[From the version for families with children]

This is the very end of the Gospel of St. Mark that we’ve been reading on Fridays for most of the year.  In this one final chapter, the Resurrection takes place and the joyous events of Jesus’ appearing to his friends and giving final instructions before Jesus goes to heaven.  

    Just as we have so often done with the Gospel, place yourself alongside Mary Magdalene and the other women as they go out to anoint Jesus body—to finish something they were unable to do the day of the crucifixion.  Feel their immense surprise and then the mounting joy of discovering that Jesus is alive and is showing his glorious self to many of his friends.  Get inside their feelings of joy until they become your own feelings.

    This is the last week in God’s year of grace. It’s been a wonderful journey and movement of God’s grace.  It’s going to begin again in Advent, just two days from now!  So get ready for another wondrous cycle of God sharing with us, not only who God is, but who we are in God’s sight. Stay faithful to God’s Word each day and you’ll know of God’s wonderful love and all that God wants to share with you.

  Mark 16

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Fridays are dedicated to the Gospels. This year, we generally read
from the Gospel of Mark, this season, chapters 10 to 16.

For all the Firestarters 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.

[From the version for families with children]

You’ll have to slow up your imagination to catch all the strong images that John unfolds for us in his visions.  Just as in yesterday’s psalm about good and evil and about which one is going to win, so too the verses of these chapters share similar stories, though much more grand and big.

     Let’s take the image of eating the scroll which we find in 10:9-11.  When we read the Bible each day, it really is like eating it!  We are meant not only to take the words in our mind, but into our whole body and person as well.  Just as in the case of Holy Communion, so also when we read God’s Word with great attention, this Word enters us completely and can change us.  At first, says John, there is a sweetness to it, like honey.  But then, as the Word really gets inside us, the challenge to our lives and to our call to be witness to God can move us so much that it might feel like food upsetting the stomach.  

There’s a swing from sweet and sour with God’s Word….But then again, there’s a sauce for Chinese food that deliberately is sweet and sour for the enjoyment of eating certain foods.  So really, the sweet and sour aspects of God’s Word blend into an overall great enjoyment, for the sourness becomes the joy of God’s power and triumph soon to come, just as happens in the glorious ending of the reading for today.

Revelation 10—11

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Thursdays are dedicated to the letters of Paul, other letters,
the Book of Acts, and the Book of Revelation.
In season of Kingdomtide this year,
we read 1 and 2 Thessalonians; Revelation 4—11.

For all the Firestarters 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.

Tap here for a video meditation on Psalm 94.

[From the original version]

When a child is about to make a sandcastle on the beach, he or she first takes the forearm and clears a smooth space in the sand, soon to receive the creative shapings. It is the same for us when we begin to pray.

Clear a space within. When the Holy Spirit speaks, your soul will receive the words as God shaping your soul. Listen inwardly to what you read so that the finger of God will etch the Word on you soul. Recall the words of St. Paul in Romans 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

What moves you as you listen? What does the Spirit seek to etch upon your heart, turned from a heart of stone to one of flesh by God’s love?

Your journal page is as the sand, waiting to receive what the Spirit says to you. Yet unlike sandcastles, the clear Word of the Lord remains forever.

Psalm 94

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We follow a reading of the Psalms in numerical order.

For all the Firestarters 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