Faith of the Night Shift Workers

  • July 31, 2024
  • /
  • Erin Newton

Scripture Focus: Psalm 134
1 Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord
    who minister by night in the house of the Lord.
2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary
    and praise the Lord.
3 May the Lord bless you from Zion,
    he who is the Maker of heaven and earth.

Student Writers Month is here: The student writers featured from July 15 to August 9 have received free coaching, ministry training, and seminars by special guests in addition to this publishing opportunity, the ability to re-publish their work elsewhere, and a stipend/scholarship for their work. A portion of all donations during these dates will be applied to the students’ stipends/scholarships. Find out more about the students at this link or give a one-time or recurring gift at this link.

From John: The student writer assigned to today’s passage had to back out due to a medical reason. Please pray for her. Her name is Pamela Baker. Erin wrote this piece in Pamela’s stead and we will still grant Pamela a stipend/scholarship for this year as well as invite her to repeat the program next year.

Reflection: Faith of the Night Shift Workers
By Erin Newton

I have been “blessed” to live in a household where one of us works the night shift—that grueling upside-down world of sleeping past the sunshine and eating “lunch” around 2 am. I add dubious quotation marks around “blessed” because that shift is typically not conducive to one’s health, family or friend relationships, and overall mental health. God has truly blessed some people with the gift to handle inverted schedules well. We praise God for such a mercy.

There are some who work “around the clock.” They are the grocery clerks or the on-call investigators, the airplane pilots or warehouse staff, the parents of young children or the bedside caregivers of the elderly. They are also the hospital chaplains called to the bed of a critical patient. They are the church pastors leaving the dinner table to sit with the family whose loved one just died. They are the counselors answering a late night phone call from a client standing on the precipice of disaster. In a metaphorical way, they are people “who minister by night in the house of the Lord.”

So much of our typical lives revolve around the work and ministry done in the daytime. We have “office hours” that guarantee periods of rest. We close up shop for the night, and 24/7 businesses seem more like a rarity these days. Working with daylight is, quite frankly, easier. It is no surprise that we schedule our ministry for these hours.

Does the work of the Lord also have “office hours”?

The psalmist highlights this rare feature of the human-divine relationship: The house of the Lord is never closed. Praise rings out from those who have taken up the mantle to tend to God’s house even in the dark hours of the night. Why? Because God never sleeps, and he is always available for us.

Our praise to God also never sleeps. While our bodies force us to take time to recuperate and recharge, we know that around the world praise continues to ring out to our God.

There is no silent hour before the throne of God. Our brothers and sisters who minister in the nighttime establish the work that we pick up the next morning.

Let us rejoice in the never-ending, around the clock, praise (by words and deeds) that is lifted up to our God. Let us also be thankful for those who minister in the nighttime. 


Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
When Jesus spoke to the people again, he said: “I am the light of the world; anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark; but will have the light of life.” — John 8.12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.


​Today’s Readings
Isaiah 60 (Listen 3:55)
Psalms 132-134 (Listen 2:42)

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Jericho’s Wall

  • July 3, 2019
  • /
  • John Tillman

Joshua 5.13-14
Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” 
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

Reflection: Jericho’s Wall
By John Tillman

If you ask most Christians how the inhabitants of Jericho responded to Israel and their silent marching around the city, most will probably say they taunted them and that the point of the story is that the Israelites demonstrated faith by following God’s strange plan despite being made fun of. This is a complete fabrication. There is no textual evidence to suggest that the Israelites were teased or taunted at all by Jericho.  

Scripture doesn’t shy away from a great taunt. The scriptures are full of them. God himself delivers sharply barbed taunts. Even Jesus gently taunts Nicodemus. But no taunts are recorded here.

Jericho wasn’t in a taunting mood. They were terrified. No matter how funny the French Peas are in a Veggie Tales video, the reality is that scripture tells us multiple times how terrified everyone in Canaan was of Israel, but it never tells us once that they taunted Israel or made any comment about God’s plan of marching around the city.

It’s not difficult to see why Jericho was terrified. This gigantic group of former slaves destroyed the entire army of Egypt—the world-wide superpower of its day. Today, this would be comparable to the United States military being wiped out by an opponent. Then this same group traveled through the desert completely destroying any king or nation that stood up to them. Then, these desert-crossing, dangerous, religious fanatics show up at Jericho’s border, crossing the river without permission and in a miraculous fashion.

One possible reason for our extremely poor handling of scripture, in this case, is that, when teaching children, we are so uncomfortable with the idea of God ordering the Israelites to wipe out an entire city, we need a distraction. “Perseverance amidst taunting” is a kinder-gentler lesson to teach children. 

This erroneous reading of scripture turns the power dynamic upside down allowing us to feel “persecuted” like the Israelites and justified in destroying our enemies.

But God isn’t interested in destroying people we call our enemies. If the commander of the Lord’s army was not on Joshua’s side, we can rest assured that the commander of the Lord’s army is not on “our” side today. Especially if we define our side so narrowly as to exclude those outside of something so meaningless and trivial as a political party.

The lesson of Jericho’s wall is not that God’s plans are weird, and people will make fun of us, but we should follow God anyway. The lesson of Jericho’s wall is that it is God who initiates judgment, not us. The lesson is that we don’t deserve what God has given us and that if we are unfaithful, we too will face God’s wrath and no wall will stand in its way.

*Tomorrow, as the United States marks its independence, may we be reminded of our utter dependence on God and that our true citizenship is in the new Heaven and the New Earth to come. 

Prayer: The Request for Presence
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
Indeed, our heart rejoices in him, for in his holy Name we put our trust.
Let your loving-kindness, O Lord, be upon us, as we have put our trust in your. — Psalm 33.20-22

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 5-6.5 (Listen – 2:38) 
Psalm 132-134 (Listen – 2:42)

Tomorrow’s Readings
Joshua 6.6-27 (Listen – 4:47) 
Psalm 135-136 (Listen – 3:53)

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Readers’ Choice Submissions

It is once again time for us to seek out the voices of our readers and hear from you about posts from the past eleven months that have challenged and comforted you and helped you find new meaning in the scriptures.

Readers’ Choice posts will be republished during the month of August and periodically throughout the Fall.

Follow the link to fill out the form. Feel free to fill out the form multiple times for multiple submissions. Please limit your submissions to posts published this calendar year, between September of 2018 and today.

For any questions about The Park Forum, or to make suggestions of posts via email, contact John Tillman at john@theparkforum.org

Read more about Over Jordan
When we cross over the Jordan with Christ, the land has no enemies to be defeated. It has no cities to march around and no battles to be fought. 

Over Jordan

Read more about Prayer for Enemies
How quickly do we celebrate our enemies’ sufferings? Should we, rather, pray for them instead?

Prayer for Enemies