Today’s reflection is written by Deacon Karen Katamay.

“God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.” —Psalm 62:6

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet.” —Hebrews 12:12-13

There are several passages in the Bible about God being our strength. In addition to today’s verses, I am also reminded of the first verse of Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Many times we want to believe that if we have faith in God, he will protect us from all hardships and struggles, and life will be easy. But instead, the Bible is filled with examples of those who had great faith and also great suffering. Take the apostles, for example. They were beaten and stoned and scorned, and yet they never lost their faith, instead drawing strength from it to endure their hardships.

As I get older, the physical labor I used with do with ease when I was younger becomes more difficult now. I do have drooping hands and weak knees at the end of the day when I am doing manual labor, but somehow God gets me through it. Lifting boxes at the food pantry, packing up groceries for refugee families, cutting my grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, cleaning my house, and other activities can leave me drained at the end of the day. But then I remember how blessed I am that I can still do these things and thank God that he gives me the strength to do them. God also gives me strength when my spirit is weak or I am emotionally drained. 

Yes, God is my rock and my salvation, my refuge and my strength. And for that, I am eternally grateful! Amen.

“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” —Deuteronomy 5:29

For some reason, when someone tells me to do something (or even politely suggests that maybe I ought to do something), it makes me not want to do it. I’m a grown-up (supposedly), but, for example, if Jade mentions that I might want to put on a warmer coat because it’s frigid cold out, I will generally pause, pondering the suggestion. Jade will then (rightly) hypothesize, “You don’t want to put on a warmer coat because I suggested it?”

It’s not that I don’t trust my wife’s understanding of winter outerwear or the Fahrenheit scale. It’s true that she’s a bit zealous about bundling up, but fair enough—it gets really cold in Chicago. This is just one manifestation of a lifelong instinct I’ve had to question advice and authority: “I’m not saying I won’t put on a warmer coat, but I’m not going to do it just because you said to!” The author Gretchen Rubin would call me a “Questioner.”

We’re not all wired quite like this (thank God!), but we all have times when we bristle at authority. People who cheerfully give away thousands of dollars to charity bristle at small tax increases. Students who love reading refuse to read the novels assigned by their English teachers. The posted speed limits mainly serve to remind us what speed we should be sure to exceed.

We often bring this same attitude to our obedience to God. In the Garden of Eden, the very first humans chose to do the one thing they’d been commanded not to. We hear that God calls us to obey, and we get antsy before we even know what God’s commands are.

Pastor Andy Stanley often emphasizes that God doesn’t so much want something from us as he wants something for us. In this verse from Deuteronomy, you can hear the longing from God. He’s just established a covenant with Israel after liberating them from slavery. They are to be his people, and he is to be their God. He’s laid out a good rule of life that will bless their life together with each other and with him. And he longs for them to keep the commands, not because God gets something from it but because God longs for his beloved children to thrive.

If you’ve had good parents or known good parents or been a good parent, you know that—however imperfectly—human parents guide their children toward right-living not for the parents’ sake, but for the children’s sake. In an even better way, God teaches us how to live because he really wants us to live. So open your ears to his good instruction, so that life may go well.

Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10

Each Christmas I imagine Mary and Joseph looking down at baby Jesus wondering what he will look like as he ages, what will he be interested in, how God will use him. But it doesn’t stop there. I inevitably fast forward to 33 years later when that baby has become a man and willingly walks toward his own execution so that I and everyone else who believes in him can live. It’s just so much weight being placed on the shoulders of a child. So for me, Christmas is always a little bittersweet.

What helps me is to remember who we are praying to when we recite the Lord’s prayer. When we pray this part of the Lord’s prayer we are looking toward the day when God’s reign and rule will be fully expressed on Earth. We are praying to the living God, the resurrected Jesus. The God who came into this world as baby, lived for 33 years, willingly died, and was resurrected so that we might have life.

Amen.  

Today’s reflection is by Deacon Karen Katamay.

“Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.” —Psalm 144:15

“See—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” —Luke 2:10-11

Today is Christmas Day! As we get wrapped up in our holiday traditions and gift giving frenzy, the verses today help to remind us that this day is really about God’s greatest gift to us, the birth of his son, Jesus. We are reminded that today is all about great joy, even as we spend the holiday this year separated from our closest friends and loved ones. We are reminded that true happiness comes not from what’s under the tree, but from our relationship with the Lord.

As I write this devotion I have Christmas carols playing in the background and they help to give me a sense of joy and peace that can only come from the message of Christmas. I feel some tears well up in my eyes as I think about how God loves me so much that he sent his only son into the world to die for me and for all people to save us from our sins. I wasn’t even born yet when Christ came to our world, but his life, death, and resurrection was still for me and for all people throughout the ages!

True love. Unconditional love. Yes, this Christmas will be different because of pandemic restrictions, but it also will be the same because it is about Jesus.  And that little baby that lay in a manger so many years ago, our Savior, still brings us the joy and peace that pass all understanding. Amen.

Have a most blessed Christmas!

“These people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.” —Isaiah 29:13

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shares a beautiful teaching about how we should speak. At the heart of Jesus’ teaching are the virtues of integrity and honesty. Jesus says not to pile up oaths and promises, swearing that this time (perhaps unlike all the other times) we really are telling the truth. Some Jesus-followers take this teaching literally and refuse, for example, to swear to tell the truth with a hand placed on the Bible. The idea here is of course not that we shouldn’t tell the truth. Rather, our word should be reliable enough that a simple “yes” or “no” is all we need to say in order to be believed.

Jesus tells another story about a son who says he’ll help his father with some work, but doesn’t end up showing up to help. The willingness to say he would help was worthless divorced from the act of actually helping.

In today’s verse, the Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah, describing his people as having a sharp disconnect between their external words and their internal reality. Words alone are cheap, worse than useless, in fact, if all they do is demonstrate a lack of integrity.

The implications aren’t difficult to figure out: God is not fooled by empty words. (Nor, it should be said, are other people, at least most of the time.) When we find ourselves saying things we don’t really mean, it’s time for some self-examination. Where’s the disconnect? What do I need to stop saying? Or what do I need to start doing in order to better line up my lips and my heart?

There’s good news here. In the verse immediately following today’s, just after God has laid bare the brokenness of his people, he follows with his plan: “So I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing” (Isaiah 29:14). Reading along, we expect God to say he’s giving up, but that’s not the kind of God we have. Given the starting point, these “amazing things” God is going to do may not be easy, but they will be good. God hasn’t given up on his chosen people. And he hasn’t given up on you or me either. So we can come to him honestly, vulnerably, acknowledging the gap between our words and our actions, between our lips and our hearts, and we can ask God to heal us, to make us whole, to give us integrity through his mercy and life-giving power.