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Morning Devotion for Eastertide
April 28, 2025
Reading: I John 1:5-10
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
I watched a portion of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday morning. More than all else, I was moved by the coverage of the procession of his body from the Vatican to the church, several miles away, where he would be interred. His casket seemed perched in the back of the Pope-mobile, where so often before he had sat, and the vehicle slowly made its way through the ancient streets of Rome. History was on display. But most striking were the crowds that silently stood awaiting a glimpse of his passing. The death of a dignitary always seems anomalous; some people are considered larger than life, which adds surprise and weight to their dying. Thousands gathered to serve as witnesses to this final journey. Their presence made it a deeply human event.
And this was fitting for Francis, who never made his elevation to the papacy an occasion for personal pride or a reason to claim for himself the kind of power that is held over others – power as threat. Francis dressed as popes do, but the striking white of his robes never kept him from mingling with the least and the forgotten. One might say that his presence to them was as light, as one who bore this image of grace yet never suggested, either in word or manner, that he was any less sinful than they were. That’s particularly notable when so much of Christianity remains caught up in contests of greater and lesser moral purity – and the power that, supposedly by right, comes with claims of rectitude.
Francis embodied the verses above from I John, which, in the work-a-day world made him an enigma. But, when he died, and when he could be considered outside all the wrangling for position and influence that so defines our time, he was esteemed for a goodness that wasn’t just sentimental. It reminded so many of the better selves we should be.
Prayer
Heavenly Father:
Hold not our sins up against us,
but hold us up against our sins,
so that the thought of Thee when it wakens in our soul,
One reviewer wondered out loud why so many people flocked to buy the book. His
should not remind us of what we have committed,
but of what Thou hast forgiven,
not of how we went astray,
but of how Thou didst save us.
Amen.
Kierkegaard
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