Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, June 22, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I used to think I was the source. Seriously. I believed God had given me everything I was going to get at birth and it was up to me to make a good life with the resources I’d been given. So I just bulldozed through the world, fully convinced a picture-perfect existence was not just possible but inevitable, because I was awesome and deserved it.
Yeah…no.
Maybe it’s because I’m almost fifty, maybe it’s because I’ve been in recovery for a decade and a half—probably both—but I get it now. I have been ridiculously gifted with a life I truly love, challenges and all, and I know that none of it comes from me. When I’m miserable, I can turn to God and my fellows for love and support, and move through the pain to some kind of resolution, even if just for that day. When I’m joyful, I am quick to praise God, my exuberance spilling over into everything I do. When I’m peaceful, which is my norm most of the time these days, I rest in gratitude to God, the source of all that I am.
What does it mean to me that I have no good apart from God?
![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)
