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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
August 29, 2026
Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
For Paul, shame is not a malicious insult, but a loving, fatherly correction to alert believers that they are acting contrary to their true identity in Christ. This is a positive good, an act of love and mercy. This frees us to grow fully into whom God has called us to be. How reassuring and inspiring this is for each of us.
How do we consider how God works God’s power and wisdom? We do not immediately recognize that it is the unwise, the lowly, the common person, the weak, the despised, the uneducated through whom God works God’s power and wisdom. I imagine we may do so to justify ourselves. Yet remarkably Paul declares that God has given every gift needed to do the ministry of Jesus until the return of Christ, to these, the lowly, the weak. Taking pride in one’s gift obstructs the exercise of gift. And pride in the gifts of others often excuses us from exercising our own.
We prize wisdom, financial security, respect and our accomplishments. We also want control over our environment to create a secure future principally for ourselves and families. The power reversals in this passage are more intellectually accessible than they are emotionally satisfying. The disposition that arises from merely a taste of God’s wisdom and power enables one to release self-satisfaction. The willingness not to be right, the generosity to suspend judgment, the ability to listen carefully to one with whom we disagree, the open-minded curiosity to wonder how another came to believe what they do—these are all characteristics of knowing it is not about us. The foolishness of the cross reduces all human pretense to control and all boasting in human accomplishment to nothing. God is faithful.
God’s faithfulness is displayed in the foolishness of the cross. The scandal of the cross has largely lost its hold. Wisely, the cross should no be a point of pride. There is no suggestion, however, that we boast in the cross; rather, if we must boast, we boast in the Lord. God possesses all those strengths and qualities that we cannot claim for ourselves, in order that we might enjoy God’s fellowship through Jesus Christ. God does what God promises to do.
The opportunity to engage with this passage opens the possibility to correct our own misunderstanding and may be of great benefit. It lifts an unnecessary weight. It is a relief to be corrected. And once one puts aside one’s pride one becomes open to God’s love and God’s true assessment of each of us, from whom he will not withhold his love, but who loves us so much, that his corrections enable us to grow into the persons he intended us to be. Now consider the great freedom we have to be fully who God intended us to be - free from judgment yet open to the correction that leads to our flourishing.
Closing Prayer
God of small beginnings,
you bring strength out of weakness
and hope out of fear.
By the power of your Spirit
make us, your children, followers and partners
in the grand design of your kingdom of love,
rooted and revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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