Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“First of all you must understand this, that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, July 18, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Sometimes I’m a scoffer. I hate to admit it, but there it is. Despite all my experiences of the inbreaking of God’s reign into the world here and now, I am so quick to discard those experiences as somehow all in my mind when I am confronted with all the ways God doesn’t seem to be showing up at all. It’s easy as a woman of incredible privilege to chalk up all the good things that happen to me to God’s presence. But when I recognize how those without privilege experience oppression and trauma (in which I am complicit) I go right to the place where I think they have been utterly abandoned by God. I am the one saying, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Everything seems to continue as they always have, with those in power doing whatever they have to in order to maintain that power.
Those are moments that call for humility and prayer, moments when I have to remember that I am not God, and that God’s got this. I can be open to the ways in which God is calling me to set aside my scoffing in favor of decisive action to prove myself wrong—to show up just as God is showing up. It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and scoff. When you’re up to your eyeballs in it, doubt tends to slip away.
Do I find myself scoffing at God’s promises? What action can I take to change my attitude?
