As I sat there with a book next to the coals from the morning fire, a wind began to blow. And it continued to blow, and it got stronger and stronger, blowing sand into my pages, and blowing the pages over so that I had to keep my hand firmly on the book to be able to read at all. I finally got so frustrated I shouted at the wind, at God, at the universe, “Really?!?! I’m finally in the right mindset to read, and now this? Stop with the sand blowing already.”
They’ve seen this movie before, and so some of them are thinking, “Great! Jesus is here, he’ll calm the storm and all will be well.”
But Jesus doesn’t calm the storm.
He’s just standing there, telling them not to be afraid, in the midst of all this raging chaos.
I tried to rationalize, I tried to ignore, I tried to bargain, but for some reason, God kept putting this on my heart, and I finally relented. As I gave the money to my local priest to give to the bishop, I was almost in tears, wondering how this could remotely be God’s plan, seeing as how I didn’t have the money to deal with my own bills.
Daily Office Readings – Gospel ( Matthew 17:14-21 ) As I read through this morning’s Gospel reading, I was, of course, struck by Jesus rebuking his disciples. They had tried to cast out a demon, and they couldn’t get the demon to leave a boy who suffered from seizures and would fall into the fire…
Daily Office Readings – NT ( Hebrews 11:1-12 ) As I read through the New Testament reading for today, the same two words kept jumping out at me: “by faith,” “by faith,” “by faith,” kind of like the steady beating of a drum. (Or a hammer on my thick skull, perhaps…) The other thing that…