Ordinary Time

Pause

Just take this minute. This minute is your time with God.

God gives life and new life — life on earth and new life in Christ.

You can read this because you are alive, but you chose to take this time because of the new life God promises.

So take this moment to be refreshed.

Listen

“Those who love father or mother more than me aren’t worthy of me. Those who love son or daughter more than me aren’t worthy of me. Those who don’t pick up their crosses and follow me aren’t worthy of me. Those who find their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives because of me will find them.”

Matthew 10:37-39

Think

This is one of those tough times when Jesus’ teachings are as challenging as they are hard to understand. Love God more than parents? Follow him carrying a cross? Lose life to find it?

Here Jesus is laying the truth out there. He’s being direct. He’s telling us how to order our priorities. God first. Period.

That doesn’t mean we can’t love our parents, friends, family, or anyone else — God gave us the people we love. It simply means that of everything and everybody we love, God is numero uno.

Let that challenge your perspective today.

Chris Suehr

Pray

Hi God, it’s me again. What does it mean to love you first? Help me to see you in all the people I love. Help me to feel your presence and follow you. Amen.

Go

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

from “Now the Green Blade Riseth” by John M. C. Crum, 1928