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Reflections - daily words of wisdom and faith “Emptied to Be Filled” for Wednesday,
19 March 2014
Today’s Reflection:
I LIKE TO IMAGINE that each of us is a
beautiful chalice fashioned by God. As a chalice is filled, we can be filled to
overflowing with the love of the triune God. To be filled with the Spirit, we
must first be empty – a frightening prospect. We attempt to avoid the emptiness
by filling our time with activity and our minds with information. We fill our
appetites with pleasurable things, good food, sex, exciting recreation. We seek
to possess, to consume, to control – all to fill the emptiness, and we allow
our addictions and attachments to get out of control. Yet only one thing
satisfies the longing of the soul, the one thing Jesus said was needful: God.
--J. David Muyskens, Forty Days to a
Closer Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer
From page 40 of Forty Days to a Closer
Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer by J. David Muyskens. Copyright
© 2006 by J. David Muyskens. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Upper
Room Books. http://bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this
book.
Today’s Question:
Spend time in prayer thinking of how you
are God’s vessel.
Today’s Scripture:
O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us
make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence
with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!--Psalm
95:1-2, NRSV
This Week: pray for someone you need to
forgive.
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Did You Know?
What activities have you planned for Lent
this year? If intentional prayer is on your agenda, may we suggest joining our
Lenten Prayer Challenge.
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Saints, Inc.:
This week we remember: Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (March 20).
As a boy growing up in northern England,
Cuthbert was working as a shepherd when he thought he saw angels carrying
Aidan's soul into heaven. He went to the monastery at Melrose and asked for
admittance. Within ten years Cuthbert was the prior where he was known for his
kind spirit. In 664 he became prior of Lindisfarne and spent the next twelve
years evangelizing Northumbria.
In 676 Cuthbert followed what he felt as
a call to be a hermit and moved to Inner Farne, a more remote island. Because
of his reputation as a spiritual director, many people took boats to Inner
Farne to ask his guidance.
In 685 Cuthbert was chosen as Bishop of
Hexham, so he reluctantly left his solitude and became a traveling bishop.
After a year, however, he returned to his hermitage on Inner Farne, where he died
on March 20, 687. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne is buried in Durham Cathedral.
If Cuthbert of Lindisfarne had taken the
Spiritual Types Test, he probably would have been a Lover. Cuthbert of
Lindisfarne is remembered on March 20.
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Lectionary Readings
(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)
Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1 All the congregation of the
children of Israel traveled from the wilderness of Sin, by their journeys,
according to Yahweh’s commandment, and encamped in Rephidim; but there was no water
for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses, and said,
“Give us water to drink.”
Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel
with me? Why do you test Yahweh?”
3 The people were thirsty for water
there; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought
us up out of Egypt, to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?”
4 Moses cried to Yahweh, saying, “What
shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
5 Yahweh said to Moses, “Walk on before
the people, and take the elders of Israel with you, and take the rod in your
hand with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you
there on the rock in Horeb. You shall strike the rock, and water will come out
of it, that the people may drink.” Moses did so in the sight of the elders of
Israel. 7 He called the name of the place Massah,[a] and Meribah,[b] because
the children of Israel quarreled, and because they tested Yahweh, saying, “Is
Yahweh among us, or not?”
Footnotes:
a. Exodus 17:7 Massah means testing.
b. Exodus 17:7 Meribah means quarreling.
Psalm 95:1 Oh come, let’s sing to Yahweh.
Let’s shout aloud to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let’s come before his presence with
thanksgiving.
Let’s extol him with songs!
3 For Yahweh is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the deep places of the
earth.
The heights of the mountains are also his.
5 The sea is his, and he made it.
His hands formed the dry land.
6 Oh come, let’s worship and bow down.
Let’s kneel before Yahweh, our Maker,
7 for he is our God.
We are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep in his care.
Today, oh that you would hear his voice!
8
Don’t harden your heart, as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers tempted me,
tested me, and saw my work.
10 Forty long years I was grieved with
that generation,
and said, “It is a people that errs in their heart.
They have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They won’t enter into my rest.”
Romans 5:1 Being therefore justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; 2 through whom we
also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in
hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only this, but we also rejoice in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance,
proven character; and proven character, hope: 5 and hope doesn’t disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
who was given to us. 6 For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ
died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet
perhaps for a righteous person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God
commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us.
9 Much more then, being now justified by
his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. 10 For if, while we
were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much
more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.
11 Not only so, but we also rejoice in
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the
reconciliation.
John 4:5 So he came to a city of Samaria,
called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. 6
Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down
by the well. It was about the sixth hour.[a] 7 A woman of Samaria came to draw
water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 For his disciples had gone away
into the city to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to
him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan
woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the
gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have
asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have
nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living
water? 12 Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and
drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who
drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that
I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him
will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me
this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to
draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your
husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered, “I have no
husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I
have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have
is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I
perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and
you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me,
the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you
worship the Father. 22 You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that
which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour comes, and now
is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for
the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to him, “I know that
Messiah comes, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us
all things.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one
who speaks to you.” 27 At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was
speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do
you speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the
city, and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything that I
did. Can this be the Christ?”
30 They went out of the city, and were
coming to him. 31 In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi,
eat.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to
eat that you don’t know about.”
33 The disciples therefore said to one
another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do
the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. 35 Don’t you say,
‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell you, lift up your
eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already. 36 He
who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who
sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true,
‘One sows, and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t
labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 From that city many of the Samaritans
believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me
everything that I did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him
to stay with them. He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of
his word. 42 They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your
speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ,
the Savior of the world.”
Footnotes:
a. John 4:6 noon
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John Wesley’s Notes/Commentary:
Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
XVII In this chapter are recorded,
I. The watering of the host of Israel.
(1.) In the wilderness they wanted water, ver. 1. (2.) In their want they chide
with Moses, ver. 2, 3. (3.) Moses cried to God, ver. 4. (4.) God ordered him to
smite the rock, and fetch water out of it; and he did so, ver. 5, 6. (5.) The
place named from it, ver. 7.
II. The defeating of the host of Amalek.
(1.) The victory obtained by the prayer of Moses, ver. 8-12. (2.) By the sword
of Joshua, ver. 13 (3.) A record kept of it, ver.14-16.
Verse 1. They journeyed according to the
commandment of the Lord, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, and yet they came
to a place where there was no water for them to drink - We may be in the way of
our duty, and yet meet with troubles, which Providence brings us into for the
trial of our faith.
Verse 5. Go on before the people - Though
they spake of stoning him. He must take his rod with him, not to summon some
plague to chastise them, but to fetch water for their supply. O the wonderful
patience and forbearance of God towards provoking sinners! He maintains those
that are at war with him, and reaches out the hand of his bounty to those that
lift up the heel against him. If God had only shewed Moses a fountain of water
in the wilderness, as he did to Hagar, not far from hence, Gen. xxi, 19, that
had been a great favour; but that he might shew his power as well as his pity,
and make it a miracle of mercy, he gave them water out of a rock. He directed
Moses whither to go, appointed him to take of the elders of Israel with him, to
be witnesses of what was done, ordered him to smite the rock, which he did, and
immediately water came out of it in great abundance, which ran throughout the
camp in streams and rivers, Psalm lxxviii, 15, 16, and followed them wherever
they went in that wilderness: God shewed his care of his people in giving them
water when they wanted it; his own power in fetching it out of a rock, and put
an honour upon Moses in appointing the water to flow out upon his smiting of
the rock. This fair water that came out of the rock is called honey and oil,
Deut. xxxii, 13, because the people's thirst made it doubly pleasant; coming
when they were in extreme want. It is probable that the people digged canals
for the conveyance of it, and pools for the reception of it. Let this direct us
to live in a dependance,
1. Upon God's providence even in the
greatest straits and difficulties;
2. And upon Christ's grace; that rock was
Christ, 1 Cor. x, 4. The graces and comforts of the Spirit are compared to
rivers of living waters, John vii, 38, 39; iv, 14. These flow from Christ. And
nothing will supply the needs and satisfy the desires of a soul but water out
of this rock. A new name was upon this occasion given to the place, preserving
the remembrance of their murmuring, Massah - Temptation, because they tempted
God, Meribah - Strife, because they chide with Moses.
Psalm 95
PS 95 The author of this psalm was David,
as is affirmed, Heb. iv, 7. It has a special reference to the days of the
Messiah; as it is understood by the apostle, Heb. iii, 7, &c. and Heb. iv,
3-9. Herein we are called upon, to praise God, as a great and gracious God,
ver. 1-7. To hear God's voice, and not harden our hearts, lest we fall as the
Israelites did, ver. 8-11.
Verse 3. God's - Above all that are
called God's angels, earthly potentates, and especially the false gods of the
Heathen.
Verse 4. Hand - Under his government.
Strength - The strongest or highest mountains.
Verse 7. Pasture - Whom he feeds and
keeps in his own pasture, or in the land which he hath appropriated to himself.
The sheep - Which are under his special care. Today - Forthwith or presently.
Verse 8. Harden not - By obstinate
unbelief. Provocation - In that bold and wicked contest with God in the
wilderness. Temptation - In the day in which you tempted me.
Verse 9. Works - Both of mercy, and of
justice.
Verse 10. Do err - Their hearts are
insincere and bent to backsliding. Not known - After all my teaching and
discoveries of myself to them; they did not know, nor consider, those great
things which I had wrought for them.
Verse 11. My rest - Into the promised
land, which is called the rest, Deut. xii, 9.
Romans 5:1-11
Verse 1. Being justified by faith - This
is the sum of the preceding chapters. We have peace with God - Being enemies to
God no longer, ver. 10; neither fearing his wrath, ver. 9. We have peace, hope,
love, and power over sin, the sum of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth
chapters. These are the fruits of justifying faith: where these are not, that
faith is not.
Verse 2. Into this grace - This state of
favour.
Verse 3. We glory in tribulations also -
Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God's displeasure, that we receive
them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we are prepared for a more exalted
happiness. The Jews objected to the persecuted state of the Christians as
inconsistent with the people of the Messiah. It is therefore with great
propriety that the apostle so often mentions the blessings arising from this
very thing.
Verse 4. And patience works more
experience of the sincerity of our grace, and of God's power and faithfulness.
Verse 5. Hope shameth us not - That is,
gives us the highest glorying. We glory in this our hope, because the love of
God is shed abroad in our hearts - The divine conviction of God's love to us,
and that love to God which is both the earnest and the beginning of heaven. By
the Holy Ghost - The efficient cause of all these present blessings, and the
earnest of those to come.
Verse 6. How can we now doubt of God's
love? For when we were without strength - Either to think, will, or do anything
good. In due time - Neither too soon nor too late; but in that very point of
time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any other. Christ died
for the ungodly - Not only to set them a pattern, or to procure them power to
follow it. It does not appear that this expression, of dying for any one, has
any other signification than that of rescuing the life of another by laying
down our own.
Verse 7. A just man - One who gives to
all what is strictly their due The good man - One who is eminently holy; full
of love, of compassion, kindness, mildness, of every heavenly and amiable
temper. Perhaps-one-would-even-dare to die - Every word increases the
strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something great and
unusual.
Verse 8. But God recommendeth - A most
elegant expression. Those are wont to be recommended to us, who were before
either unknown to, or alienated from, us. While we were sinners - So far from
being good, that we were not even just.
Verse 9. By his blood - By his
bloodshedding. We shall be saved from wrath through him - That is, from all the
effects of the wrath of God. But is there then wrath in God? Is not wrath a
human passion? And how can this human passion be in God? We may answer this by
another question: Is not love a human passion? And how can this human passion
be in God? But to answer directly: wrath in man, and so love in man, is a human
passion. But wrath in God is not a human passion; nor is love, as it is in God.
Therefore the inspired writers ascribe both the one and the other to God only
in an analogical sense.
Verse 10. If - As sure as; so the word
frequently signifies; particularly in this and the eighth chapter. We shalt be
saved - Sanctified and glorified. Through his life - Who "ever liveth to
make intercession for us."
Verse 11. And not only so, but we also
glory - The whole sentence, from the third to the eleventh verse, may be taken
together thus: We not only "rejoice in hope of the glory of God," but
also in the midst of tribulations we glory in God himself through our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.
John 4:5-42
Verse 5. Sychar - Formerly called Sichem
or Shechem. Jacob gave - On his death bed, Gen. xlviii, 22.
Verse 6. Jesus sat down - Weary as he
was. It was the sixth hour - Noon; the heat of the day.
Verse 7. Give me to drink - In this one
conversation he brought her to that knowledge which the apostles were so long
in attaining.
Verse 8. For his disciples were gone -
Else he needed not have asked her.
Verse 9. How dost thou - Her open
simplicity appears from her very first words. The Jews have no dealings - None
by way of friendship. They would receive no kind of favour from them.
Verse 10. If thou hadst known the gift -
The living water; and who it is - He who alone is able to give it: thou wouldst
have asked of him - On those words the stress lies. Water - In like manner he
draws the allegory from bread, chap. vi, 27, and from light, viii, 12; the
first, the most simple, necessary, common, and salutary things in nature.
Living water - The Spirit and its fruits. But she might the more easily mistake
his meaning, because living water was a common phrase among the Jews for spring
water.
Verse 12. Our father Jacob - So they
fancied he was; whereas they were, in truth, a mixture of many nations, placed
there by the king of Assyria, in the room of the Israelites whom he had carried
away captive, 2 Kings xvii, 24. Who gave us the well - In Joseph their supposed
forefather: and drank thereof - So even he had no better water than this.
Verse 14. Will never thirst - Will never
(provided he continue to drink thereof) be miserable, dissatisfied, without
refreshment. If ever that thirst returns, it will be the fault of the man, not
the water. But the water that I shall give him - The spirit of faith working by
love, shall become in him - An inward living principle, a fountain - Not barely
a well, which is soon exhausted, springing up into everlasting life - Which is
a confluence, or rather an ocean of streams arising from this fountain.
Verse 15. That I thirst not - She takes
him still in a gross sense.
Verse 16. Jesus saith to her - He now
clears the way that he might give her a better kind of water than she asked
for. Go, call thy husband - He strikes directly at her bosom sin.
Verse 17. Thou hast well said - We may
observe in all our Lord's discourses the utmost weightiness, and yet the utmost
courtesy.
Verse 18. Thou hast had five husbands -
Whether they were all dead or not, her own conscience now awakened would tell
her.
Verse 19. Sir, I perceive - So soon was
her heart touched.
Verse 20. The instant she perceived this,
she proposes what she thought the most important of all questions. This
mountain - Pointing to Mount Gerizim. Sanballat, by the permission of Alexander
the Great, had built a temple upon Mount Gerizim, for Manasseh, who for
marrying Sanballat's daughter had been expelled from the priesthood and from
Jerusalem, Neh. xiii, 28. This was the place where the Samaritans used to
worship in opposition to Jerusalem. And it was so near Sychar, that a man's
voice might be heard from the one to the other. Our fathers worshipped - This
plainly refers to Abraham and Jacob (from whom the Samaritans pretended to
deduce their genealogy) who erected altars in this place: Gen. xii, 6, 7, and
Gen. xxxiii, 18, 20. And possibly to the whole congregation, who were directed
when they came into the land of Canaan to put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim,
Deut. xi, 29. Ye Jews say, In Jerusalem is the place - Namely, the temple.
Verse 21. Believe me - Our Lord uses this
expression in this manner but once; and that to a Samaritan. To his own people,
the Jews, his usual language is, I say unto you. The hour cometh when ye - Both
Samaritans and Jews, shall worship neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem -
As preferable to any other place. True worship shall be no longer confined to
any one place or nation.
Verse 22. Ye worship ye know not what -
Ye Samaritans are ignorant, not only of the place, but of the very object of
worship. Indeed, they feared the Lord after a fashion; but at the same time
served their own gods, 2 Kings xvii, 33. Salvation is from the Jews - So spake
all the prophets, that the saviour should arise out of the Jewish nation: and
that from thence the knowledge of him should spread to all nations under
heaven.
Verse 23. The true worshippers shall
worship the Father - Not here or there only, but at all times and in all
places.
Verse 24. God is a Spirit - Not only
remote from the body, and all the properties of it, but likewise full of all
spiritual perfections, power, wisdom, love, holiness. And our worship should be
suitable to his nature. We should worship him with the truly spiritual worship
of faith, love, and holiness, animating all our tempers, thoughts, words, and
actions.
Verse 25. The woman saith - With joy for
what she had already learned, and desire of fuller instruction.
Verse 26. Jesus saith - Hasting to
satisfy her desire before his disciples came. l am He - Our Lord did not speak
this so plainly to the Jews who were so full of the Messiah's temporal kingdom.
If he had, many would doubtless have taken up arms in his favour, and others
have accused him to the Roman governor. Yet he did in effect declare the thing,
though he denied the particular title. For in a multitude of places he
represented himself, both as the Son of man, and as the Son of God: both which
expressions were generally understood by the Jews as peculiarly applicable to
the Messiah.
Verse 27. His disciples marvelled that he
talked with a woman - Which the Jewish rabbis reckoned scandalous for a man of
distinction to do. They marvelled likewise at his talking with a woman of that
nation, which was so peculiarly hateful to the Jews. Yet none said - To the
woman, What seekest thou? - Or to Christ, Why talkest thou with her?
Verse 28. The woman left her water pot -
Forgetting smaller things.
Verse 29. A man who told me all things
that ever I did - Our Lord had told her but a few things. But his words
awakened her conscience, which soon told her all the rest. Is not this the
Christ? - She does not doubt of it herself, but incites them to make the
inquiry.
Verse 31. In the meantime - Before the
people came.
Verse 34. My meat - That which satisfies
the strongest appetite of my soul.
Verse 35. The fields are white already -
As if he had said, The spiritual harvest is ripe already. The Samaritans, ripe
for the Gospel, covered the ground round about them.
Verse 36. He that reapeth - Whoever saves
souls, receiveth wages - A peculiar blessing to himself, and gathereth fruit -
Many souls: that he that soweth - Christ the great sower of the seed, and he
that reapeth may rejoice together - In heaven.
Verse 37. That saying - A common proverb;
One soweth - The prophets and Christ; another reapeth - The apostles and
succeeding ministers.
Verse 38. I - he Lord of the whole
harvest, have sent you - He had employed them already in baptizing, ver. 2.
Verse 42. We know that this is the
saviour of the world - And not of the Jews only.
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