Righteous Judgment: Lent Daybook 17
Take a few deep breaths, settle your body, mind, and heart into a quiet space, and let’s begin with prayer.
Opening prayer: Heavenly Father, make me more like Jesus and more like the true self you’ve created as I savor your loving presence today. Please guide my thoughts and impressions by your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Look: Fire at Night, Francisco Goya - Source
Listen: The Lord Is Coming, Alanna Boudreau, Scott Mulvahill, Gabi Wilson, Andy Baxter - Spotify w/ lyrics | YouTube
Read: Psalm 69; Psalm 73; Jeremiah 5:1-9; Romans 2:25-3:18; John 5:30-47
Excerpts:
It is zeal for your house that has consumed me; the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. When I humbled my soul with fasting, they insulted me for doing so. When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them. I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.
But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. With your faithful help rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Do not let the flood sweep over me or the deep swallow me up or the Pit close its mouth over me.
Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me. Do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress—make haste to answer me. Draw near to me; redeem me; set me free because of my enemies.
*
Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth—so that I may pardon Jerusalem. Although they say, “As the Lord lives,” yet they swear falsely. O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth?You have struck them, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.
Then I said, “These are only the poor; they have no sense, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the law of their God. Let me go to the rich and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the law of their God.” But they all alike had broken the yoke; they had burst the bonds.
Therefore a lion from the forest shall kill them; a wolf from the desert shall destroy them. A leopard is watching against their cities; everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many; their faithlessness is great.
*
Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but injustice, there will be wrath and fury.
*
but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, both the Jew first and the Greek. For God shows no partiality.
All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged in accordance with the law.
*
Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth.
Therefore the people turn and praise them and find no fault in them. And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued and am punished every morning.
If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,” I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.
*
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. …
But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from humans. But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?
—Psalm 69:9-18; Jeremiah 5:1-6; Romans 2:3-8, 10-12; Psalm 73:1-17; John 5:30, 36b-44
Pray: On Fridays during Lent, we will pray the traditionally-read prayers of the daily office that draw us into Psalm 95, known in Latin as the Invitatory and the Venite. If you’re reading this prayer with another person, one of you can lead with the first phrase and the other response with the bolded words, then reading the last portion (Psalm 95:1-11) together.
O Lord, open our lips; And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.
O God, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Praise the Lord. The Lord’s Name be praised.
The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: O come, let us adore him.
O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and show ourselves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the depths of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land.
O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice: ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, on that day at Massah in the wilderness, when your forebears tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works. Forty years long I detested that generation and said, ‘This people are wayward in their hearts; they do not know my ways.’ So I swore in my wrath ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’ “
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was, in the beginning, is now and shall be forever. Amen.
Do: Fast from one kind of food, one meal, or one whole day of eating today. Let your hunger prompt simple dependence and prayer, noticing areas of unarticulated anger that need God’s healing attention.
Traditionally, the Church sets aside Lenten Fridays, the weekday of Jesus’ crucifixion, to abstain from eating meat or to a partial (one meal) or whole fast (24 hours without solid food).
You might also enjoy:
*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America). Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1).