Tuesday, June 14

The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime (pp. 78-80)

To read the office, click here.

The singular gift of the Christian faith is summed up in the word grace and it reverberates throughout this morning's lesson. God's glorious and providential control in the Call to Prayer, the "word" in which we can trust in the Request for Presence, the desire to glorify the Lord because of his "love" in the Greeting, dwelling in the "word" of Jesus in the Reading, the "new song" that the believer can sing in the Morning Psalm, but most especially in both the Refrain and the Prayer Appointed for the Week: "those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish" and "that through your grace each of us may proclaim." Each of these carries on the theme of God's embracing and healing grace.

God calls us to himself and God enables us to answer that call; God calls us to serve him and God enables us; God gives us a new song and enables us through the Holy Spirit to sing that new song.

In our many walks in the last month Kris and I have seen numerous ducks with their new little family of babies. Somehow, someway those mother ducks communicate with their little ones. For, when we get near them the little ones have heard the voice of the mother, the mother has shown the way to safety, and the little ones need only waddle behind the mother to find that security -- sometimes into the water and othertimes into some clump of taller grasses.

In much the same way, God calls us into the safety of his grace and the security of his love, and all we need to do is listen and "waddle behind the direction God takes us." In that grace and love we become the ones who are "planted in the house of the Lord" and who can "flourish in the courts of our God.