A WORD FOR TODAY, June 25, 2024
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
I am on vacation this week, so instead of my usual pattern of regular devotions on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Midweek Oasis lectionary devotion on Wednesday, I’m going to post devotions on the lectionary scriptures, one each day of the week.
Scriptures for Sunday, June 30, 2024: Lamentations 3:22-33 or Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-23; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43
A WORD FOR TODAY, June 25, 2024
“...because God didn’t make death, neither does he delight when the living perish. For he created all things that they might have being. The generative powers of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor has Hades royal dominion upon earth; for righteousness is immortal ... Because God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own everlastingness; but death entered into the world by the envy of the devil, and those who belong to him experience it.” Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-24, WEB
What is death? In the most common definition, death is when a physical body stops living, when a living thing breathes no more. I’m sure most, if not all, of us reading this today have experienced the loss of someone we knew and loved, whether it was a person or even a pet. Death is the ultimate separation because except for the memories, we have no connection to that person or animal after they’ve died.
But death can be understood in a wider sense, to include objects and ideas as well as physical beings. Psychiatrists tell us that people grieve any sort of loss, just as they might grieve for a dead loved one. The loss of a job means separation from the workplace, co-workers and financial security. When we are separated from a friend because of an argument or a change in the relationship, we go through a period of grief. It can feel like we’ve died when we have been faced with the reality that our opinions or ideas are wrong, especially if those ideas or opinions are deeply rooted and long lasting. Any of these experiences can cause division, separation: walls built between people.
God did not intend for us to live divided by walls, but we constantly build them. Some people want to divide us according to some visible distinction, whether it be race, gender, age or any other physical attribute. Others want division based on ideas. Yet others want lines drawn between nations and cultures, classes or politics. It isn’t always easy to tell who belongs to which group, but the walls are built anyway.
Every time a wall is built, a death occurs. Yet, as the apocryphal text from the Wisdom of Solomon today makes clear, God did not intend us to be separated by our differences. God created us to last forever, living together in His Kingdom, under His rule, with His grace as the bond that ties us all together. Unfortunately, we live in a world corrupted by sin, our own and the sins of others, from the days of Adam and Eve until now. Sin causes death: death of body, mind, and spirit. It causes death in relationships. It causes death in the human connection to our God.
God did not intend for His creation to die. He did not intend for sickness. He did not intend for violence. He did not intend for there to be borders between people. The writer of Wisdom wrote, “But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, and they that are of his portion make trial thereof.” We find death. We find illness. We find destruction. We find (or cause) broken relationships. All too often death finds us because we have not lived as God intended. It began in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve listened to the voice of the serpent and believed him above the voice of God. We continue to suffer the consequences of that choice, but we also suffer the consequences of our own choices. We hold on to the devil and in doing so, we find death.
But God created us for life, and so He sent His Son to break down the walls that cause separation and brokenness. Jesus came to destroy death. Not only can we live eternally in the presence of God by faith, we can also see the benefit of faith in our daily lives. We can live blind to our differences, ignore the walls, reach out to those who are different, open our hearts and minds to others. We don’t have to become door mats or give up our principles. We simply look at the world through Jesus’ point of view and we’ll see things differently. In faith, by grace, we have been changed. We do not need to suffer from death. We have been created to live and live abundantly.
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