Today’s Reflection
When individuals no longer fit into the slots where we place them, when ideas outgrow the confines of our thinking, when change threatens to force new ways of viewing others or ourselves, two options emerge. One option circles the wagons, raises the walls, and rejects any possibility that change in us or others could be good or even possible. Another option considers that maybe—just maybe—God calls us to be something and someone other than what has always been. Encounter with Jesus posed that choice in Nazareth. Encounter with Jesus poses that choice in your zip code, in the communities where you and others come to be known in ways confining or liberating—or more often, something of both.
—John Indermark, Gospeled Lives: Encounters with Jesus, A Lenten Study (Upper Room Books, 2008)
Today’s Question
Encountering Jesus in your community, how might you be challenged to know others in new ways? Join the conversation.
Today’s Scripture
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
—Mark 6:3-4 (NRSV)
Prayer for the Week
Holy One, challenge me today to see the world as you see it. Challenge me to seek your way and to not settle for what might be the norm.
At times, life seems like a jumble of loose ends, but God sees from another perspective—weaving a tapestry of life and redemption for the whole world, with each person’s story as part of that narrative.
Lectionary Readings
(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38 or Mark 9:2-9
