Hunkered Down Devotion

November 3rd, 2020

Matthew 22:34-40 (Voice)
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, a group of Pharisees met to consider new questions that might trip up Jesus. 35 A legal expert thought of one that would certainly stump Him.
Pharisees: 36 Teacher, of all the laws, which commandment is the greatest?
Jesus (quoting Scripture): 37 “Love the Eternal One your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.”[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is nearly as important, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 40 The rest of the law, and all the teachings of the prophets, are but variations on these themes.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (Voice)
Moses: 4 Listen, Israel! The Eternal is our True God—He alone. 5 You should love Him, your True God, with all your heart and soul, with every ounce of your strength.[a] 6 Make the things I’m commanding you today part of who you are. 7 Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. 8 Do whatever it takes to remember them: tie a reminder on your hand and bind a reminder on your forehead where you’ll see it all the time, 9 such as on the doorpost where you cross the threshold or on the city gate.

2 Corinthians 3:1-3 (Message)
1-3 Does it sound like we’re patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we’re not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

Today, finally is the day. Election day is here, and I think for many people the overwhelming feeling is one of relief – not necessarily about one candidate or the other winning, but just that it is over. No more calls, commercials, text messages, junk mail, arguments (okay – those are likely to continue, but maybe they might at least slow down)

I think it is fair to assume that all of us are suffering from at least some amount of election fatigue and while many of us have been thinking and praying about this election for quite a long time, we can be ready to put it behind us and move on. At the same time, participating in this election and every election is one of our primary and most solemn duties of citizenship.

In my prayer time this morning, and for the past several weeks I have been focusing on the election and I have been trying to remind myself of this important truth: that republican, democrat or even American is not the primary way we ought to define ourselves – rather, we know that we are first citizens of heaven.

We are Children of God and that as children of God, that comes with its own set of responsibilities. The passages above from Matthew and Deuteronomy are about just that – our primary responsibilities as the people of God – as citizens of heaven.

Simply put we are to Love God and Love people. This is the ‘campaign platform’ that the kingdom of God is built on and that we are called to be ambassadors and evangelists for. The message above from 2nd Corinthians contains another election theme – endorsements – here Paul says that our lives – the lives you and I lead - , written by Jesus Christ are the only endorsement people should need to know about Jesus Christ and his love and mission in the world. Did you read that – your very life is a letter that anyone can read.

Tomorrow (or maybe Thursday or next week – or at least sometime soon) we will know who or next President is going to be. To be sure, this is an important decision and one that we should take seriously. But don’t let your concern for that decision, which will effect the next 4, 6 or 8 years of our lives and community affect the witness and the story that your life tells for eternity. Make sure that the primary story the letter of your life tells, the first thing it endorses is not red or blue, Democrat or Republican but Jesus Christ.

Sharing God’s Love,
Chip

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, unite us under your banner of love. Amen.

Posted in Hunkered Down Devotions