Daybook: January 7, 2010

January 7, 2011

Lectionary

1 Jn 5:5-13

Beloved: Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one who came through water and Blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and Blood. The Spirit is the one who testifies, and the Spirit is truth. So there are three who testify, the Spirit, the water, and the Blood, and the three are of one accord. If we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is surely greater. Now the testimony of God is this, that he has testified on behalf of his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God.

Reflection

“Christ is a God of joy. . . A Christian should be and must be a man of joy.

The devil is the spirit of sadness, but God is the Spirit of joy, and he is our salvation.

We have more occasion for joy than sadness.  The reason is we believe in the living God, and Christ lives, and we shall live also.

God can make himself known only through those works of his which he reveals in us, which we feel and experience within ourselves.  When the experience is to learn that he is a God who looks into the depths and helps principally the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken and those who are of no account, at that very moment a love for him is created and surges up from the heart’s core.  The heart overflows with gladness, and leaps and dances for the joy it has found in God.

In this experience the Holy Spirit is active, and has taught us in the flash of a moment the deep secret of joy.

You will have as much joy and laughter in life as you have faith in God.”

— Martin Luther

Prayer

Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
The mountains shall yield peace for the people,
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor.
Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
(Ps 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8)