Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Making amends is a powerful experience. I’m still not convinced God needed to be assuaged because Josiah’s kingdom was operating out of complete ignorance of what God wanted from them. But, laying that aside, it is true that the action of recognizing our errors—seeing and assessing them honestly—and committing ourselves to taking action to make things right is utterly liberating. Even if the person to whom we are making the amends does not receive it—refuses to listen, becomes angry, won’t forgive—the act of making the amends is what heals us.
King Josiah and his people saw the ways in which their actions as a society were harming them. They saw the opportunity to live by principles God had laid out of them. And they did what they had to do to show their contrition to God and, probably, to one another. In the story, God takes back God’s curse on them. In reality, the curse was probably lifted by simply the act of changing their ways, as so often happens for me when I am willing to clean up my side of the street.
When have I had to make an amends for something? What was the experience like?
