Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent
March 30, 2022
Invitatory
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.
Reading: I Corinthians 12:4-11
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
I visited an old friend this past weekend: old as in long-standing, even though she is now in her early nineties. And at one point in our conversation she said that she had been feeling a bit guilty about some of the habits that she had fallen into during the long periods of isolation occasioned by the Covid pandemic. Her home is in the wooded Connecticut countryside and abuts state land that is largely forest. Wildlife frequently wanders across to her property. And on many afternoons when the weather was pleasant, she would sit on her deck for hours and gaze across a few small meadows toward the trees that form a natural border on the far end. She could do this at length, with a comfortable attentiveness, hoping – expecting – that something would come into sight that would have been missed had she not spent the time waiting.
But this is the modern world, and, thus, on many days my friend’s practice of watching the world around her would be challenged and interrupted by the anxious thought that she should be busy about something instead. Anything really. She worried that she must have some work to do. It is important, we tell ourselves continually, to be demonstrably productive and to be able to point to things accomplished during the day. To wait upon the breezes meandering through high tree branches could suddenly set off fears that this is no more than wasting time. It is foolish and unjustifiable.
When these uninvited thoughts arose, my friend would often imagine that it might just be the case that God actually delights in her practice. She’d wonder, in fact, whether God might be gazing at his world through her eyes. Literally. If we’re the heart and hands of God in the world, she said to me, then maybe we’re also the vehicles through which God uniquely enjoys his creation – not from a far distance but as intrinsically close as by means of our own eyes, patiently trained on what lies outside of us. It’s a beautiful thought, that we gift God by such actions, pondering what we ourselves are being given.
Often, when Paul’s well-known verses on the variety of gifts are read, we start to think about what people do and what they contribute and what they achieve. It’s a force of habit. Paul’s list of gifts, however, is not meant to be comprehensive or definitive; he merely offered examples pertinent to the church in Corinth. But we’re quick to confine the possibilities of gifts to things that can be pursued and completed – whatever it is that makes for progress. This is our own shortsightedness. For it may be that the gift of the spirit that is most needful now isn’t anything that serves as a means to an end; maybe the best gift is that of sheer receptivity – our believing that God finds joy in our looking on the world with joy. I’d be hard-pressed to find any other activity that would more profoundly add to the common good. To wonder resituates us. And we invite God into the pleasure of our amazement. Imagine that.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
