The Ongoing Cleansing Work of Jesus - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 4/14/2022 

Today is Maundy Thursday. On the evening of this day, Jesus gives his disciples their mandate — their new commandment — to love one another with the love with which he had loved them. Rather than from the passages in the Daily Office lectionary, I’ll be basing my reflections today on the Gospel passage the lectionary prescribes for this evening’s Maundy Thursday service: John 13:1–17,31b–35, with its description of Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet and his issuing of the new commandment.

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

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In his Gospel, John paints this Last Supper as a tableau of multi-layered realities. For example, the Last Supper recalls the wedding in Cana from John 2. That wedding feast is a forecast of the feast of the Lamb, but it is also a place where vessels of water-purification become vessels holding the wine of the blood of sacrifice and the wine of celebration. So, the wedding of Cana becomes a Eucharistic feast. That’s why, when he paints the wedding at Cana, the great Italian artist Giotto puts Eucharistic elements on the table.

John, in fact, has three angles of vision on the Eucharist.
In the first place, this meal “before the Passover feast” remembers our atonement. Remember how John the Apostle recalls John the Baptist saying that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus’s Maundy Thursday dinner with his disciples presupposes Christ as our sacrifice for sin.
In the second place Eucharist, in John’s Gospel, provides nourishment for our journey through this life, for it brings us a manna from heaven. Because, according to John 6, Jesus is the true Bread from Heaven, the true manna, the Eucharistic table is the life-giving resurrection-nourishment that Jesus gives to his people on their wilderness-journey through life.
And then in the third place, the Eucharist makes us a fellowship of love—as we have been loved by Jesus, so we learn to love one another.  Here, where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, he paints an amazing portrait of his work for us.
One, at this Table on this night, the Lord shows his love: “having loved his own while he was in the world, he loved them to the end.” Thus, he takes off his outer garment and girds himself with the towel of a servant. The foot washing becomes a profound parable of the whole project of incarnation. Nowhere else is the parabola of Jesus’s, stooping low to raise sinners more graphically portrayed. Read John 13 when you have a chance. Bask in it, and then go read Philippians 2 and see if Christ humbling himself with towel and basin isn’t a mini-tableau of the whole redemptive drama. He who was, and is equal with God, humbles himself in the profoundest service to humankind. And then he is exalted to receive the name that is above every name.
Two, during his encounter with Peter at that foot washing, Jesus communicates that the Table is where we get ongoing cleansing. By virtue of our baptism (the whole-body washing we’ve had before we ever get to the Table), we are clean. Really! Clean—not dirty, not unworthy to be there! But walking the streets of this life, our feet get dirty—ugly sin clings to us despite our best efforts. And so, Jesus’s washing of the disciples’ feet becomes a compelling picture of our need for his ongoing ministry.

Jesus says to us what he says to Peter: “If I do not wash you[r feet], you have no share with me…. The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you disciples are clean…” (John 13:8b,10a). Jesus renews us daily. And he cleanses us daily. So, like Peter, who comes to the meal already bathed, we have been completely washed in our baptism and therefore we don’t ever need to be baptized again—still, we get our feet dirty, and as humiliating as it is, we need to admit that hard truth and accept the ongoing cleansing work of Jesus through the Holy Spirit … week after week as we come to the table.

The thing is we remain sinners throughout this earthly pilgrimage—in need always of grace. In need, therefore, for our baptism to be renewed over and over and over again. We do this in part by thankfully contemplating the benefits of our baptism … by humbly confessing the ways that we walk contrary to our baptism … by worshipfully endeavoring to yield to the Spirit’s, ongoing work to transform us into the image of Christ—and by coming to this table to let the Lord wash our feet with his ongoing, forgiving love.

Three, the table’s where we learn to love one another.

So Jesus gets up from this table, and says, as I’ve done for you, you’re to do this for one another. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And that’s how the world will know you’re my disciples. And then after chapters, 14, 15, and 16 of teaching, he prays in chapter 17: “Father make them one as you and I are one that the world may know that I am in you and you are in me. May the world see our love for one another and their love for one another.”

And it’s interesting to see how for Paul, washing the feet of the saints becomes shorthand for a lifestyle of meeting the needs of others. Think of 1 Timothy 5 verse 10, when Paul lists qualifications for what he calls “enrolled widows.” The phrase “washing the feet of the saints” stands between “receiving strangers” and “relieving the afflicted.” Now, the objects of service are different: strangers, saints and the afflicted, but the same attitude is expressed to all. A spirit of humble self-giving. And that’s part of what we learn at this table.

I can’t think of a more fitting close to a Maundy Thursday meditation than the prayer attributed to St. Francis. In a world of conflict and self-aggrandizement, may we become an army of Franciscan peacemakers and foot washers and servants of the Master:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is discord, union; 

where there is doubt, faith; 

where there is despair, hope; 

where there is darkness, light; 

where there is sadness, joy. 

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; 

to be understood as to understand; 

to be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive; 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

The Long Story of Redemption - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday 4/13/2022

Wednesday of Holy Week

 This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 55; Lamentations 2:1-9; 2 Corinthians 1:23–2:11; Mark 12:1-11

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (“A Song of Penitence,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

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Collect for Wednesday in Holy Week. Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 Had I come upon this cluster of passages at any other time than Holy Week, my reflections might have gone in a different direction. But here we are, in the middle of this Week of weeks.

…had it been an enemy who vaunted himself against me, … But it was you, a man after my own heart, my companion, my own familiar friend. — Psalm 55:13,14. During this week, who cannot not read about King David bemoaning being betrayed by a friend, and not think of the Friend of Sinners who is turned on by one of his closest friends, Judas Iscariot (a “familiar” enough “friend” to have been entrusted with the moneybox!)? Just to think about Jesus “loving his own to the end” so much that he would stoop to wash their feet, knowing that one of those whose feet he was washing was just waiting for his chance to slip out into the night to ready a fateful kiss: “So, after receiving the piece of bread [Judas], immediately went out. And it was night.” (See John 13, especially, verse 30).

 The thought stings. It stings when I ask what kind of friend I am—to Him, and to those who count me friend. Lord, have mercy.

 The Lord has become like an enemy… — Lamentations 2:5. In the first chapter, Lamentations portrays Jerusalem/Judah violated & kicked to the side of the road. It is a pathetic, pitiable sight. In the second chapter, Lamentations turns to a different subject: God. The picture is jarring. Yahweh has “bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe… he has poured out his fury … he has demolished without pity” (2:4,17). He “withdraws his right hand from” his people because of emotions that are difficult for us to accept: he is angry, merciless, wrathful, burning like a flaming fire, furious, fiercely indignant, scornful. (See the cascading terms in verses 1-4, 6-7.)   I wanted to avert my eyes in chapter one. I want to close my ears in chapter two. This is supposed to be the loving, rescuing, redeemer God, right? Instead, this sounds like the “fire and brimstone” God of caricature that keeps people away from church—like a cosmic tantrum-throwing, petulant child, who’s had a toy taken away.

 But then … if God isn’t at war with that within us which is at odds with him, we are lost. The long story of redemption is one of God’s implacable enmity towards the sin that destroys us. That’s what I need to see when I behold the bloody mess of this Holy Week’s cross.

 “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…” — Mark 12:10. Thus, there is so much packed into Jesus’s quote of Psalm 118. The One “whipped and his face…spit upon,” as today’s Collect puts it, is God-in-flesh, absorbing the wrath his “enemies” deserve, so that, by some mysterious divine reckoning, God-in-heaven reconciles us to Himself, and counts us friends (Romans 5:10). Christ, have mercy.

 But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. … [Now]…you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. — 2 Corinthians 1:5,7. Somebody in Corinth had caused a crisis in the church. The congregation has dealt with it to Paul’s satisfaction, and the person has repented. Some, though, are not ready to let it go. Paul says: I’ve forgiven him, so you need to as well. In Christ, we have been reconciled, so we become reconcilers. Forgiven, we become forgivers.

 Hard times expose us to the best and the worst in each other. Irritations mount when the world feels like the movie set for a surreal horror flick.

 All of which makes the days we are living through an especially important time to tune in to each other’s emotional well-being, and to be, as James puts it, “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). To be especially ready to extend forgiveness and to ask: Lord, have mercy.

 Be blessed this day,

 Reggie Kidd+

Hope-Tinged Grace & Beauty - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Year 2, Holy Week, Tuesday 4/12/2022

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 6; Psalm 12; Lamentations 1:17-22; 2 Corinthians 1:8-22; Mark 11:27-33

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

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Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week. O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Without sugar-coating reality, the Bible carries about it an irrepressible hopefulness, a stubborn hold on a sense that glory and goodness will finally prevail, no matter what. The ugliness of judgment is always pregnant with the promise of redemption. Suffering inspires the singer. Punishment prompts the poet.

The book of Lamentations begins with four chapters of acrostics, each verse or stanza beginning with successive letters of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet (chapter 3 is a triple acrostic, so it’s 66 verses long). The last chapter (chapter 5), though not an acrostic, has the same number of verses as the Hebrew alphabet.

Judgment, in other words, runs from “A to Z.” Judgment has a beginning. But it also has an end, as we will see in Good Friday’s reading. In the very center of Lamentations (in Hebrew poetry, the center is often the “crown” of the poem) we find this: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end… Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone” (Lamentations 3:22-33).

 On the torturous journey to “the steadfast love,” today’s verses from Lamentations acknowledge the guilt of sin and they bemoan the shame that attends sin’s guilt: “Jerusalem sinned grievously, and so she has become a mockery; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness” (Lamentations 1:8).

 As if in answer, the BCP’s Collect for the Day points us to the cross, “an instrument of shameful death” that God made “the means of life.”

 The shamefulness of Christ’s death on the cross lay, in the first place, in the fact that Jesus had been spurned by his own nation, and then had been turned over to pagan Romans for a degrading non-Jewish execution. Deprived even of the benefit of a “good” Jewish stoning or even a “dignified” Roman beheading, Jesus was given over to what Scripture had always thought of as a repugnant, cursed death for infidels: hanging on a tree (see Deuteronomy 21:23).

 The humiliation of Christ’s execution lay, in the second place, and almost in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s lament that Jerusalem’s mockers “have seen her nakedness,” in the fact that Jesus, according to Roman custom, would have been crucified naked. Victims of what Cicero called “the unlucky tree” were stripped, and then nailed or tied to crosses prominently displayed in public places.

 Even into the 4th century, Christians in Jerusalem would remember “the nakedness of Christ on the cross, who in his nakedness ‘disarmed the principalities and powers, and openly triumphed over them on the tree’” (Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, Mystagogy 2). The marvel is that such shame worked such grace, such rejection effected such fellowship, and such a curse won such blessing.

 2 Corinthians. We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead — 2 Corinthians 1:8b-9. You can see Christ’s triumph in Paul’s life, when he talks about being “unbearably crushed” and having “received the sentence of death,” yet relying on “God who raises the dead.”

 You can see that same triumph in the likes of the 72-year-old Italian priest, Don Giuseppe Berardelli, who, stricken with the coronavirus, maintained his greeting to everyone, “Pace e bene,” and then when it came time for him to go on a ventilator, insisted it go to another. “Pace e bene,” indeed: the eternal “peace and well-being” Jesus has secured through his death and resurrection.

 In the days ahead, Lord willing, your “sentence of death” will take a lesser form. Whatever we face, I pray that you and I, like Jeremiah of Lamentations, can bring a hope-tinged grace and beauty to the ugliness of the day. I pray that you and I, like the Apostle Paul and Father Berardelli, will discover the glory of Christ’s cross, and count our own share in its “shame and loss” as something gladly to be borne.  

 Be blessed this day,

 Reggie Kidd+

How Long, O Lord? - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Year 2, Holy Week, Monday • 4/11/2022

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 51; Lamentations 1:1-12; 2 Corinthians 1:1-7; Mark 11:12-25

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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Collect for Monday in Holy Week. Almighty God, whose dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, p. 220)

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people — Lamentations 1:1. This first chapter of the book of Lamentations is one of the most gruesome in all of Scripture. The “weeping prophet” Jeremiah (by tradition, the author of Lamentations) looks out over a city he loves, left desolate in the wake of the Babylonian destruction of 586 B.C.—like a bombed-out Dresden or Hiroshima or Aleppo or Mariupol. Jeremiah imagines Judah/Jerusalem as though she had been bride to a husband, Yahweh, who now is dead to her: “How like a widow she has become.” Worse, she had given herself to false lovers who had failed to care for and protect her. And now she has been violated by despoilers (“she has seen the nations invade her sanctuary”), only to be promptly tossed aside (“her uncleanness was in her skirts”—Lamentations 1:9,10). It’s among the ugliest scenes Scripture ever describes. I find it hard to take.

But the writer of Lamentations, whether the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah as tradition holds, or an anonymous poet worthy of the attribution, does what only a great artist can do: create haunting beauty from something grotesque. Picasso’s Guernica, a visual lament of the 1937 Nazi and Fascist bombing of that Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, is just such a piece. Guernica wrenches the cry, “How long, O Lord?”, from deep in my soul.

 Just so, the book of Lamentations, one of the most beautifully crafted series of poems in all of Scripture (I’ll describe its overall architecture tomorrow), provides some of the most exquisite language for bringing to God our anguish and grief over human suffering.

 Today’s Lamentations reading ends with a verse that has inspired one of the most powerful choral pieces I’ve had the privilege to sing, Z. Randall Stroope’s “O Vos Omnes,” a Latin rendering of Lamentations 1:12:

 O vos omnes (O you people),

Qui transitis per viam (Who pass this way),

Attendite et videte (Look and see)

Si est dolor (If there is any sorrow),

Sicut dolor meus (Like my sorrow).

Recordare Domine (Remember, Lord),

Intuere et respice (Consider and notice)

Opprobrium nostrum (Our humiliation).

 Here’s a YouTube link to a recording of Stroope conducting Canticum Novum, with visuals from Auguste Rodin’s “The Burghers of Calais” (commemorating the Hundred Years’ War)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjPeqih9fxc

The book of Lamentations presents one of the many ways that the Old Testament anticipates the desolation of abandonment that Jesus would endure for us on the cross. Holy Week is an extended invitation to embrace what today’s collect calls “the way of the cross.” Whatever form “the way of the cross” takes for you this day and this week—especially if you are wondering, like Jeremiah, “if there is any sorrow like my sorrow”—, I pray you embrace that “way” with both honesty and courage. I pray that you find it indeed “none other than the way of life and peace, through Jesus Christ.”

 Be blessed this day,

 Reggie Kidd+

Image: From Moleskine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hard Times - A Great Equalizer - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 4/8/2022
Friday of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 22; Exodus 9:13-35; 2 Corinthians 4:1-12 (plus tomorrow’s 4:13–18); Mark 10:32-45

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (Song of Moses, Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 94)

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In our church we begin each Lenten season with the Great Litany. In that prayer we cry out: “From lightning and tempest, from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence. and famine, Good Lord, deliver us. From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us” (BCP, p. 149). Today’s readings provide an exceptional wrap to Lent. 

Exodus: Plagues 6 and 7: Boils & Hail. The plagues against the Egyptians become more severe. The plague of hail is the first of the plagues to threaten human life. But then, just as the threat accelerates, so does God’s counsel to provide and to seek shelter (Exodus 9:19-21). An offer of mercy during judgment, shelter in the storm.

Lord of heaven and earth, when storms sweep our world—whether they are storms of sickness or of conflict or of natural disaster—may they quickly pass. Protect those who provide what shelter they can. Have mercy, Lord, and spare lives. Soften and transform hearts that have been hardened into indifference to your presence. Reclaim hearts that have drifted into inattention to your care for them. Good Lord, deliver us. 

Psalm 22 anticipates, by a thousand years, Jesus descending into the abyss of abandonment to death (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), so he could rise to lead the praise of the God who rescues those “that fear him … the poor in their poverty … those who worship him … all the families of the earth … all who go down to the dust … [and] … a people yet unborn” (Psalm 22:1, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30). What a powerful prelude to Holy Week! 

Lord Jesus, Friend to sufferers, there’s no pain we’ve felt that you have not felt, no fear that’s unfamiliar to you, no loss that has not touched you. Please be near to all those for whom you have given your life in agony and rejection. Please strengthen especially those who feel most abandoned and forgotten. Remind them that you are there: a very present help in time of trouble. Good Lord, deliver us.  

Thus, it makes sense that in Mark 10, as Jesus heads for Jerusalem and Holy Week, he makes it crystal clear to his followers that the kind of power he embodies and is preparing to release into the world through his death and resurrection is not available to the ambitious, the proud, and the self-promoting: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44).

Hard times — when there are “boils” and “hail” aplenty — are a great equalizer. You may have been important in the “before times,” or you may have been unimportant. You may have had a voice, or not. We can take Jesus at his word: neither our pretensions nor our inadequacies were ever in the least relevant. All that matters is the generous heart of the One who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). 

Lord Jesus, Son of Man, show me this heart. Make me glad in the service of the One who gave his life a ransom. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer. 

2 Corinthians 4: apt words to close out Lent. The apostle Paul marvels at the way God places the light of knowing him in the hearts of his people. We are as frail and fragile, and as broken, as clay lanterns that have been put back together with semi-transparent glue. God lets his light shine out all the brighter through the cracks: “For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Corinthians 4:6–7).

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). 

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. 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 disappointed 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” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Good Lord, deliver us. 

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 say, “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. And writing devotions like these is part of what reminds me of the difference between what is merely temporary and what is eternal. 

If this Lenten season has reminded you just how frail you are, how tentative all your plans need 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). 

God of Light, you who make your light to shine in the darkest of places, shine the light of your glory through the cracks of our frailty. Perfect your strength in our weakness, and give all our brothers and sisters a joy this Easter that comes in the very midst of trials and tribulations. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Chris Hunkeler from Carlsbad, California, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

My Soul Can Rest, Safe and Tranquil - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 4/7/2022
Thursday of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131, 132, 133; Exodus 7:25–8:19; 2 Corinthians 3:7-18; Mark 10:17-31

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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A Beautiful Clustering of 3 Psalms of Assurance. 

It’s assuring to know that God so takes care of me that my soul can rest “tranquil and quiet like a child in its mother’s arms” (Psalm 131:2 JB). 

It’s assuring to know that I can rest in the truth that God is working all of history so as to dwell among us (Psalm 132:13) through an enthroned Son of David (132:11-12), revealed to us in the New Testament as Jesus Christ (Luke 1:31-33).

And it’s assuring and motivating to know that God is in the business of dwelling, through King Jesus, in a place where “all…live together like brothers” (Psalm 133:1)

Lord God, may King Jesus be enthroned in my life in such a way this day that I may know peace within my heart, and be at peace with my brothers and sisters. Harmony and affability abound in the internal life of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But all-living-together-as-brothers is in short supply in a world of lockdowns and lockouts, of invading armies and fleeing populaces. Where there is estrangement and conflict, Lord, may your people show a better way. Lord, have mercy.

Plagues of Frogs, Plagues of Gnats … and a Song Celebrating God’s Liberation of his People. 

Exodus 8 describes the plague of disgusting frogs and choking gnats, and chronicles Pharaoh’s refusal to listen even to his magicians’ warning, “This is the finger of God!” (Exodus 8:19). How fitting that today’s canticle following the OT reading is the Song of Moses (Canticle 8 = Exodus). This is the song the Israelites sing after Moses leads them on dry ground across the Red Sea and after the returning waters crush Pharaoh’s army. The Song of Moses extolls Yahweh for, “your constant love” with which “you lead the people you redeemed” (Exodus 15:13a). The question before us is always: am I yielding to or resisting that constant love? Christ, have mercy. 

Vision Unimpaired versus Vision Impaired. 

On the one hand, Paul joyfully describes the wonder and the hope of having the Spirit of God live inside us in such a way that we begin to see ourselves as changed people (2 Corinthians 3:7-18). Our transformation isn’t, according to Paul, into merely better versions of ourselves. Instead, as we reflect Jesus Christ in our lives, we become more and more like the One we are reflecting: 

“All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (v. 18).  

On the other hand, sadly, Jesus encounters a man whose wealth so clouds his vision that he can’t see true wealth (Mark 10:17-31). He has scrupulously kept the commandments regarding his behavior and relationships with others (e.g., parents and neighbors). However, he fails to recognize the value of a relationship with God. And as a result, he is unable to accept Jesus’s offer of that relationship: “Follow me.” Lord, give me eyes to see. Lord, have mercy. 

Be blessed this day.

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

The Heart is Everything - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 4/6/2022
Wednesday of 5 Lent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145-176; Exodus 7:8-24; 2 Corinthians 2:14–3:6; Mark 10:1–16

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

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Exodus: hard heart disease. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go’” (Exodus 7:14). Over the years, Jewish, Christian, and secularist interpreters have wrestled mightily with the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Ten times the book of Exodus says that Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Nine times the book of Exodus says that Pharaoh hardens his own heart or simply that his heart is hardened. I confess the dynamic remains a mystery to me. 

But because the locus of the problem for Pharaoh lies in the heart—the center of our being that is oriented toward, or away, from God—the plagues do challenge all of us to do a checkup on our own hearts. 

If our heart is inclined towards him, bad things will cause us to bless his name no less than good things. If our heart is tilted away from him, good things will contribute to our disdain for him no less than bad things. A financial windfall can be as detrimental to our spiritual heart condition as a huge loss. A bad medical diagnosis has as much capacity to lead us to a deeper love for God as does a good one. Everything that happens to us either pushes us further away from God or pulls us further toward him.

2 Corinthians: a heart that takes ink. “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” — 2 Corinthians 3:2–3. 

I take pleasure in writing notes by hand. Utilizing a wide-nib fountain pen or a wide rollerball pen and luxurious card stock, I delight to see words take shape. After a few lines, I find myself writing with a flourish. It’s irritating, by contrast, to have a restaurant server expect you to sign a bill with a dried-up fine-point ballpoint pen on thin glossy paper that won’t even take ink. I try to redeem every instance in which that happens by quietly praying: “Lord, let this not be me. May my heart be a luxurious place for you to write — may my life unfold as a living epistle under your hand.”  

May this Lenten season, in which we examine ourselves, repent, pray, fast, deny ourselves, and read and mediate on God’s holy Word, be a time in which we freshly discover the Lord’s own joy in finding our hearts luxuriously receptive to the ink of his hand.  

Mark: a heart given to relationship. The surest gauge for whether our hearts are turned toward God is whether they are turned toward people. If we love God, we’re going to love those who bear his image. Jesus says two of the biggest tests for that are how we are doing with the image-bearer to whom we are married (if, indeed, we are married — and if not, there are principles here that apply to our relationship with God and with others) and how we’re doing with the “little ones” in our life. 

In our marriage, we are 1) keeping the back door open—just in case, 2) if our career is more important than our home, 3) if we are keeping a little something on the side, or 4) if we are invested in a fantasy-world, then there’s a heart-problem. On the other hand, if we’re “all in” emotionally, mentally, spiritually, our heart is where it needs to be.

If our attitude toward the children in our life is condescending, and if our treatment of them is unkind and indifferent, then there’s a heart-problem. If, on the other hand, the amazing “tiny humans” in our lives know they are not only safe with us, but that we value, respect, and cherish them, our heart is where it needs to be. 

Lord, forgive us when our hearts grow hard against you. Grant us a “heart of flesh” instead of a “heart of stone.” May we see your providing hand in every part of our lives. May we receive with grace the writing of your story into ours. May we find joy in serving you in those you place close in our lives. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Some Words on Worship - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 4/5/2022
Tuesday of 5 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 121, 122, 123; Exodus 5:1–6:1; 1 Corinthians 14:20-40 (note that the lectionary excludes verses 34-38); Mark 9:42-50

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

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Meditating on 1 Corinthians 14: As important as worship is to Episcopalians, it’s curious that the Daily Office lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer includes the reading of some words on worship (tongues & prophecy) that we apply in a nuanced rather than a literalistic fashion, but then passes over other instructions on worship (women in worship) that we take in a similarly nuanced fashion.

So, we read, “each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation…let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.” We are expected, I suppose, to discern these words’ applicability to our worship despite the fact that our liturgy is not exactly spontaneous. In fact, whether our worship includes things like impromptu prophecy or not, or tongue-speaking or not, we can surely learn lessons from this passage about how true worship aims at building one another up rather than at putting our own spiritual prowess on display: “Let all things be done for building up” (14:26). 

But the daily lectionary invites us to skip “women should be silent” (verses 34-38). Why? Because our tradition has decided these words may have been applicable to Corinth, but have nothing to say to us? 

In fact, this teaching is important. Paul has already endorsed women speaking in church, when back in chapter 11 of this epistle, he urges women not to allow the piety of their public prophesying or praying to be undermined by impiety in their appearance (1 Corinthians 11:5-6). Here, in chapter 14, Paul is saying that when all the prophesying is over, he does not want the evaluation of the prophets (see the end of 1 Corinthians 14:32) to be interrupted by anyone (and specifically, in Corinth, some women) interrupting the process by continuing to speak. 

Just as uninterpreted tongues could be a cacophonous, perhaps even ego-inflating, hindrance to the edification of everybody, so could any speaking that is not within a proper order or context (to use the language of v. 17) “in turn.” That’s why Paul concludes, “all things should be done decently and in order” (v. 40). As Solomon says, “A time for keeping silent, a time for speaking” (Ecclesiastes 3:7)—a time for prophesying, a time to refrain from prophesying. 

Exodus: Meanwhile … back in Egypt. The Israelites groan under the burden of having to make “more bricks with less straw” (Exodus 5). Israel’s plight under their harsh taskmasters cannot help but remind us of the cruel affliction endured by so many people throughout history — and today — at the hands of soulless brutes. 

“When Israel was in Egypt land, Let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go!” intones the African-American spiritual. The words of the spiritual still resonate as we lift our voices on behalf of those still bearing scars from the scourge of antebellum slavery in the U.S., on behalf of girls and boys the world over pressed into trafficking, on behalf of women trapped in abusive relationships, and on behalf of citizens of countries under attack by ruthless would-be overlords. The Bible’s sustaining message is that in his time, Yahweh will answer the cry, “Let my people go!” 

Mark: Fighting the battle within. And then there’s the battle within ourselves, a necessary reminder this last week of Lent. Jesus urges us to be as concerned about the sin battling inside, against our souls, as we properly are about what’s going on “out there” in the cruel world: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire….” (Mark 9:43–48). There is no crueler taskmaster than the Father of lies who would take us to hell by giving us grasping and groping hands, feet quick to go down evil paths, and wandering and lustful eyes. May the prayers of the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Jesus who “ever intercedes for us” (Hebrews 7:25) prevail for us, “Let my people go!”  

Be blessed this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

God Supplies What is Needed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 4/4/2022
Monday of 5 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Exodus 4:10-31; 1 Corinthians 14:1-19; Mark 9:30-41

For a DDD “Riffing on Paul’s approach to tongue-speaking” in 1 Corinthians 14:12 from 10/12/2021 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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The Book of Exodus is about many things, one of which is the long journey of Moses to be described finally as a “friend of God” (Exodus 33:1). Along the way, Moses has some lessons to learn. And his journey is an invitation for us to contemplate just what it is to be called “friend of God” and to know the Lord “face to face” (Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10) … and what it takes to get there.   

Candor about your inadequacies. We don’t know what made Moses protest his lack of eloquence and his “slowness of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). He may have had a speech impediment. He may have felt his current forty years of wilderness life had eroded rhetorical skills he had learned his first forty years in Pharaoh’s courts. The point is, he acknowledges his inadequacy, and Yahweh accommodates. 

Who can’t identify with Moses? Who feels completely up to every task to which they are called — a new job, the Spirit’s nudge to tell a friend about Jesus, a sense you might be called to minister in an uncomfortable setting? Who hasn’t sensed God’s displeasure at our refusal in the face of his promptings?

God supplies Moses with Aaron. Who hasn’t been grateful when the Lord has provided a Christian friend to provide wise counsel, just the right verse to get us back on track, or the right person to come alongside us to help with the task at hand? Praise be to the God of grace who meets us where we are … and is not content to leave us there!

Faithfulness to the basics. Moses had embarked upon the special task to which God had called him, but he had overlooked one of the fundamental requirements of covenantal relationship. He had failed to initiate his sons into the covenant community through circumcision. 

Exactly what transpires during the night our reading describes as “the Lord met him and tried to kill him” is mysterious (Exodus 4:24). If ever there was ever a case of hyperbole in the Bible, it is here. If the God who sends the plagues against Egypt wanted to kill Moses, Moses would be dead. I suspect that the narrative depends upon Moses’s own account of a night-time terror that came upon him. Maybe it was a nightmare, maybe a nighttime visitation by the Angel of the Lord. We don’t know. Whatever it was, it felt to Moses like the Lord was trying to kill him. His wife, Zipporah knows exactly what to do (in the story, she’s the equivalent of Tami Taylor in the Friday Night Lights TV series, who always seems to know what to do!). Snip. Snip. Their child is brought into line with covenant life through circumcision … and so is the heretofore disobedient father. That’s why we sing, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way…” 

Extraordinary gifts and calling do not remove the need for attention to the basics of obedience and character. The field is littered with celebrity pastors who have “fallen” because nobody called them to account for sins of pride, envy, greed, sexual license. Historically, the apparent “Christianizing” of the Roman Empire took place under the leadership of an unbaptized, and therefore undiscipled, Constantine.* The church has paid a high price: the toleration of a pick-and-choose attitude among professed believers toward fundamental things like what to believe, how to behave, and whether or not to belong to a church. Lent is a good time for all of us to ask ourselves straightforward questions about how we are doing with matters of basic discipleship: Bible study and prayer, faithfulness in worship and giving, loving our neighbor as ourselves and respecting the dignity of every human being. Again, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way….”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* See the analysis in Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom (Trinity Press International, 1999; Wipf and Stock, 2006), especially Chapter 4, “Constantine Broadens the Attraction,” pp. 33–42. 

How to Face Desperate Times - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 4/1/2022
Friday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Exodus 2:1–22; 1 Corinthians 12:27–13:3; Mark 9:2–13

And Saturday’s Exodus 2:23–3:15

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

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Psalm 102: Calling out in distress. This morning’s psalm hits like a ton of bricks: “…[M]y days drift away like smoke, and my bones are hot as burning coals” (Psalm 102:3). I am struck both by how close to home the psalmist’s situation is: our lives are as precarious as his. I am struck also by the fact that the psalmist’s spiritual instinct is to process the pain by writing a song to the Lord. The psalm’s superscription (not in the BCP, but part of the ancient received text, and included in printed editions of the Bible) says it all: “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.”  

Psalm 102 is a masterful study in how to face desperate times. 

First, the psalmist cries out to the Lord about how distressing his situation is (vv. 1-11): “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop … I wither away like grass” (vv. 7,11 NRSV). 

Second, the psalmist expresses confidence that the Lord will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.” The Lord will heal, and thereby bring glory and praise to himself (vv. 12-22): 

18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
    so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,
    from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
    to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,
    and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,
    and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

Third, the psalmist turns again to his own plight, contrasting his own fragility with the Lord’s eternality (vv. 23-28): “[D]o not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations” (v. 24 NRSV). But then that last clause prompts an extraordinary turn. In the remaining verses of his song, the psalmist drops an “Easter Egg” of sorts. He celebrates God’s permanence in language that the New Testament will pick up centuries later to describe Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son whom God sends as Apostle and High Priest of his love: “[Y]ou are the same, and your years have no end” (compare Psalm 102:25-27 with Hebrews 1:10-12).

Exodus 2 and 3: Yahweh prepares a redeemer. In Exodus 2 and 3 (today’s and Saturday’s readings), the future deliverer Moses is rescued from a murderous tyrant’s decree of death-by-drowning as an infant. As an adult, Moses is moved at seeing the “forced labor” inflicted on “his people.” After a horribly misguided and tragically failed attempt to avenge the beating of one of his kinfolk, Moses goes into a wilderness exile. 

In that exile Moses has a personal encounter with Yahweh. From the burning bush, Yahweh says, “I have observed the misery … I have heard their cry … I know their sufferings … The cry of the Israelites has now come to me.” This tender insight comes in the same passage as the revelation about God’s mysterious name: “I AM WHO I AM.” The Redeemer Lord of the Exodus is touched by our infirmities, but he’s no fuddy-duddy “Big Guy” in the sky. More fundamentally, the Redeemer Lord will graciously bring about his redemption through the rescued wanna-be redeemer Moses. But Moses must learn to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. 

Centuries later, infant Jesus also escapes a tyrant’s decree (Matthew 2). Jesus too will be moved by the plight of the oppressed, but instead of inflicting punishment on evildoers, Jesus will undergo a vicarious death-by-drowning at his baptism (Matthew 3). Having readied himself to take the punishment for our sin, Jesus then exiles himself to the wilderness (Matthew 4). There is no burning bush for him, only the voice of the tempter. Nor is there a need to be taught to do the Lord’s work the Lord’s way, for Jesus is the Lord himself. And he assures the Tempter that he has come to do the will of His Father and ours. Moses’s life and ministry foreshadows in remarkable ways that the Lord’s work will indeed be done in the Lord’s way!  

All the world’s pain—from the psalmist’s to the Israelites’ to yours and mine, be it pestilence or war, fractured relationships or failing health—all of it has been taken up into the suffering and victory of God’s Eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Be blessed. May the knowledge of that hope sustain you this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Words to Lift Up to Yahweh - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/31/2022
Thursday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Exodus 1:6–22; 1 Corinthians 12:12–26; Mark 8:27–9:1

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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Exodus and Psalm 69: Rescue is on the way. The start of the book of Exodus is worth noting: Exodus begins the saga of a return home. Separation from the Garden had led to the slavery of sin. Thus, Israel’s exile under “taskmasters” in Egypt is a parable for the whole human condition of captivity under the dominion of sin, evil, and death. God is not going to leave his people under this oppression. As Eucharistic Prayer A puts it: “…and when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ…to reconcile us to you….” The book of Exodus, we’ll see, is a telling of that story in advance. 

Today’s canticle, “The Song of Moses,” celebrates the fact that taskmasters do not have the final say, that “Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name” (Exodus 15:3 JB). As the story of the exodus unfolds, we see that God’s deliverance for all of us can be likened to a rescue from drowning waters. Despite Pharaoh’s command that “every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile,” baby Moses will be lifted from the waters. Despite being trapped on the shores of the Red Sea, the nation of Israel will be brought through the parted waters on dry ground. 

Today’s psalm, Psalm 69, personalizes Moses’s and Israel’s experience. In this song about one of his own near-death experiences, David gives each of us words to lift up to Yahweh when life circumstances feel like they are about to sweep over us and drown us: “Let not the torrent of waters wash over me, neither let the deep swallow me up; do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me” (Psalm 69:17). 

But more: David provides one of his many glimpses of the Savior he looked forward to: “They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink. As for me, I am afflicted and in pain; your help, O God, will lift me up on high” (Psalm 69:23–24; see Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:23). David saw in advance that which we have the privilege of seeing at Calvary and in our lives: Christ meets us in the torrent, suffers in our stead, and rescues us from the “reproach” of our enemies, and from the “shame” and “dishonor” of our sin (Psalm 69:21a). 

1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers…” One verse stands out in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (12:26). Throughout this passage, the apostle Paul contemplates the “oneness” and the “many-ness” of Christ’s Body the church. All baptized into one body, all drinking from the same Spirit. Everybody feeling everybody’s joy. Everybody feeling everybody’s pain. 

The English poet and priest, John Donne (1573–1631) had an acute feel for the truth of the interconnectedness of our lives.  

“No man is an island, 
Entire of itself, 
Every man is a piece of the continent, 
A part of the main. 
If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less, 
As well as if a promontory were. 
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s 
Or of thine own were: 
Any man’s death diminishes me, 
Because I am involved in mankind, 
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee.”

“All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is torn out of the book and translated into a better language. And every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God’s hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another.”

The Suffrages in the Daily Office are pitch perfect to enable us as a “kingdom of priests” to bring the hopes and hurts and the aspirations and torments of the whole human family to the throne of grace. I commend a lingering over each couplet:

Show us your mercy, O Lord;

And grant us your salvation.

Clothe your ministers with righteousness;

Let your people sing with joy.

Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;

For only in you can we live in safety.

Lord, keep this nation under your care;

And guide us in the way of justice and truth.

Let your way be known upon earth;

Your saving health among all nations.

Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;

Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.

Create in us clean hearts, O God;

And sustain us with your Holy Spirit. Amen

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay