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| As we enter the third week of Easter, we may see an ease in stay-at-home restrictions and a re-opening of businesses, but we do not know what this means for returning to our places of worship. In this season of uncertainty, let us hold fast to what we know to be true in Christ. May we continue to find encouragement through our daily prayers, spiritual discernment, and a shared reading of the Scripture.
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| | Wednesday, Third Week of Easter
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| God Will Strengthen the People (Zechariah 10:6-12, NRSV)
The Home Daily Bible Readings for Monday through Saturday are selected in support of the Sunday lesson in the Uniform Lessons Series, ©Spring 2020.
10:6 I will strengthen the house of Judah,
and I will save the house of Joseph.
I will bring them back because I have compassion on them,
and they shall be as though I had not rejected them;
for I am the Lord their God and I will answer them.
7 Then the people of Ephraim shall become like warriors,
and their hearts shall be glad as with wine.
Their children shall see it and rejoice,
their hearts shall exult in the Lord.
8 I will signal for them and gather them in,
for I have redeemed them,
and they shall be as numerous as they were before.
9 Though I scattered them among the nations,
yet in far countries they shall remember me,
and they shall rear their children and return.
10 I will bring them home from the land of Egypt,
and gather them from Assyria;
I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon,
until there is no room for them.
11 They[a] shall pass through the sea of distress,
and the waves of the sea shall be struck down,
and all the depths of the Nile dried up.
The pride of Assyria shall be laid low,
and the scepter of Egypt shall depart.
12 I will make them strong in the Lord,
and they shall walk in his name,
says the Lord.
Jesus is Baptized (Matthew 3:13-17, NRSV)
Today’s Gospel lesson is selected from the Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer (Louisville, KY:Westminster/John Knox, 1993).
3:13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
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| | The Indweller Within
By Rev. Christian Iosso, Social Witness Coordinator at Presbyterian Church (USA), co-convener, NCC Joint Action and Advocacy for Justice and Peace Convening Table
Great God, we imagine you in immense spaces like the sky, the ocean, the open desert, the high mountaintop, but you are the Indweller within, above all. Rarely have health and justice been so clearly intertwined as they are today, and the risks taken by caregivers so serious. The wholeness of the human race is being tested and the insufficiency of nationalism is being exposed.
God, giver of this sense of wholeness and companionship even in solitude, be most with those pressed and forced together, that they may survive together as well. May your incarnate and redemptive presence and power live–even briefly– in every heart. Amen.
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