Daily Devotion for Lent 2017 - Day 19, Wednesday

Today's Reading: John 9:13-34 (NRSV)

Why do the sweetest blackberries
seem to have the biggest thorns?

Have you ever had two competing truths?  It really is amazing how often life can be predicted to go a certain way. We often find ourselves relying on other people to act in their predictable patterns and when they don't, we become offended.

Within today's reading, we see that the Pharisees had two things that they believed:

1)  A person that defies the Sabbath (or at least their understanding of it) is not on the same page as God.

2)  A person that provides spectacular healing miracles could only do so in partnership with God.

So what if you have a person that gives evidence of these miracles and interprets the Sabbath differently?  Something does not add up.

Is it possible that I was misinterpreting the Sabbath?

Well, that couldn't be it.  The miracles must be a sham!

The Pharisees give an excellent example of the human being's stubborn refusal to reinterpret reality if the facts don't line up with our assumptions.  We have all done this in life to some extent.  We have all seen people refuse to address reality and it is sad.  We hope that our own examples haven't been too obvious or public or else it becomes rather embarrassing.

As we consider the miraculous, we are often more skeptical than embracing.  What if we began to reexamine the things around us with an eye toward God?

Prayer for the day:

Gracious God, we believe that
'Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.'
May we take off our shoes more times than not.  Amen.

     This prayer was modified from my favorite poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Aurora Leigh."


Photo by Alice Rosen via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.