We are in the middle of the most sacred week of the year: Holy Week.  We are with Jesus from the time he enters Jerusalem in triumph, to all the events that lead up to his death and burial. 

Today, the middle of the week is a day of sadness, since it’s the day when Judas must have been plotting to betray Jesus.  Some people call today “Spy Wednesday,” as we think about Judas spying on Jesus so that he could tell those that wanted Jesus dead, just how Judas was going to hand Jesus over to them.

Let’s pray this psalm as though it is Jesus, who must have known that something terrible was going to happen to him. Imagine Jesus praying this prayer to his loving Father. In verses 2 to 4, the sacred writer uses four images that describe God’s protection over David, Jesus and us.  Can you find them?  As you come upon them, spend time linking your life to these images, as your way of feeling God’s protection, just as David and Jesus did. What a gift we have in our imaginations! We can go anywhere with them and feel the connection to the images we see in our thoughts.  Our imaginations are gifts from God to find God.

Psalm 61

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We continue reading the Psalms in numerical order.

These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.

As we saw last Tuesday, so today God speaks to Job with more questions that make Job stand very still in silence.   His mouth hangs open just as when we are surprised and awed by something.  God gently invites Job to turn his attention away from himself and his problems.  God knows that only God has charge of bringing final justice to the great wrongs in the world. Only God can fully understand about the good and the bad. Remember how Adam and Eve in the garden were forbidden to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  To eat the fruit from that tree would mean we could completely understand good and evil. . . and we just can’t!  

God invites Job to consider some wonderful animals. Let’s do the same with our pets, animals and birds around the house.  Get lost in wonder at them and like Job, you’ll notice that you won’t be so worried about what might be happening in your life.  Take a look at God’s wonderful creatures . . . and be silent! 

 Job 40                

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Tuesdays are dedicated to the Old Testament books of history
and the Hebrew “Writings.”

These Firestarters are for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.

When I see the sun and moon rise and setting right on schedule, I feel peace something like Jeremiah in today’s reading. He invites us to find the never-changing laws of day and night to be reminders that the faithful covenant of God’s love and protection will always last. 

It wasn’t until I was much older in life that I began to enjoy the phases of the moon. The tiny crescent in the evening sky begins each month for Jewish and Islamic peoples.  Each day the moon rises about 45 minutes later, getting bigger and bigger in the evening sky until two weeks later when the full moon rises as the sun sets.  Then the moon becomes smaller and smaller through the next nights until in about twelve days, you can see it as a tiny crescent just before dawn.  Then it “disappears” for a few days while it passes in front of the sun, reappearing in the evening sky as the crescent of the next new moon.   

Like the sun and the moon, God’s love is always with us.

 Jeremiah 33:19-26

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Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.

These Firestarters are for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.