way conditional on doing what he commands us is only true after that friendship is established. It is not the reason for the friendship. It is rather a definition of what sort of friendship it is meant to be, the shared interest we must pursue. If we will not pursue it we will be the ones walking away in another direction, not Jesus.

Since we have heard that some of our number
who went out without any mandate from us
have upset you with their teachings
and disturbed your peace of mind

The Apostles and presbyters described in Acts were concerned that other people were making things overly complicated for the early disciples. What was meant to be about the love of Jesus and friendship with him was being dragged back into rituals that were now obsolete, having been fulfilled in Jesus himself. So the messengers chosen to clear up the confusion were themselves exemplary friends of Jesus, Barnabas and Paul "who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ". They, together with Judas and Silas, explained to the early disciples that the point was not a sort of rules maximalism. Instead they commanded only simple necessities to ensure that all of the friends of Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile, could share a common life, directed toward the one common goal of responding to his love. 

Is it true that the Church has probably more rules than any other institution on earth, and if so is this not excessive? Yes, but no. The rules of the Church are precisely in response to all of the many ways in which she has been challenged by people going out without mandate from her and saying things that sounded just true enough to disturb the peace of mind of those who listened. Perhaps when we are in the middle of reading some finer point of canon law we don't realize it. But the Church is designed to be the place where friendship with Jesus can flourish and grow, drawn by his Father, and united in his Spirit. It is meant to be a place where all of us can join together with one voice in the psalmist's song of praise.

My heart is steadfast, O God; my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and chant praise.
Awake, O my soul; awake, lyre and harp!
I will wake the dawn.

CityAlight - He Calls Me Friend

 

7 May 2026 - the remain thing

Today's Readings
(Audio)

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

We don't think of obedience as being in any way connected with love. Americans in particular are suspicious of anything other than unrestricted freedom, and tend to oppose anything that feels like an attempt to control us. However, if we listen to Jesus we immediately see that he understood things differently. His relationship to his heavenly Father was defined in terms of obedience to his commandments. But this was vastly different from the obedience proper to slaves or even employees. This was instead the obedience proper to a Son whose Father was perfect and loved him with a perfect love. There was no suspicion or coercion involved in obedience of this kind. Jesus chose to obey because he trusted his Father, and because he wished to reciprocate the unlimited love he received by doing only and exactly what his beloved Father wished in return.

We are not merely being asked to keep some abstract laws. Much less are we being asked to submit ourselves in an ultimate sense to any self-serving human systems of authority. It is not as though we are being asked to follow the laws of a state so that we can enjoy the privileges of citizens. It is much deeper than that. We are being invited into the relationship of Jesus with his Father. We are invited to it in terms expressed as commandments because those terms express the absolute priority the Father is meant to have in our lives. They could not be suggestions, as though the Father's will must ultimately pass the scrutiny of merely human judgments. No, instead we need to abandon the suspicion about his will that characterized the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Commandments in this sense are different from suggestions because we can only respond wholeheartedly to commandments if we trust the one from whom they come.

I have told you this so that
my joy might be in you and
your joy might be complete.

The point of our obedience is not that the Father or Jesus gain anything from it, but rather we ourselves. To obey does not denigrate us as we are wont to imagine. Rather it ennobles us, making us more like Jesus himself. It was his trusting relationship to the Father that was the source of his own joy. It is that very joy that he invites us to share.

Remain in my love.

For us, the commandments ensure we remain united to God by ensuring we don't prefer those things which are contrary to it, all the many forms of disordered self-love. The goal of the commandments is therefore good. And Jesus himself, the perfect example of living for such a goal, is imminently compelling. Why should we continue to hesitate or hold back? What we have been asked is not the "yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear", spoken of by Peter. It is rather the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light to which Jesus himself invites us. 

Newsboys - Beautiful Sound

 

6 May 2026 - growth opportunity

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit

Jesus is the source of our ability to bear fruit, but he is not a guarantee that we will bear fruit. He wants us to remain in him. The fact that he encourages us to do so implies that the contrary possibility also exists. When we refuse to bear fruit, when we refuse to share the love and mercy we ourselves first receive, we may have the appearance of being Christians, of being united to the vine, without actually being so. If we refuse to let his life flow through us so as to bear fruit the Father will ultimately ratify what we have already in fact decided by removing us from the vine. 

So, why not just take the easy way out and bear fruit? But it turns out this path is not without difficulties. We must submit ourselves to regular pruning in order to direct ever more of our energies toward those things which are life-giving rather than on dissipation and distraction. But when we are used to expending our lives toward certain ends it is not a comfortable process to have those aspects of ourselves pruned. The temptation might be to say that fruit isn't worth the trouble of the continuous process of purification it apparently requires. We can experience a life free from the annoyance of outside interference if we simply refuse to cooperate with the vine grower. But such a life is actually not a life, since it is disconnected from Jesus who is the source of life. But if we remain in Jesus, even though it may seem difficult at times, even though the pruning process might often feel overwhelming, we will bear fruit. It isn't that we have to achieve a certain level of skill ourselves. We just need to submit and let it happen even when our flesh rebels and we are tempted to withdraw.

Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.

It may at first seem like there are some things we can do without Jesus. But are there really? Without him holding us in existence we cannot even take our next breath. Apart from Jesus all we can do is embrace the illusory reality of sin, doing non-things that accomplish nothing real. Our responsibility is to let Jesus do his work within us. The more we become aware of this work he is doing the more we will have the choice between embracing it or refusing it. As Christians who know our faith and have heard these words of his we have been given much indeed. And to whom much is given, much is expected.

If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.

The more we concede to the work of Jesus within us the more aligned we will become to his larger plan for the world. We will become more effective in choosing to cooperate with him. It will become more and more true that we only want what he wants. And that is when miracles happen.

John Michael Talbot - I Am The Vine

 

5 May 2026 - prizing peace

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.

The world gives us a peace that is the result of a temporary lack of negative feelings and circumstances. It is merely a lull between crises. It comes about when we manage to momentarily elude our anxieties. We are occasionally able to distract ourselves from the things we fear. We don't always have to directly engage those things in life with which we struggle. But the trouble with peace of this sort is that it always comes up short. It circumstantial by definition. Even if we happen to have immense resources and spend them all, along with all of our effort, to protect it, we cannot achieve uninterrupted peace of this kind. And the harder we try the more it tends to hurt when something breaks through the barriers we have built and we are confronted by the intrusion of an apparently indifferent world.

'I am going away and I will come back to you.'
If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;

The peace that Jesus gives is different from that of the world. It does not require that we only always experience positive feelings and circumstances. It is durable enough to provide us with stability even in the midst of suffering. Paul and Barnabas told the disciples that, "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God", and they did not sense this to be in contradiction to the good news they proclaimed. 

We probably wonder if this sort of peace, that is present in the midst of pain, is really anything other than pretense and propaganda. But it is vastly different to experience trials, hardships, and suffering, when we abide in the peace of Jesus, than to do so without it. We don't need to experience the desperation that is so common to the rest of the world in the face of suffering. We don't need to feel as though something went wrong, or is irreparably broken. We can move through the highs and the lows of life with a profound and unshakable trust that God is in control. Then, no matter what life throws at us, we won't overreact and make matters worse. We may not always see or understand what God is doing in the world. In fact, we do not often understand the ways in which God brings greater good from the many evils we see around us. But we know that even when he seems absent he is still working. He is always arranging everything for our good, not in an obvious way, like Santa Claus, but as rather as one whom we can trust because he knows us better than we know ourselves. 

I will no longer speak much with you,
for the ruler of the world is coming.
He has no power over me,
but the world must know that I love the Father
and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.

Even the ruler of this world, the devil, need not cause us to lose our peace since he has no power over Jesus in whose hands are all of our lives. It should, perhaps, give us pause that we ourselves are all to able to extricate ourselves from his protection. But even when we think about that possibility we should not overestimate ourselves and underestimate God's mercy and his desire to save us. In any event, we don't need to worry as though the devil has ultimate power over us since the one who is living within us is greater than the one living in the world (see First John 4:4). We never need to succumb to his wiles or let ourselves be deceived by him again. We have recourse if it happens. But better to remain seated in the power of the peace of Christ.

MercyMe - Greater