Intentional Faith

Today’s Devotion

Excerpt from Luke 9:28-36

“And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”

Anthony B. Robinson

Jesus went up the mountain, taking three of the disciples along with him. There light burst the seams of his robe. He shone – brilliantly, brightly, dazzlingly.

Have you heard the sermon on this story? It goes like this: “We must not tarry on the mountaintops of spiritual ecstasy and encounter. We must return to the valleys of human need and suffering, there to serve.” I’ve heard it. I’ve preached it.

It’s a good sermon. But I’ve heard this sermon so often that I began to wonder why we were in such an all-fired hurry to get down the mountain. I began to wonder if a different question were the right question just now. “Have we been to the mountaintop?”

It’s not of course an either/ or, not either mountaintop or valley. Not either encounter with God or service to others. It’s a both/ and. But perhaps just now, we need to ask, “Have we been to the mountain?” Have we been in the presence of God, which as preacher Fred Craddock used to say, is where everyone wants to be and where everyone doesn’t want to be.

Holy ground is not safe. It is full of mystery and power. We aren’t in control here on the mountain. But should you find yourself there, don’t just do something, stand there. Don’t speak. Listen. As the cloud swirls and the fog lifts, “This is my Son, listen to him.” Let God be God.

Because having been to the mountain, when you return – as you must – everything will be different, brighter, charged, transfigured – even you.

Prayer

It is your presence that we long for and flee, O God. Grant us courage to risk the mountaintop. Amen.

You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say. (B. Jewett)

Today’s Prayer

You O Lord are always before my face, for You are at my right hand so that I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart will rejoice and my tongue be glad and my flesh will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life and You will make me full of joy in Your presence. In Jesus Precious name I pray,

Thoughts on Today’s Text

Moses’ shining face embodies God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to Israel, despite the Israelites’ confused and rebellious worship of the image of a calf they proclaim as “the gods who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:5). A traditional declaration earlier in Exodus 34 emphasizes that covenant renewal is in keeping with God’s essential character:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).1

The light of divine presence transforms Moses’ appearance on an ongoing basis, whenever he emerges from the tent of meeting after speaking with God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:7-11; cf., Numbers 12:8; Deuteronomy 34:10). Moses’ dazzling face confirms that his plea for God’s presence among the Israelites as they leave Sinai (Exodus 34:9) has been answered, even before the tabernacle is built and filled with glory (Exodus 40:34-38).

Today’s Text

Exodus 34:29-35 (NIV)
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD.
30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.
31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them.
32 Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.
33 When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.
34 But whenever he entered the LORD’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded,
35 they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.

Today’s Christian Music Video

http://youtu.be/r6nHLg1Y7-M

Today’s Quote

There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous, urgent, ardent. Flamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.

E.M. Bounds

Devotion for the Day

Excerpt from Psalm 91

“My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”

Reflection by Martin B. Copenhaver

Home. It is hard to think of another word with as many deep resonances. Whether we are responding to the presence or the absence of something called home, the word itself seems to echo in the deeper recesses of our hearts.

A home is so much more than a house. A home is a place, or a dream of a place, where you feel uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel like you belong. Some of us have an actual place like that, a place that comforts and enfolds, a place where you can seek refuge from the world and are refreshed to face the world again. Whether you live alone or with others, it is a place where you don’t have to explain everything. It is a place where you can be yourself, for better or worse, and usually it is both. And, in the home of our dreams, at least, it is a place where you feel accepted, loved even. There are not many places like that in the world, and we all need such a place.

The authors of scripture talk about God in some of the same ways, as a shelter and a comfort, as the one who accepts us just as we are, who enfolds us with care and equips us to serve. Perhaps that is why scripture speaks of God as a home. “God is my refuge and my fortress,” writes the psalmist, using the words that would later inspire Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.” Elsewhere we read, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Imagine: God is our home.

If the home in which you live is a sanctuary or roiled with conflict, grand or plain, a real place or merely the stuff of dreams, we all have the same gracious home in God. So welcome home.

Prayer

O God, thank you that you have been our refuge, our dwelling place, throughout all generations and are so even now and even for me. Amen.

Today’s Prayer

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its going down, the Lord’s name is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations, His glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, Who dwells on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people. He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 113

Thoughts on Today’s Text

To begin with it will be important to keep in mind that this is poetry, and well-attested by use as easily one of the most beautiful and loved pieces in the New Testament. The task will thus be in part to rescue or recover a reading that has gained so close an association with weddings and married love. Its placement here as a culmination of the argument of chapter 12 makes clear that it is rather a vision of the love that characterizes the one body of a caring community that is the gift of the Spirit in Christ Jesus our Lord.

At the end of this beautiful poem Paul will remind us that this vision of community is ultimately not about knowing or doing things, but is about knowing a person “face to face” and that living in such a community is merely a reflection of our having first been known and caught up in the love of God (13:12).

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” — these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (2:9-10). It is revelation. Like the beauty of an opening flower, it comes as surprise and as a fantastic vision of the possibilities of life in the oneness of community that is the gift of the Spirit.

“An more excellent way.” The word used here — “way,” road,” or “path;” Greek hodos — has a rich history in the Scriptures and in early Christian reflection and practice. The invitation is to a journey, a venture of which the end is of course only known to God. And so it is ultimately to be cast back upon trust in the wisdom and promises of the God who is faithful and who has called us into this community (1:9).