A WORD FOR TODAY, January 19, 2026
Peggy Hoppes
We pray you have been blessed by this daily devotion. If you received it from a friend, you can see other devotions and studies by visiting our website at www.awordfortoday.org.
Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, January 19, 2026
“Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tender hearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing. For, ‘He who would love life, and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil, and do good. Let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears open to their prayer; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.’” 1 Peter 3:8-12, WEB
Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg was a German Lutheran missionary and leader of the church that was being established in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century. In one of his diary excerpts, Muhlenberg talked about a conversation he had with another missionary named Alexander Murray. Murray was disappointed because talks between different church bodies, the English and German churches, were not going well. Murray thought it was an ideal time for cooperation and for the welfare of the church so that German Lutherans could be educated in the English academies and prepared to serve. He was concerned that if there were not enough leaders, then the people would turn away from the Church and Christ. Muhlenberg understood his concerns wrote this in his diary: “I said {to Alexander} that one could travel from one pole to another in a few minutes on a map, but in practice things went much more slowly and laboriously. It is something fondly to be hoped for that all the walls of partition made by human hands may be done away and Christ be all in all.”
I think there is a lot of wisdom in this statement for us today. We want every issue to be solved easily. In some cases, it is vital that the issues be solved immediately because people’s lives are at stake. Unfortunately, nothing happens quickly, particularly when it comes to politics. I mean politics, which is the process of making decisions that apply to members of a group, both in the secular world and in the religious world, because no matter how much we wish differently, politics rears its ugly head in every aspect of our life. And we all know how slowly things work when politics are involved! Anyone who has served on a call committee for a church will tell you that it can take two to three years to finally select the one who will be called to serve as pastor.
We remember the Confession of Peter on Sunday, January 18th, and we’ll remember the Conversion of Paul on Sunday, January 25th. The church has established this week to be the week of prayer for Christian Unity. In John 17:21, Jesus prayed for the Church, “that they all may be one.” It is appropriate that they chose this week to pray for this particular need in the Church, after all Peter and Paul had disagreements when they were working at organizing the Church two thousand years ago. Somehow they managed to find ways to live out Jesus’ hope for their ministries, supporting one another despite those disagreements. The week of prayer is an ecumenical observance, and though we really don’t agree very well about certain aspects of our life of the Church, we can pray for one another and hope for Jesus’ prayer to be fulfilled.
We don’t know why the churches in the late eighteenth century could not work together, but we do know the same thing happens still today. We will get frustrated because the Church is filled with fallible human beings; we see the world through our own opinions and biases. However, we can trust that God is working in the lives of all Christians. We will disagree, but Peter writes that a blessed life comes from being Christ-like, even when the circumstances in our life seem overwhelming. When we face opposition, we should not try so hard to make things happen according to our timeline. When we do so, we lose sight of the One from whom we receive the greatest blessings. God knows what He is doing and He will accomplish His will despite our human failings. Meanwhile, living the Christ-like life will help us to take time to think about our response to the things that happen around us, to keep us from overreacting and causing harm to ourselves and others. In Christ we will be blessed.
A WORD FOR TODAY is posted five days a week – Monday through Friday. The devotional on Wednesday takes a look at the scripture from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday. A WORD FOR TODAY is posted on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Word-for-Today-Devotional/339428839418276. Like the page to receive the devotion through Facebook. For information and to access our archives, visit http://www.awordfortoday.org.