Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
July 13, 2022
The Invitatory
Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
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 earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Romans 11:33-36
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counsellor?’
‘Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?’
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen..
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
How about these few verses for a heart stopping experience! They just grabbed me in the throat almost and took my breath away. Indeed, Paul’s writing here is utterly breathtaking and so very powerful, rhapsodic, dizzying. And yet he stands completely in awe of God and invites all who hear and/or who read these words to join with him in rapture and awe. For he goes to the heart of who God is in his great mystery. We generally do not understand God, for he is God and therefore beyond our understanding. While there are many words that attempt to capture God for us: profound, inexplicable, invincible, omnipotent, omniscient one who can only be known by means of revelation, inexplicable, or having a secretive character not susceptible to easy discernment; inscrutable.
Paul has worked tirelessly and methodically in his writings to various groups in the ancient world to unravel the mystery of God’s gift for the salvation of all people, Jew and Gentile. Now as he comes to the conclusion of his argument Paul expresses the mystery of election and salvation in the only way possible–a doxology of praise to God.
There is nothing in all creation that can comprehend “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” God is beyond our human ability to know his ways. God is God. There is nothing in all creation that can call the creator into question concerning his judgments and ways.
Paul follows with three rhetorical questions which uphold his doxological words of praise: “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” And we, hearing them, have the moments or hours to come to grips with the fact that we, too, are ill equipped to answer these questions; for they proclaim the reality that indeed God is God in his dealings with Jew and Gentile alike.
The final words of these three remarkable chapters in Romans bring this section of the letter to a resounding conclusion that testifies to an eternal and abiding truth. “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen”
What could be more central to the faith of all people in Paul’s time and in our time than to proclaim the richness of these words? They are words of God’s constant grace and faithfulness in spite of our willful and self-centered ways. God will not give up on us. His promise of eternal life is centered in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. No wonder that Paul, formerly a persecutor of the early Christians, had a revelation of Christ that opened to him the power of God’s grace. It is only natural that he should powerfully present that power to all that he could and then respond in the only way a human, and one flawed, also could: with praise and thanksgiving. And, so, might we all
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.
