The Embracing and Reconciling Community: Week 7 of Ordinary Time
Look: Forgive Thy Other, Scott Erickson - Source
Listen: Brother, Good Shepherd Collective, feat. Propaganda, Liz Vice, Charles Jones & Dee Wilson - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
Listen to my playlist for Ordinary Time, pt. 1: World and Church
Read: Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85; Ephesians 1:1-14; Ephesians 1:15-23; Mark 6:7-13
Readings for the rest of the week*: Psalm 133; Jonah 1-4; Luke 7:1-10; Acts 10:1-11:18; Colossians 3:1-17; Philemon
(The weekly readings during Ordinary Time come from Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross. If you’d prefer to keep tracking with the Daily Office Lectionary from the 1979 BCP, you can find those passages here.)
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Seventh Week After Pentecost
Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and, that we may receive what we ask, teach us by your Holy Spirit to ask only those things that are pleasing to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the same Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
Do: This week, we’re thinking about what it means to belong to Christ’s embracing and reconciling community. In the safety of God’s presence, ask the Spirit to help you prayerfully sit with the following questions from Living the Christian Year (p. 261):
Is there any group of persons different from you - in race, culture, social background, sexual orientation, politics, education - that you find difficult to fully accept and freely love?
Ask God’s help to show some simple gesture of embrace toward just one person from that group this week.
*During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be sharing readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christain Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross. While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, it’s an excellent resource we’ve dog-eared so often the pages are falling out of our copy!