The Giving and Sending Community: Week 9 of Ordinary Time
Look: Life in Community, Aidan Hart with contributions from Donald Jackson for The Saint John’s Bible - Source (Image used from this article: The Art of The Saint John’s Bible)
Listen: The Church’s One Foundation, Indelible Grace, feat. Brian Moss - Text | Spotify | YouTube
Listen to my playlist for Ordinary Time, pt. 1: World and Church
Read: 2 Kings 2:1-15; Psalm 114; Ephesians 3:1-7; Ephesians 3:8-21; Mark 6:45-52
Readings for the rest of the week*: Psalm 67; Genesis 12:1-9; Luke 10:1-20; Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3; 2 Corinthians 8-9; Galatians 1:11-2:10
(The weekly readings during Ordinary Time come from Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross. If you’d prefer to keep tracking with the Daily Office Lectionary from the 1979 BCP, you can find those passages here.)
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Ninth Week After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Do: This week, we’re thinking about what it means to belong to Christ’s giving and sending community. In the safety of God’s presence, ask the Spirit to help you prayerfully sit with the following questions from Living the Christian Year (p. 267):
Does your church support missions partners? Do you pray for any of them or give money in support of them?
Do you give money toward relief efforts at times of disaster or in response to human suffering in parts of the world?
How are you making yourself available to relationships with people from around the world? Is there a particular people group you feel most drawn to know better and to build friendships?
Ask God’s help to give something of yourself this week to one of the partners or people groups highlighted from the questions above.
*During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be sharing readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christain Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross. While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, it’s an excellent resource we’ve dog-eared so often the pages are falling out of our copy!