Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Their land is filled with idols;
they bow down to the work of their hands,
to what their own fingers have made.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, March 4, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I like to make things. I sew. I craft. I draw. I write. I’m grateful for “the work of my hands.” But it can (and has at times) become an idol. Not that I worship the clothes I make or the beautiful lake-stones-and-beach glass picture frames I put together. But once upon a time, I would compulsively spend on craft supplies, which was actually about the powerful desire to escape my life and create time I would never have to do all these projects I was buying supplies for. The supplies, by the by, sat in bags and boxes in my closet, collateral damage in the struggle to fill an emptiness in my life that could only be filled by God.
I am grateful, in more recent years, to have put my priorities in their proper order. I nurture my relationship with God and take appropriate self-care, both of which give rise to actual time in which to create things with my hands. Such things are not to replace God as idols to worship, but expressions of gratitude for God’s invitation to me to be a co-creator of beauty.
What things have I tried to use to fill the emptiness that only God can fill?