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Morning Meditation for the Season after Pentecost
July 28, 2026
Reading: Romans 14:7-12
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written,
‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall give praise to God.’
So then, each of us will be accountable to God.
Excerpt from The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
What conflicts with the courage of wisdom is desires and fears. The Stoics developed a profound doctrine of anxiety which also reminds us of recent analyses. They discovered that the object of fear is fear itself. “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is terrible in things except fear itself.” And Epictetus says, “For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.” Our anxiety puts frightening masks over all men and things. If we strip them of these masks their own countenance appears and the fear they produce disappears. This is true even of death. Since every day a little of our life is taken from us-since we are dying every day-the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely completes the death process.
Meditation by Rebecca Northington
A wise old priest who has officiated countless funerals once told me that our true nature comes out towards the end. People who are lovely to the core are lovely at the end of their lives. People who are angry, damaged, insecure, greedy and jealous show those traits as they scramble to hold on to more time, control, or even just relevancy. I think this is the manifestation of that anxiety the ancient Stoics understood so well. It is a mask. We fool ourselves into believing that we are more than what we are. We are simply put: Gods’.
In that simplicity is a liberation I wish for all people. When we surrender that tension of self-importance to God, we can be ourselves, stripped of the masks that pretend we are anything more. Some might consider this concept not as “simple”, but rather as “simple minded.” As though we should have an appetite for more, as though we should strive to be God-like. But that is where we get into trouble.
Tillich’s book, published in 1952, is a compilation of lectures at Yale. It beautifully explores the age of anxiety and considers courage to be the best approach towards combating that existential dread and fear of death or meaninglessness. This is a courage rooted in faith. I believe this courage stems from handing over our fears and anxieties to God. Laying our burdens down and trusting in something so much greater than ourselves. This is not a simple-minded act. This is not easy or lazy work. This is the work of profound trust in something other than ME. This surrender does not leave us empty but fills us up with love and a sense of purpose greater than any bank account, or garage full of cars, or title on a door, or control over our day-to-day life.
The truth is any of us could die at any moment, with or without a terminal illness; at 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100. I pray that when the time comes, I have the courage to be loving, giving, generous, patient, kind and forgiving in the end; because as St. Paul reminds us in this lectionary text, “each of us will be accountable to God.”
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