Month: January 2025

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Genesis 18 Listen: (4:59), Read: John 17 Listen: (3:40)

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Read: Genesis 19 Listen: (5:33), Read: John 18 Listen: (5:16)
Read: Genesis 20 Listen: (2:39), Read: John 19 Listen: (6:23)

Scripture Focus: Genesis 18.25-26, 32

25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”
He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

Reflection: How Righteous?

By John Tillman

Culture thinks of Jesus as the nice God and God in the Old Testament as the mean God. It’s true we see more direct acts of divine violence in the Old Testament but the “mean” label ignores that God is responding to victims’ cries.

There was an outcry against Sodom. God answered with localized destruction, eliminating the wicked city.

Just because the city was “wicked” doesn’t make it easy to think about its destruction. It’s a serious matter. Abram shares our concerns. We wonder how God can do this without harming the innocent. Will the judge of all the Earth do right? Yet how can he not do it when the innocent are already being harmed?

Who were Sodom’s victims and what was happening to them? Scripture clues us in.

One group of victims was the poor. Ezekiel was direct about Sodom’s sin: “…arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16.48-50)

Other prophets compare Jerusalem to Sodom because they gave power to evil leaders and were proud of all their sins, doing them flagrantly. (Jeremiah 23.14; Isaiah 3.5-9)

Another victimized group were travelers. If God assigned you to determine if there were 10 or more righteous people in a large city, how would you do it? The angels posed as vulnerable travelers. They intended to spend the night in the square, as those with little money or no connections would. Lot, however, seemed aware this was not safe and convinced them not to do so. Lot risked his own safety to protect those who, like himself, were “foreigners” in the city and vulnerable to attack and abuse. He showed righteousness by interfering with evil, even if he couldn’t stop it.

How evil does a person or city have to be to deserve destruction and how “good” to be spared? God challenged Jeremiah to find just one righteous person in Jerusalem and he failed. (Jeremiah 5.1)

Are our cities righteous? Ask the vulnerable who cry out to God. Listen to them.

Abram shows us that even the most wicked cities deserve our care and prayers on their behalf. Lot shows us that even even at risk of our home and safety, we must interfere with evil in our cities.

The judge of all the earth will do right. Will his servants?

Like Abram, intercede for the city and like Lot make a practice of interfering with evil.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Righteousness shall go before him, and peace shall be a pathway for his feet. — Psalm 85.13

Listen to The Sins of Sodom

Can we conclude that Sodom was destroyed for just one type of sin? The text prohibits that conclusion. Sodom was a web of evil.

Read The Bible With Us

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Links for today’s readings:

Read: Genesis 16 Listen: (2:18), Read: John 15 Listen: (3:20)

Scripture Focus: Genesis 16:6-7, 13

6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

Reflection: Her Voice from the Margins

By Erin Newton

“As a symbol of the oppressed, Hagar becomes many things to many people” (Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror).

We are accustomed to comparing the two sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael. Even in the ordering of the names, we place the younger, chosen son before the eldest. There is an instinctual (or likely a learned) way of viewing Isaac positively and Ishmael negatively. Perhaps the mind wants to conclude: If Ishmael is not chosen by God, he is rejected by me.

Similar thoughts are carried on to their mothers: Sarah and Hagar. Sarah at the beginning is the sole wife to Abraham. It is the promise given to her that the grand ancestry of God’s people would be rooted. But she laughed, she doubted, she schemed.

There are many stories in the Bible that can, if we are still listening, furrow our brows in concern. At first we are reading with a smile watching God choose and bless this family, but then the frailty of humanity sneaks in and begins to warp the goodness. If we are too calloused to see it anymore, we might be tempted to shrug off this really bad idea as something that “works out in the end.”

Works out? For whom?

We have a rare glimpse into the aftermath of Sarah and Abraham’s scheme. We watch Hagar flee into the wilderness for solace. It is there that God comes to meet her. And for the first time, a character in the story calls her by name.

This is why Hagar means so much to so many—God knew her even when people abused her.

Phyllis Trible noted how Hagar represents the marginalized in our day: “She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others” (Texts of Terror).

Hagar reminds us of the importance of letting the marginalized speak. It is Hagar who names God, the One Who Sees. There is no monopoly of knowing God. Let us listen.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

Save me, O God, by your Name; in your might, defend my cause.
Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. — Psalm 54.1-2

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Countering Hatred

The gospel solution to hate is to love our enemies, overcoming evil with good.

Read more: Prayer for Outcasts

We pray, today, for those who flee. Aid their flight.
May they avoid danger, escaping the fowler’s snare.
May they find fair winds, lifting their wings and spirits.

Links for today’s readings:

Read:   Genesis 15 Listen: (2:53), Read: John 14 Listen: (4:13)

Scripture Focus: Genesis 15.6

6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Reflection: Righteousness On Credit

By John Tillman

Abram did things we’d call righteous.

Abram won a daring military victory that rescued kidnapped people who would have been enslaved. But bravery and fighting for a good cause didn’t make him righteous. Abram refused a financial reward from a corrupt leader. But refusing corruption didn’t make him righteous. Abram had a vibrant spiritual life and talked to God. But spiritual connection didn’t make Abram righteous. Abram obeyed God by abandoning his country and becoming a wandering migrant. But obedience and sacrifice didn’t make Abram righteous.

Abram also fell short of righteousness.

God told Abram to leave home with only his immediate family. Abram invited Lot, a source of conflict, foolishness, and sin. When entering Egypt as a migrant, Abram lied about Sarai being his sister and allowed Pharoah to take her as his wife. This deception enriched Abram while harming Sarai, Pharoah, and his family. Abram later repeated this behavior with Abimelech. Though Abram rescued Lot and others from slavery as war captives, Abram kept slaves himself. Although he was promised a son through Sarai, Abram had a child with Hagar, Sarai’s slave girl.

Abram’s righteous deeds did not outweigh his wicked ones to make him righteous and neither will ours. Adding “righteousness” to “wickedness” yields wickedness. You can mix milk into a gallon of poison, but if you eat cereal with the mixture, you’ll still be dead.

Righteousness is both a perfect thing accomplished for us by Jesus and an imperfect thing we strive for on Earth. There is righteousness that is a gift and righteousness that is a goal. There is righteousness that comes to us and righteousness we must pursue.

We access perfect righteousness by belief in God’s promise. We do not “deserve” this righteousness but it is “credited” to us as it was to Abram. The imperfect righteousness we strive for by obeying God’s calling to “establish righteousness.”

We have Christ’s righteousness on “credit.” Let’s put it to work and yield a harvest. (Romans 4.3-5, Galatians 3.6-9)

In a broken world, we are unworthy servants if we rest and ignore our tasks until Jesus returns. (Mark 13.33-37) We are unworthy servants if we bury our imputed righteousness in the ground without putting it to work in our master’s world. (Matthew 25.24-30)

Let us both accept and pursue righteousness. Let us show our faith by our deeds.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus taught us, saying: “Whoever holds my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father and I shall love him and reveal myself to him.” — John 14.21

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus taught us, saying: “Whoever holds my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father and I shall love him and reveal myself to him.” — John 14.21

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: The First Spirit-Filled Work

Whether with hammer and chisel or keyboard and screen, God’s Spirit longs to use your work to build sacred space depicting redemption.

Read The Bible With Us

Join our Bible sustainably-paced two-year Bible reading plan. Find moments of reflection and meaning in God’s word.

https://mailchi.mp/theparkforum/m-f-daily-email-devotional