Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, June 24, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
A prophet just cannot keep silent. When God tells you to speak the truth, it burns until you do. I think a lot of us are feeling this burning right now. We see injustice and we know we are called to cry out, proclaim God’s message of radical welcome and inclusion, of mutual flourishing and creativity. Yet we hold back out of fear of the unknown. What should we say, exactly? Who should we say it to? It’s not enough to just blurt our own personal ideologies on social media as if that satisfies the call. Frankly that’s just screaming into the abyss. It’s useless and does nothing more than either create an echo chamber in which we can be self-satisfied that so many people agree with us, or give rise to verbal warfare which is equally pointless. How many of us are just using that as a sort of emotional release valve, to try to lessen the burning of God’s actual call to do actual work speaking actual truth to actual people?
The burning will not go, people of God, until we stand up and proclaim. Let it fuel our passion for justice, mercy, humility, and love.
Where and how am I called to speak God’s truth into our current context?
