Psalm 128
Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. The LORD bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children's children! Peace be upon Israel! (ESV)
What's to Lose?
Monday after Pentecost
24 May 2010
Cyril of Jerusalem emphasized the gifts of God to the Catechumens who were preparing themselves for the sacrament of baptism. For Cyril God was able to overcome every human obstacle cast up on God's path to save the sinner. He is confident that God through his speaking could overcome even hypocrisy and unbelief. Unbelievers like us give up a sin-laden worthless heart.
God gives over forgiveness, blotting out sin, placing us in the church, putting us under service, granting us the armor of God, filling us with the heavenly gifts of the New Testament, and sends us the Holy Spirit. We certainly get the better end of that bargain: hypocrisy and unbelief in exchange for inestimably great gifts from God. So what's to lose? We trade off the worthless for the only worth in the sight of God.
Cyril of Jerusalem
"We for our part as men charge and teach you thus: do not make our building hay and stubble and chaff, lest we suffer loss, from our work being burnt up; but make our work gold, and silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:12, 15)! For it lies in me to speak, but in you to set your mind upon it, and in God to make complete. Let us nerve our minds, brace up our souls, and prepare our hearts. The race is for our soul. Our hope is of things eternal. God, who knows your hearts, and observes who is sincere, and who a hypocrite, is able both to guard the sincere, and to give faith to the hypocrite; even to the unbeliever, if only he give his heart, God is able to give faith.
"So may He blot out the handwriting that is against you (Col 2:14), and grant you forgiveness of your former trespasses; may He plant you into His Church, and enlist you in His own service, and put on you the armor of righteousness (2 Cor 6:7; Rom 6:13), may He fill you with the heavenly things of the New Testament, and give you the seal of the Holy Spirit indelible throughout all ages, in Christ Jesus Our Lord, to whom be the glory forever and ever! Amen."
Prayer
Guard me, O Christ, by Your Holy Spirit given me in baptism. Let me live in joy in Eastertide knowing that sin and death have been blotted out by the handwriting of Your Word that is for me. Amen.
For Sarah Coronado and Aryanna Sanchez, who were brought into the kingdom of the Son of God through the sacrament of holy baptism, that they would be kept in their most holy faith
For Edgar Burmeister, who is recovering from cancer surgery, that God our Lord would grant healing
For all those who are unemployed that God our heavenly Father would endow them with a vocation suited to their gifts
For husbands and wives that they might live in peace and harmony under the bonds of holy marriage
Art: Unknown Unknown Unknown