This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 137:1-6; 144; Exodus 10:21–11:8; 2 Corinthians 4:13-18; Mark 10:46-52

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 12 (“Song of Creation,” BCP, p. 88); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94) 

Consequential words from Paul. 

We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus — 2 Corinthians 4:14. What’s at stake in the question of whether on that first Easter Sunday Jesus actually, literally, bodily rose from the dead isn’t just the truthfulness of the Apostles’ claims that he did so. (Not that truthfulness isn’t important for its own sake. It is.) 

More critical than the bare fact of Jesus’s resurrection, though, is its meaning. Because the Father raised Jesus from the dead, insists Paul, he “will raise us also with Jesus.” If Jesus rose, we will rise. Really. If he didn’t, we won’t either—at death we’re done (at best). 

That’s what’s so momentous about the medical crisis swirling around us: nobody gets to dodge the issue. I’m “all in” on the confession “Christ is risen.” Because he is, we will be as well.

Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day — 2 Corinthians 4:16. Believing that Jesus’s resurrection is sure, and that your own resurrection is secure—such believing brings an equilibrium that can face the inevitable: “wasting away.” Sometimes that “wasting away” is a long and graceful glide. Sometimes it’s an abrupt and ugly crash. Sometimes it’s a protracted and brutal deterioration. Regardless, it can be faced with equipoise and peace. 

I’ve been in ministry long enough to have seen too many people so desperately pinning their hopes on the preservation of this physical body that, when faced with news of terminal disease, they spent their remaining months, weeks, or days, in denial of what was happening to them. Claiming a “healing” that wasn’t going to come, they became distant from the God they thought they must be disappointing because of a lack of faith. They deprived themselves of the opportunity to experience what Paul describes here: “our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (v. 16). 

We do not lose heart…because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal — 2 Corinthians 4:16, 18. I’ve known others who knew where they were going, and were thus able to entrust themselves to the Lord who knew the way. 

When the transitory nature of this life hits you in the face like a two-by-four, you can’t help but stop, and go, “What just happened?” The gift of that jolt can be the dawning recognition of a singular grace: the opportunity to pay attention to, and to nurture, the inner self through cultivating friendship with God. 

I suppose that’s why it’s become so important to me to begin the day with the Daily Office’s Scriptures, Canticles, and Prayers—sometimes basking in them, sometimes puzzling over them, sometimes letting them flow over me. Writing devotions like these, then, is part of what reminds me of the difference between what is merely temporary and what is eternal. 

If you find yourself being reminded these days of just how frail you are, how tentative all your plans have to be, how impossible it is to place all your hopes in this life, I pray you find something being “renewed day by day” deep within you: the abiding sense that “this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory…” (2 Corinthians 3:17). 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+