Daily Office Readings for Tuesday of the 5th Week of Easter: Year 2
Morning, Psalms 61 and 62; Evening, Psalm 68:
Leviticus 16:20-34; 1st Thessalonians 5:1 to 11; Matthew 6:7 to 15:
“For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Matthew 6:7 – 9)
I like thinking of myself mostly as a day creature. I rise before the sun comes up and go to bed shortly after it sets. However, as I take a distant look of our solar system through space cameras or art, I realize that during the day my place on the earth is facing inward toward the sun. But at night, my view is toward the universe, that vast expanse of interstellar space. Hey, I’m “pondering” here ok. Our night time view is one of taking in the stars and planets, the universe that God created. I have become familiar with the “Big Dipper” and “Orion’s Belt,” the occasional visitation of Venus and Mars and other planets and constellations as they make their journeys in their God-given paths
So for me, night is more than just a time for sleep, it is also a time of wonder. As a Christian, I agree with Bishop Kallistos Ware who says, “It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.
There is genuine goodness in people of all walks of life. But then evil comes. Evil cannot make itself known without good present. Evil must have good close at hand in order to establish itself. Almost all of our Bible stories show us this. There is good Abel and evil Cain; there is good Moses and evil Pharaoh; there is good Esther and Mordecai and evil Haman; there is good Jeremiah and evil Zedekiah: and today we have good Ukraine and the evil of Russian troops killing civilians and targeting the good of hospitals and apartment buildings for bombings. We pray daily for this to stop.
We do not see evil in the night sky, only the good rotations and movements throughout the year as they make their way on their God-given paths. God has destined them for such. And God has also destined us for the same goodness through our Lord Jesus. “For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Therefore, in pondering reflection, I think we are both day and night creatures. And as the Holy Spirit says through Matthew, we are on our own God-given path to salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us come together and stop evil from happening. We need to stop the evil some people do with guns and stop world violence and just be good as God has made us to be.
As we listen to what the Spirit is saying to us, let us live to love, to serve, and to teach, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
onewhoponders 