Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, February 27, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
There isn’t really a competition to see who loves God the most. I mean, it’s not like Jesus is advocating for us to go big or go home in the sin department just so that we can feel a closer bond to God when we realize God forgives us.
What this makes me think of is my food recovery program. I have heard some truly harrowing stories about the insanity around food addiction. Things people have done with food and to their bodies that are unbelievable. And I did none of it. I wasn’t obese as a child. I never got to a point in my disease where I was driving around to multiple conveniences stores or drive-throughs late at night to get my binge foods, or planning hours-long binges by myself in front of the television. At my highest, I was only about 60 pounds overweight. I had only been in active addiction—eating compulsively—for about three years when I found recovery at the tender age of 33 (20 years ago last November). Some people might look at me and wonder how I was able to grab ahold of a Twelve Step program as structured and disciplined as mine and still be working it twenty years later. There is a general feeling that a person has to be truly desperate in order to get recovery. In other words, you have to owe 500 denarii in order to fully surrender to God and the spiritual nature of the program.
It is true that we stubborn human beings and addicts have a tendency to do an awful lot of damage to ourselves before we’re willing to change. But as we say in recovery, “You hit bottom when you stop digging.” So even if our debt is only 50, we can still surrender everything and have our lives completely transformed by God.
How do I calculate my “debt” to God? How deeply in debt do I need to be before I’m willing to change?
