Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, September 6, 2018
by Daniel D. Maurer, Clergy Stuff
How wonderfully counter to the modern sensibility today's reading is. If anything, the Bible continually challenges us to think and reflect and today's reading is no exception.
The wisdom of today's Narrative Lectionary daily reading in Jeremiah states that the heart is not to be trusted. It's devious. Perverse, even!
It's God's duty to search the heart, to challenge and mold and shape us to follow God's will.
Then, when all's said and done, we can't really claim it. It's God's. That's a tough reading for me—I love it when people pat me on the back telling me what a swell job I've done.
But perhaps the freedom in allowing God to claim responsibility to these good works is to simply delight that we are shaped by a power greater than ourselves. Also, it's a great comfort to know that those who take advantage of others will be getting their own comeuppance. (Ooops. Might that include, me, too?)
Give it to God. Breathe. God's got our heart under control, not us.
Narrative Lectionary Daily Reading:
Jeremiah 17:9-11
The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay, so are all who amass wealth unjustly; in mid-life it will leave them, and at their end they will prove to be fools.
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