Daily Office Readings for Tuesday of the first week of Epiphany: Year 1
Morning, Psalms 5and 6; Evening, Psalms 10 and 11;
Isaiah 40:25-31; Ephesians 1:15-23; Mark 1:14-28
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” (Ephesians 1:17 – 19 NRSV)
St Paul prays that God gives us the spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know God. We really need to ponder these words. We can study God all we want but until God decides to share wisdom with us we will not have it. The same goes for revelation. We are made aware of divine things when God shares it with us. I think the only way we can participate in this sharing is that we first believe and await God’s pleasure. For if we choose not to believe, there is no place in us for God to put the greatness of God’s glory, which contains the hope to which we have been called. We must learn to listen with the ears of our heart and see with the eyes of our heart. I hope St Paul appreciates my explanation.
Some pondering on revelation from Mark McIntosh as he has written “Mysteries of Faith” for The New Church Teaching Series. The following is taken from chapter four of his book which I am mentoring in Education for Ministry (EfM) at St Paul’s in the Pines, Fayetteville, NC.
Mark McIntosh writes: “Revelation is Jesus. Think how, as you come to spend more and more time with a person, you come to know more deeply who she is. That is only possible because at the same time you are being changed by your friendship with her – sometimes brought up short, sometimes delighted, sometimes wounded in your pride, sometimes healed and forgiven. All these changes in you are the means by which you come to know your friend more and more, because knowing someone in that intimate way is only possible through a process of transformation and growth – sometimes painful, always unsettling – by which you and your friend come to share life together. Similarly, revelation happens when, by the miracle of God’s grace, we are brought to share in the love of the Trinity. As we know, such sharing is risky for us in the world we have made. God’s giving-life-in-you (usually called “grace”) leads you out of the self others have made for you by their anger or their possessiveness, and it tugs you out of the life you have settled into as a way of hiding from what God longs for you to be. It sends you into soup kitchens and night shelters, to hospital bedsides and communion rails, it exhausts you and gives you life, it gets you crucified and yet raises you into life itself.” (Page 77 “Mysteries of Faith”)
Thank you Mark McIntosh. What I get from this is that God reveals God’s self through the other. We should never dismiss another person who comes to us to share a message. If we ever say to ourselves, “I know this person and God would never use him or her to bring me a revelation,” we are not really dismissing them. We would be limiting God; we would be saying that God is not able to use him or her to reveal anything. Have you not heard, God is able to use anybody to do anything? The lesson here is to always be open to what God might be saying to you through someone else, and further, companion the ups and downs that accompany the revelation. Sometimes God is tough, but always merciful and loving.
As we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and serve, and to teach others to love and serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
Let us pray:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP p.291)
onewhoponders 