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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
August 16, 2024
Invitatory
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:57
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
John 4:46-54
When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.
Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
What do you believe in? Where do you store your faith; in a team like the Phillies or the Eagles? Do you have faith in science or medicine? Maybe you have faith in your partner, or in a good friend, parent or sibling? Maybe a good cosmetic line doesn’t let you down, or you are committed to the constitution and our rule of law, a particular party or politician? There are two definitions of faith in the dictionary: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something” or “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof”. “Spiritual apprehension” meaning spiritual understanding; understanding in this sense communicates total belief without the benefit of “signs or wonders”.
I question if there is anything we have total belief in today. I am not trying to be combative, but when it really comes down to the wire do we believe the way Jesus asks us to? We have post Enlightenment logic and science. We have access to any information at our fingertips. We can prove most anything, control most anything, and have “faith” in most anything as our society and culture have broadened and evolved. We are not limited by the Church or provincial customs the way we may have been 100 or even 500 years ago. We can choose what and how to believe with fickle mania, free of judgment and criticism, according to the latest information and trends. And we can change our minds if and when those trends and information fail us, as they so often do.
How has this left us, as a society, a country, a people? Are we happier and more secure? Is our faith more akin to a popularity contest rather than a sense of “spiritual apprehension”: understanding and believing in that which cannot be proven or explained? Do we feel secure and at peace?
My house is abuzz with anxiety this time of year. We have one son preparing to go back to his second year teaching, our middle two kids heading off to college and our fourth is preparing for 8th grade. They are full of hopeful anticipation and also apprehension and dread. They cannot know what will happen or how they will manage it. Many of us feel this tension as the new academic year commences. I don’t believe we can rely on sports teams or cosmetic lines to carry us through. But we can attempt to nurture what little or large sense of faith we have in that which cannot be proven; be it love, something divine, the magnitude of this Earth which keeps turning and chaperoning us through the seasons of our lives; each other and/or God. When we cease to believe we can control it all by knowledge and preparation, but rest more securely in a sense of surrender to a higher authority we may actually find the peace we so fervently search for.
Many of us read The Anxious Generation this spring or summer and were given lengthy statistics on the damage we have done by over parenting outside and under parenting on our smartphones, tablets and computers. We are all inundated with various theses on the levels of anxiety that exist amongst every generation,(not only our youth) in literature, journalism and documentaries. We have faith in the information we absorb, and yet somehow religion has been relegated to a different area in our lives-as though faith has no role in combating anxiety.
Throughout the Book of John Jesus is asking us to choose this path of light, love and freedom; and when choosing Jesus, choosing God, we are choosing peace and happiness, joy and love. It is not trendy or sexy, it sometimes feels old fashioned and dated. But as you move through this season of anticipation, of new beginnings, I challenge you all to meet moments of anxiety or friction with faith. Instead of trying to control or micro manage, surrender- and lean into God’s loving embrace. We may not see the miracles that Jesus performed, but we have the choice to believe, and to find out what believing in love can do for our own inner calm.
A prayer of Julian of Norwich
In you, Father all-mighty, we have our preservation and our bliss.
In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving.
You are our mother, brother, and Saviour. In you, our Lord the Holy Spirit, is marvellous and plenteous grace.
You are our clothing; for love you wrap us and embrace us.
You are our maker, our lover, our keeper.
Teach us to believe that by your grace all shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well. Amen
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