The Daily Lectionary for WEDNESDAY, August 28, 2019

The Man with a Withered Hand
Matthew 12:9-13, Mark 3:1-6, and Luke 6:6-11

The Daily Lectionary

WEDNESDAY, August 28, 2019

(Revised Common Lectionary Year C)

(Semi-continuous Reading Plan)

Psalm 10

Prayer for Deliverance from Enemies
1  Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
     Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2  In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—
     let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.

3  For the wicked boast of the desires of their heart,
     those greedy for gain curse and renounce the Lord.
4  In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, “God will not seek it out”;
     all their thoughts are, “There is no God.”

5  Their ways prosper at all times;
     your judgments are on high, out of their sight;
     as for their foes, they scoff at them.
6  They think in their heart, “We shall not be moved;
     throughout all generations we shall not meet adversity.”

7  Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
     under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
8  They sit in ambush in the villages;
     in hiding places they murder the innocent.

   Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9    they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;
   they lurk that they may seize the poor;
     they seize the poor and drag them off in their net.

10 They stoop, they crouch,
     and the helpless fall by their might.
11 They think in their heart, “God has forgotten,
     he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

12 Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
     do not forget the oppressed.
13 Why do the wicked renounce God,
     and say in their hearts, “You will not call us to account”?

14 But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
     that you may take it into your hands;
   the helpless commit themselves to you;
     you have been the helper of the orphan.

15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers;
     seek out their wickedness until you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
     the nations shall perish from his land.

17 O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
     you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
18 to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
     so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

Jeremiah 7:27-34

7:27 So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

29 Cut off your hair and throw it away;
     raise a lamentation on the bare heights,
   for the Lord has rejected and forsaken
     the generation that provoked his wrath.

30 For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. 31 And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 32 Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth until there is no more room. 33 The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the animals of the earth; and no one will frighten them away. 34 And I will bring to an end the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for the land shall become a waste.

Luke 6:6-11

The Man with a Withered Hand
6:6 On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. 7 The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. 8 Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. 9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Optional parts of the readings are set off in [square brackets.]

The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

The Daily Lectionary is a three year cyclical lectionary. We are currently in Year C. Beginning with the first Sunday of Advent in 2019, we will be in Year A. The year which ended at Advent 2018 was Year B. These readings complement the Sunday and festival readings: Thursday through Saturday readings help prepare the reader for the Sunday ahead; Monday through Wednesday readings help the reader reflect and digest on what they heard in worship. Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, copyright © 2005 Consultation on Common Texts. www.commontexts.org
Healing the man with a withered hand is one of the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels, namely in Matthew 12:9-13, Mark 3:1-6, and Luke 6:6-11.

The Morning Prayer for WEDNESDAY, August 28, 2019

Wednesday Morning Prayer

Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430)

One of the greatest influences on the theology of Western Christianity, Augustine wanted from a young age to understand the meaning of life and the nature of good and evil. As a teacher, he sought answers to these questions through the best philosophy of his day. Although his mother, Monica, had instructed him in the Christian faith, he was not originally drawn to the tradition, but later found a depth and wisdom in Christianity to explain the question of evil and good. The famous story of Augustine’s conversion involves an experience in a garden in Milan. Torn between living a life of chastity and remembering his former life of sin, he prayed for forgiveness and immediately heard the voice of a child singing from a neighboring house, “Take up and read!” He picked up a book of St. Paul’s epistles left nearby, and the words he found there changed him forever. After his baptism, Augustine moved to North Africa to pursue a monastic life, but he was urged by the church to become ordained and was later made bishop of Hippo, where he served for thirty-five years. Augustine has rightly been criticized for silencing some important voices in his own day and passing on a harmful view of the body. He was not perfect, but he himself insisted that grace is the heart of our faith.

Augustine of Hippo said, “Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.”

Our Father, Teach us to listen, Lord. Quiet the noise of our lives so we can hear your voice. Amen.

Verse of the Day for WEDNESDAY, August 28, 2019

John 6:29 (NIV) Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Read all of John 6

Listen to John 6

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Un dia a la Vez - Wednesday, August 28, 2019

El corazón del hogar

[Ella] está atenta a la marcha de su hogar, y el pan que come no es fruto del ocio. Sus hijos se levantan y la felicitan; también su esposo la alaba.

~ Proverbios 31:27-28, NVI

La mujer es el corazón del hogar. Sin duda, Dios le ha dado a la mujer esta gran responsabilidad.

¿Te has puesto a pensar que cuando tenemos nuestros esposos, o aun si somos madres solteras, Dios nos ha dado la capacidad de ser ese corazón del hogar? Tú y yo influimos de una manera positiva o negativa en nuestros esposos y en nuestros hijos. Cuando estamos desanimadas, eso es lo que transmitimos en casa… ¡y cómo sufren todos ese desaliento!

Sin embargo, esto lo vemos también en las cosas positivas. Si eres emprendedora, de seguro animas a tu esposo en los momentos en que necesita de ti. Asimismo, cuando alientas a tus hijos y los aconsejas en medio de las dificultades, su respuesta será positiva.

Por eso la mujer es ese motor que debe estar siempre conectado con Dios, ya que nuestra función en el hogar es determinante. Así que, recapacita, pues si tu esposo y tus hijos se quejan de ti, que eres insoportable, que no se te puede hablar o que te pasas la vida con regañinas, estas son señales de advertencia.

Pidámosle a Dios que nos ayude a cambiar y a estar centradas, de manera que logremos seguir siendo ese motor impulsor en la familia.

Un Día a la Vez Copyright © by Claudia Pinzón
La mujer es el corazón del hogar. Sin duda, Dios le ha dado a la mujer esta gran responsabilidad.

Standing Strong Through the Storm - Wednesday, August 28, 2019

GOD’S ETERNAL LOVE

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

~ Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV)

Yesterday we learned the first prison lesson from Pastor Okuk Ojula who was incarcerated on false charges for three and a half years in a federal prison in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

When Jim Cunningham was able to visit him in the prison, he told Jim that before the prison experience, he had centered his life on serving the Lord, pursuing his education to the highest level (he has an MA in economics from the University of Reading-UK), doing research work and other good things to help people. But he had never thought of imprisonment as having any spiritual or practical value. He commented, “Time was very precious to me and I never thought of wasting it in prison sitting for nothing under a hostile situation.”

But God taught Pastor Okuk several lessons. The second one is that the depth of God’s love for us is eternal. He says, “I was in prison for my protection. God put me in prison beforehand to escape the massacre of the elites and the educated people of my tribe in the Gambella region—the incident of December 2003 that shook the media world.”

Genocide Watch reported that at least 416 Anuak people were massacred in December 2003 in Gambella led by Ethiopian government troops in uniform, but they were joined by other local tribal people from highland areas. Between 3000 and 5000 additional Anuak refugees fled into Sudan as refugees.

The pretext for these massacres was the ambush of a van on December 13th by an unidentified gang who murdered its eight occupants, who were U.N. and Ethiopian government refugee camp officials. There is no evidence that the killers were Anuak. The Ethiopian troops responded by murdering hundreds of Anuak civilians in Gambella and surrounding areas. They also burned their homes and raped the women.

Sources indicated that those targeted particularly were educated Anuak men; a tactic often intended to render a group leaderless and defenseless. To this day hundreds of Anuak Christians are still listed as “missing.”

Pastor Okok is convinced that his imprisonment in Addis was God’s love and protection because if he had been at home, he would have been a prime target because of his education.

RESPONSE: Today I will walk in the assurance of God’s love and His positive actions on my behalf even when they do not seem to be favorable.

PRAYER: Pray for those brothers and sisters experiencing injustice without the understanding of God’s purposes.

Standing Strong Through The Storm (SSTS), a daily devotional message by SSTS author Paul Estabrooks. © 2011 Open Doors International. Used by permission.

LHM Daily Devotions - August 28, 2019 - No Lasting City

"No Lasting City"

Aug. 28, 2019

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through His own blood. Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach He endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

~ Hebrews 13:12-14 ESV

"Here we have no lasting city." Oh, how true that is! For this is a time of grief and loss for so many of us. The things we have trusted in—the things we have loved and served and placed our hopes in, sometimes for all our lives—seem to be falling apart. We are afraid. We grieve.

For some of us, it is worry over our country—the land, the people, the institutions we love. We see evil things happening that we never could have imagined, and we feel powerless to stop them. Neighbor rises up against neighbor, and we find ourselves in conflict with the very people we love. The foundations of the earth seem to be shaken. And as we pray, we are reminded that no nation endures forever.

For some of us, our worries are closer to home—at church or work. We may be living through a time of church conflict—or the simple years-long loss of membership. No congregation endures forever. Or at work we may face job loss or transfer or even the expected but still difficult transition to retirement. No job lasts forever.

Hardest of all are the changes in our families. We lose people we love to death, divorce, or estrangement. Others move away. Children grow up and leave the nest—a good thing, but still hard. Even our families don't last forever.

In the midst of all this, what should we do? What can we hold on to? God tells us: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Or as He says in another place, "Even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save" (Isaiah 46:4).

Jesus is the One we can cling to with all our might. He will not change. He has not changed, ever since we were children, ever since the first day He called us to Himself in faith. He is still the same Savior who laid down His life for us on the cross—the same Lord who took up His life again when He rose from the dead on the third day afterward. None of our losses catches Him by surprise. He will carry us through all of them.

Have you been foolish enough to put your hopes in something mortal: in politics or work or family or denominational structures? If so, welcome to the human race. You are like all the rest of us. But now it is time to take those hopes and put them where they have belonged all along—in the Lord of the only city that endures, in Jesus Christ. Absolutely, He will forgive us. And He will never let us down.

THE PRAYER: Lord of the everlasting city of God, help me to trust You with all my heart, and to look to You for everything I need. Amen.

Reflection Questions:

• What human things feel like they've "always been there" to you?
• What human things feel like they are falling apart to you right now?
• How do you find comfort and help in Jesus when you feel that way?

This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo. Use these devotions in your newsletter and bulletin! Used by permission; all rights reserved by the Int'l LLL (LHM).
What human things feel like they've "always been there" to you?

Devocional de la CPTLN del 28 de Agosto de 2019 - Ciudad permanente

ALIMENTO DIARIO

Ciudad permanente

28 de Agosto de 2019

De igual manera, Jesús sufrió fuera de la puerta, para santificar así al pueblo mediante su propia sangre. Así que salgamos con él fuera del campamento, y llevemos su deshonra, pues no tenemos aquí una ciudad permanente, sino que vamos en pos de la ciudad que está por venir.

~ Hebreos 13:12-14 RVC

"No tenemos aquí una ciudad permanente". ¡Qué cierto es esto! Porque este es un momento de dolor y pérdida para muchos de nosotros. Las cosas en las que hemos confiado, las cosas que hemos amado y servido y en las que hemos depositado nuestras esperanzas, a veces durante toda nuestra vida, parecen desmoronarse. Tenemos miedo. Nos afligimos.

Para algunos de nosotros es la preocupación por nuestro país: la tierra, las personas, las instituciones que amamos. Vemos que suceden cosas malvadas que nunca podríamos haber imaginado, y nos sentimos impotentes para detenerlas. Un vecino se pelea con otro vecino, nos encontramos en conflicto con las personas que amamos. Los cimientos de la tierra parecen estar sacudidos. Y mientras oramos, se nos recuerda que ninguna nación perdura para siempre.

Para otros, nuestras preocupaciones están más cerca: en la casa, en la iglesia o en el trabajo. Podemos estar viviendo un momento de conflicto en la iglesia. Ninguna congregación dura para siempre. O quizás estamos enfrentando la pérdida o transferencia del trabajo, o incluso la transición esperada pero aún difícil a la jubilación. Ningún trabajo dura para siempre.

Lo más difícil de todo son los cambios en nuestras familias. Perdemos a nuestros seres queridos por muerte, divorcio o alejamiento. Otros se mudan. Los niños crecen y abandonan el nido, algo bueno, pero aún difícil. Incluso nuestras familias no duran para siempre.

En medio de todo esto, ¿qué podemos hacer? ¿A qué nos podemos aferrar? Dios nos dice: "Jesucristo es el mismo ayer, hoy y por los siglos" (Hebreos 13:8); "Yo mismo los seguiré llevando, hasta que estén viejos y canosos. Yo los hice, yo los llevaré. Yo los apoyaré y los protegeré" (Isaías 46:4).

Jesús es a quien podemos aferrarnos con todas nuestras fuerzas. Él no va a cambiar. No ha cambiado desde que éramos niños, desde el primer día que nos llamó a la fe. Sigue siendo el mismo Salvador que dio su vida por nosotros en la cruz, el mismo Señor que retomó su vida cuando resucitó de los muertos al tercer día. Ninguna de nuestras pérdidas lo toma por sorpresa. Él nos llevará a través de todas ellas.

Este es el momento de tomar todas nuestras esperanzas falsas y ponerlas donde siempre han pertenecido: en Jesucristo. Él es el único que nunca nos defraudará.

ORACIÓN: Señor de la ciudad eterna, ayúdame a confiar en ti con todo mi corazón y a buscarte para todo lo que necesito. En Jesús. Amén.

Dra. Kari Vo

Para reflexionar:

• ¿Qué cosas sientes que se están desmoronando en tu vida?
• ¿Cómo encuentras consuelo y ayuda en Jesús cuando te sientes así?

© Copyright 2019 Cristo Para Todas Las Naciones. Que a través de estos devocionales, la Palabra de Dios te refresque en tu diario caminar.
¿Qué cosas sientes que se están desmoronando en tu vida?

Ministérios Pão Diário - Prestando atenção

Prestando atenção

Leia: Salmo 41:1-3
 | A Bíblia em um ano: Salmos 123–125; 1 Coríntios 10:1-18


Baixe a versão MP3

Bem-aventurado 
o que acode 
ao necessitado; o Senhor o livra no 
dia do mal. v.1


John Newton escreveu: “ Se, no caminho para casa, uma criança derrubar um centavo, e se, ao dar-lhe outro, eu puder enxugar suas lágrimas, sentirei que fiz algo útil. Ficarei feliz em fazer coisas maiores, mas não negligenciarei as pequenas.”

Hoje em dia, não é difícil encontrar alguém que precise de conforto: um caixa de mercado cuidadoso que tem um segundo emprego para dar conta das despesas; um refugiado ansiando por seu país; uma mãe solteira cujas preocupações drenaram sua esperança; um velho solitário que teme não mais ser útil.

Mas o que fazer? “Bem-aventurado o que acode ao necessitado…”, escreveu Davi (Salmo 41:1). Mesmo que não possamos aliviar a pobreza daqueles que encontramos ao longo do caminho, podemos considerá-los — este verbo significa “ter em alta conta, respeitar”.

Podemos deixar as pessoas saberem que nos importamos com elas. Podemos tratá-las com cortesia e respeito, embora elas possam ser irritantes ou cansativas. Podemos ouvir as suas histórias com interesse. E podemos ainda orar por eles ou com eles — essa é a atitude mais útil e curativa de todas.

Lembre-se do velho paradoxo que Jesus nos deu quando disse: “…Mais bem-aventurado é dar que receber” (Atos 20:35). Vale a pena prestar atenção a isso, pois somos mais felizes quando nos entregamos para servir o próximo. Acolha o necessitado.

Só vale a pena viver, quando entregamos a nossa vida por amor.


Frederick Buechner

por David H. Roper

© 2019 Ministérios Pão Diário
John Newton escreveu: “ Se, no caminho para casa, uma criança derrubar um centavo, e se, ao dar-lhe outro, eu puder enxugar suas lágrimas, sentirei que fiz algo útil. Ficarei feliz em fazer coisas maiores, mas não negligenciarei as pequenas.”