Tuesday, March 25

Scripture: 1 Samuel 21-24, Psalm 84

GodStory: (Reflecting on Psalm 84)

As I read the phrase “courts of the Lord” it sounds a little foreign to me, as I haven’t been raised in a time or place very familiar with kingdoms and courts. But after recently reading about the tabernacle, I’m understanding the courts of the Lord as a place where God’s presence dwells. It’s interesting to contemplate the different ways we see people encountering God’s presence throughout the biblical narrative from the Garden of Eden to altars to the traveling tabernacle to the established temple to Jesus.

OurStory:

I’m so grateful that we live in a time where because of Christ we go forth in the world as temples ourselves. As I work through the Old Testament, I recognize the freedom and creativity that this reality permits us. God’s presence dwells within us and thus makes all that we do sacred work. As a mom and nanny, my days are inclined toward repetitive tasks that rarely feel “done”. But because God goes with us, our ordinary days and tasks become spiritual rhythms and habits. They become sacred spaces where we encounter the glory and beauty and grace and refining work of God.

Blessing: May we be grateful for the opportunity to dwell with God wherever we are. May we walk through our ordinary days awake to God’s presence and may we find our hearts transformed and refined by the mundane inconveniences and opportunities to love. May we remember that because of Jesus, God’s presence is not something from which we come and go, but that goes with us in our waking and in our sleeping, in our working and in our playing, in our questioning and in our worshiping, in our laughing and in our weeping, in our remembering and in our forgetting, in our hurrying and in our slowing, in our forgiving and in our apologizing, in our doubting and in our knowing, in our feasting and in our grieving, in our thinking and in our feeling, in our imagining and in our discovering, in our breaking and in our healing.

~Holly Yinger

 Daily Prayer Focus: All who suffer from addiction, dependency or co-dependency