Daily Devotion for Lent 2015, Day 33

Daily Devotion for Lent

Friday, March 27, 2015, Day 33

Mark 13:14-27 (NRSV)

These verses don't sound very reassuring to a North American audience that has it good. In fact, I would rather just skip over them.  They don't make for a very easy devotional topic, thank you very much.

But as we read them in light of the turmoil that was happening when Mark was written or if we consider our Christian brothers or sisters in Africa who are experiencing political upheaval and violent unrest in the midst of food shortages and drought, they may read very differently.

The hope of the coming of the Son of Man is something to hold onto when all else is falling down around us.  We are people of the cross, yes.  But we are also people of the resurrection.

The metaphor of resurrection in the return of Christ to our lives means that this passage has light for every generation.  If we only read it as the second coming in a future age, then all of the Christians who preceded us got nothing out of it because it wasn't for them.

I believe that scripture is for every age and so we must interpret it for today.

How does the return of Christ come to us today?

As Jesus earlier equated welcoming him with welcoming a little child, we might look to our children for hope of Christ among us.

Might we look at our tutoring ministries, such as Whiz Kids, Project Transformation or the new
tutoring program at Sunset Elementary in Edmond that the church here is starting?

Would our attitudes change if we saw our participation as a sharing in the return of the Son of Man?

It certainly might grant us more patience with the children we encounter.

Maybe that's the important take-away for today.

Prayer:

God our Father,
   we pray for our young people growing up in an unstable and confusing world.
Show them that your ways give more meaning to life than the ways of the world, 
   and that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals.
Help them to take failure not as a measure of their worth but as a chance for a new start.
Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation;
   through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.




Photo by U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Walter M. Wayman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Prayer from the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, Book of Common Prayer