A Daily Lent

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent Daily Reading : Luke 11:29 – 32 Focus Passage : “The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now one greater than Jonah is here.” (Lk. 11:32) Don’t let yourself drown in analysis of the passage. Jesus used two sets of figures – Jonah in Nineveh and the Queen of the South listening to Solomon – which would have made a point with his original hearers about their willingness to adjust their lives. We may not fully understand the images, but Jonah with the people of Nineveh and Solomon with the “Queen of the South” likely would have been recognizable to Jesus’ first-century hearers. We, therefore, can immediately get over our fixation with knowing the intricacies of the references. If the names had been unrecognizable or obscure to Jesus’ original audience, he would have provided an explanation. Both references point to groups or persons who heeded t...

Luke 11:14 After the demon had gone out, the man started speaking, and the crowds were amazed. In this longer passage (Lk. 11:14 - 23), I notice this first verse and the amazement of the crowds at this miracle. What caused them to be amazed? Why did this miracle do it for them, when many other things had gone unnoticed to that point? As humans, we are so accustomed to not seeing, that when we finally do see, it seems amazing. We become acclimated to the darkness, so that seeing the little-bit offered in darkness seems like full sight. When the fullness of light, then, does shine, it can be overwhelming and blinding. I believe that for the person who can see, who has eyes to see and ears to hear, these kinds of miracles are happening all the time. In fact, they are such "ordinary miracles" that they may defy classification as miracles. Once we begin to see them, once we start to notice the ways the Holy is woven through the fabric of everyday life, they seem common...