Epiphany Readings: Sunday, February 23

Readings:  Psalm 119:33-40 and Matthew 5:38-48

  1. Sit with God in quietness even before you open your Bible to this week’s readings. Acknowledge his benevolent presence with you as you open to God in honesty. What sense of God, what sense of yourself do you have in these moments? How are you? Agitated? Frustrated? At peace? Where do you find yourself? In difficulties? With anxieties?  Do you sense God near? Distant? Attentive to you? Speak to God about these things.
  1. Turning to Psalm 119:33-40, employ the words of the psalmist as your heart’s prayer to God in these moments of reflection on the Scriptures. Teach me, O LORD…Give me understanding…Lead me… Offer to God your truest intentions regarding your participation in his Kingdom way of life.

In Matthew 5:38-40, Jesus turns the corner in his teaching to demonstrate that God’s love has no limits.  Jesus moves from a focus on external behaviors, merely legal, that had no correlation to the heart,  to a revelation of how human actions, animated by the kingdom love of God, become a good for those around us —even our worse enemies!

  1. As you read Jesus’ depiction of the characteristics, the behavior of how true love acts toward others – ask yourself: Where do I sense stinginess in my loving? Where am I withholding good from others? In what ways might I seek God’s creativity to love beyond my self-imposed notions of love? Or self-preservation mechanisms I hold to minimize risk or cost to my own life?
  1. Paul invites us to experience the depths, the heights, the boundless love of God and to live out of the fullness of God, who is in you, with you, through the person of the Holy Spirit (Eph.3:18-19). Take a few moments to think about a time when you experienced the boundless love of God? When you were met by God’s generosity though you knew there was nothing in you or about your behavior that merited such luxury, such embrace. Spend some time in prayer to be transformed by God’s love that you might love others as you have been loved by God.

– Elizabeth Khorey