Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
September 24, 2021
Feast Day of Anna Ellison Butler Alexander, 1947
Invitatory
“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
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.
Praise ye the Lord.
The Lord's Name be praised.
Reading: Deuteronomy 6:4-9
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
I owned an Apple computer before Steve Jobs changed the world with the introduction of the iPhone. Back then, Apple had less than a 10% market share, and most of its sales were to schools. Savvy purchasers, so I was told -- and with great assurance -- bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems. And even in spite of the incredibly irritating appearance of Clippy in Microsoft’s 1997 Office, PCs were the exclusive choice in business. It was only a matter of time before Apple and its strange intuitively based computers would be dismissed as obsolete.
And then Steve Jobs upended all these projections. Appearing on stage in the now iconic jeans and a T-shirt, he unveiled a handheld device that would launch Apple’s new future. It was as if God had spoken. With unprecedented speed, the smartphone became ubiquitous. It’s not only owned and carried by just about everyone worldwide; it often seems to control us more than we it. And if wisdom is to be dispensed, it comes now in the form of Jobs-like individuals, in dress and singular confidence, offering tech-based presentations that announce the latest innovations that we just can’t truly live without.
Apple has taken on the Deuteronomic form of the law. A device seems to be always in our hands and pockets or purses, held before our eyes and against our ears. It’s attached to our wrists to wake us in the morning when we rise and provide messages throughout the day, whether we’re sitting at table or walking by the way or lying down. In almost every spare moment, as soon as there’s space to roam, this is what we pick up and check into and find refuge in. What else so captures our heart and soul and mind and strength?
Moses imagined that it might be God, not data, not knowledge, not information, not chatter, not ephemeral moments of gossip that disappear almost as soon they arrive. More desire than addiction. More a sense of waiting than the constant need for something new to provide a minute and fleeting experience of excitement and connection. I’m regularly astonished by how often I pick up my phone as if by reflex -- just to check… maybe some important message has been sent, that wasn’t there fifteen minutes ago.
I’ve discovered, however, that the Lord’s Prayer is a deeply effective antidote. It resets me. In part because it is an articulation of a great suspension: by it we set ourselves before God with the acknowledgement that all that is needful is in the process of being provided. This is being unfolded for us in the course of the whole creation, in the drama of time, in the promise of redemptive culmination -- which is the work of God’s providence, into which we are being taken up. Marvelously balanced, this prayer transforms our world by the light of divine intention. It’s this we can notice.
The next time you casually reach for your phone, just because the moment allows it, do something extraordinarily radical instead. Recite a line or two of the Lord’s Prayer. You just might find that the whole world seems to come alive, lastingly.
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.
