Friday 12/16/2022

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Friday 12/16/2022

Luke 13:10-17

December 16, 2022 • Luke 13:10–17

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Friday 12/16/2022

Luke 13:10-17

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman on the Sabbath

10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. 14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” 15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Few people in Jesus’ day could have been lowlier than this woman, crippled for 18 years. On top of the low social and legal status of women in general, and the limitations of her physical disability, most Hebrews at that time understood physical problems as a sign of God’s displeasure. When Jesus decisively set her free, he lifted a huge burden from her. No wonder Luke recorded that people “rejoiced at all the extraordinary things he was doing.” Use your imagination to try to feel the freedom and almost disbelieving joy the woman must have had when she was able to stand upright for the first time in 18 years! Has God ever worked, either directly or through a human agent, to free you from something that had bound you for a long time? Has God ever given you the privilege of being part of the process of freeing someone else from a long-standing burden? As at other times in Jesus’ ministry, in this story his healing power met guarded laws and traditions. Luke said the synagogue leader was “incensed that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.” With which are you more comfortable: established procedures and order, or God breaking into 21st-century lives in sometimes surprising, “disorderly,” joy-producing ways?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, your healing, freeing work brought joy, and often met opposition. Give me the wisdom to stay attuned to the ways you choose to work, even if that stretches my comfort zone. Amen.

Saturday 12/24/2022

December 24, 2022 • Ephesians 3:14–19

Saturday 12/24/2022 Ephesians 3:14-19 A Prayer for the Ephesians 14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Paul’s letters included prayers he prayed for the Christian converts in the little house churches he raised up in Asia and Europe. In this passage sent to Christians at Ephesus, he asked lyrically that the Holy Spirit, dwelling in their hearts, would give all believers “the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth.” He used those geometric, almost architectural terms to express his belief that God’s love is enormous, bigger ultimately than any love we can imagine. Yet he believed that it was spiritually vital that we do all we can to grasp and experience that awesome love. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more and nothing you can do to make God love you less. May knowing that you are completely loved fill you with joy this Christmas Eve.

Friday 12/23/2022

December 23, 2022 • Romans 5:1–8

Friday 12/23/2022 Romans 5:1-8 Peace and Hope 5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For many Christians, the salvation God’s grace offers us produces times of awesome joy and peace. But human emotions are volatile and erratic. At times of pain or doubt, even the strongest, most confident Christ-follower may struggle to feel that “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts.” That’s why Paul based our ultimate security not in how we feel at any given moment, but in an event. Jesus valued and loved us so much that he died for us.

Thursday 12/22/2022

December 22, 2022 • 1 John 4:7–16

Thursday 12/22/2022 1 John 4:7-16 God’s Love and Ours 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. In this passage John repeated that “God IS love.” All of us love someone or something at times (some of us more than others!). But John’s thought reached beyond that to say that the very essence of God’s being is love. “And how do you know that?” someone might have asked John. Advent pointed to the answer. We know God is love, John said, because God sent his only Son into the world on a saving mission.