Measuring Mystery?

Psalm 71:1-6 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is...
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Defending the Fatherless, Pleading for the Widow

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek...
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The Weight of Abortion

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my...
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The Bruised Reed

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the...
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Worship in a Culture of Death

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips (Psalm 16:4). What is meant exactly by the above verse is not entirely clear. Were the drink offerings to other gods literally of...
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Learning to See

  Do you see this woman? (Luke 7:44).   In the Gospel lesson cited above there are three people. There is the woman, “a woman of the city, who was a sinner,” a woman who wept at the feet of Jesus, and anointed him there. Then there is Simon. Presumably a law-abiding...
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Press On

  And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus” (1 Kings 19:15a). It’s a bad day when one is called to be a prophet. Isaiah was sent to an unresponsive people (Isaiah 6:9-10). Jeremiah was told he would face stern opposition, God warning...
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When Questions Confuse

Galatians 1:11-24 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace… (Galatians 1:15). The Collect for last Sunday is as follows: O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by...
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What We Refuse to Know: Mark 11:27-33

  So they answered Jesus, “We do not know” (Mark 11:33). Sometimes we don’t know things because we don’t know them. Sometimes we don’t know things because we don’t want to know them. Sometimes we trifle with the things that we should take most seriously. The Pharisees ask...
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Can a Nation Repent? Jonah 3:1-10

  When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it (Jonah 3:10).   Two things we know. First, that over 50 million babies have been legally killed in the womb in the last...
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