Monday August 23 Pentecost 13
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 1
Those who live in righteousness—which means with justice to all—will be as strong as healthy trees planted near water. Injustice will be blown away like chaff.
Psalm 2
Other nations laugh at God and God’s people, but God has chosen this people and their king, and God will have the final word.
Christians may understand this to be a way of saying that God has made self-offering love and justice in the death and resurrection of Christ to be the ultimate reality. All other attempts at finding full life through pursuing self-interest are laughable and doomed to fail.
Psalm 3
Because of God’s protection, I have nothing to fear.
1 Kings 1: 5-31 What’s Kings about?
When David is very old, his son Adonijah is plotting to make himself king, but Bathsheba, David’s wife, insists that her son Solomon had been selected by David to be the next king. David agrees. God’s plan for another great king has not been thwarted.
Mark 13: 14-27 What’s Mark about?
We continue reading Mark’s “Little apocalypse” in which Jesus describes the disasters that will happen. Mark is writing about 40 years after Jesus’ earthly life and understands Jesus was describing the Romans’ deliberate act in 70 AD of desecrating the temple by setting up in the temple a statue of the emperor as a divine god—this is the “desolating sacrilege.” But, Jesus assures them, in spite of horror, and in spite of others claiming to be the true messiah, God will finally be victorious. How apropos for our time!
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
we are taught by your word
that all our doings without love are worth nothing.
Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts
that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtue;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share a comment on the web site.