Living in the Spirit

November 11, 2020

Scripture Reading: Psalm 123
To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
Look to the hand of their master,
As the eyes of a maid
To the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
Until he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us.
For we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill
 Of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

This psalm of assent, most likely post-exilic—after the return from Babylon, is a prayer moving from individual reconnection with God to communal worship of God. We must reignite our relationship with God before we can become a positive, active participant in the community of faith approaching worship. This Psalm recognizes God as both master and mistress of the heaven as individuals come together as one to seek mercy.

The Body of Christ in our nation today is deeply divided. That has become more complicated as it has been usurped by the world of politics. The result is that more and more people are choosing to walk away from traditional Christianity. There, of course is a continuum of identification with God as has always been the case. God is great enough to meet God’s followers where they are on that continuum. The possibility exists that such diversity is the best way to serve God completely.  We seem, however, to find ourselves in a situation where the sides are more monolithic, where we may not recognize our common threads of faith at all. Yet Christ called us to be one.

The time is now that we must seek our common ground in faith as frail as some of those links might have become. To accomplish that goal, we must face the discomfort of our differences, set them aside, and work to build on strengthening what will hold us together as the Body of Christ in the world today.

Prayer: Lord, cleanse us of our pride of contempt, we humbly ask in the name of Jesus who loves us and wants the very best for us especially when we do not accept oneness as that best. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.