Epiphany 3 / Ordinary Time 3
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.
-- Nehemiah 8:9
When our lives are in chaos, one of the first things we need is a very clear discipline and structure to help us stabilize. The story of the people's return from exile is a story of return from chaos. Almost everything that provided them identity -- land, temple, government -- had been ripped away from them. They were allowed to return to the land.
Metaphorically, it is like people whose faith had been destroyed and who ventured back into the land of faith. One of the first things they did was to hear the law read to them. They heard what the discipline of this new way of life required. They were given a set of practices that would help reorder their lives from that which had been their practices. It is a new orientation.
Their first response was to compare the way of life provided by God through the scriptures with the life they had been living, and they were filled with guilt for time lost. "For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." But they were counseled to rejoice instead. The law was not meant to condemn them for their failures in the past but to provide them with a structure by which some new order might come to their chaotic lives. The law was like the word of God that split the darkness in Genesis 1. The first day of a new life is when we begin again under God's guidance. It is a holy day: "For the joy of the Lord is your strength."
-- Nehemiah 8:9
When our lives are in chaos, one of the first things we need is a very clear discipline and structure to help us stabilize. The story of the people's return from exile is a story of return from chaos. Almost everything that provided them identity -- land, temple, government -- had been ripped away from them. They were allowed to return to the land.
Metaphorically, it is like people whose faith had been destroyed and who ventured back into the land of faith. One of the first things they did was to hear the law read to them. They heard what the discipline of this new way of life required. They were given a set of practices that would help reorder their lives from that which had been their practices. It is a new orientation.
Their first response was to compare the way of life provided by God through the scriptures with the life they had been living, and they were filled with guilt for time lost. "For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." But they were counseled to rejoice instead. The law was not meant to condemn them for their failures in the past but to provide them with a structure by which some new order might come to their chaotic lives. The law was like the word of God that split the darkness in Genesis 1. The first day of a new life is when we begin again under God's guidance. It is a holy day: "For the joy of the Lord is your strength."
