Focus

Slow your breathing and become aware of the taking in and letting out of your breath. Focus on putting things aside so you will be open to what God is saying to you today.

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Read

1 John 2:1-6 (NRSV)

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.

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Reflect

I have said before that I love a good mystery. I read them voraciously. But I also like a good TV show or movie that holds me in suspense. But I have a bad habit of falling asleep before finding out “Who done it.” I have seen the first 45 minutes of every Perry Mason episode ever produced. You know how it goes: Perry calls a series of witnesses to the stand to testify and, inevitably, someone jumps up to confess “I did it!” or “I didn’t mean to!” And in a good Agatha Christie novel, the guilty party has been displaying hints of suspect behavior throughout the book, even though the reader usually doesn’t pick up on the clues until the very end when we share an “Ah ha!’ moment.

Like the witness in the courtroom of my favorite shows and novels, our words, our actions, our very lives witness to our faith in Christ. John says that the way to know we are in Christ is to walk or live in the same way Jesus walked. We should share with the world not in just the way we talk, but in the way we live.

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Pray

Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord, to thee. Take my words, take my heart, and take my life. Use me to witness to the joy and peace that you have brought to me to make the world a place of joy and peace. May others look at me and know you. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Go with God.