Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“They shall be turned back and utterly put to shame—
those who trust in carved images,
who say to cast images,
‘You are our gods.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, November 21, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
God is promising to show up at last! God’s people have been languishing in exile, living under the rule of those who serve other gods—cast images they created and then worshipped. And now, Isaiah promises, all will be made right with the world.
Most of us live in a spiritual exile, under the rule of mistaken ideas about who God is and who we are in relationship to God. Societies and cultures create norms around appearances—what we have to do or say, how we have to act or look, what we have to believe in (or at least profess to believe in) in order to be acceptable. We seek after these carved and cast images for our comfort. Yet when we do so, we cannot help but be aware that something is “off” somehow. That something is missing. We try to fill that hole with things, with substances, with people, when the only thing that will actually fill it is deep and humble communion with God as God is found in all of creation.
When we seek after that communion, we find that it’s right there. That it wasn’t God who had left us languishing in exile until God decided to show up, but that it was us who had chosen to go after what the world said we were supposed to go after, and didn’t really believe God was the answer. It’s a comfort to know that we don’t have to wait around to be rescued. We’ve already been rescued, if we will only realize that fact.
What distracts me from a close communion with God in my day to day life?
![1 Kings 17:1-16 [17-24], God’s Care for the Widow](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b39b61ab48de92d991a40a/bf37035e-33d5-439f-a0d6-a68b02d0f1bc/24-11-03.jpg)
