Friday – November 6, 2020

Scripture

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

Galatians 6:5 (The Message)

Modern Lesson

People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.” James Baldwin

A Word of Hope

I am writing these words one week to the day before our election. You will be reading them 3 days after. It is possible the results are not yet known and are being contested. I can’t predict what you or I will be feeling right now. Perhaps hope and optimism. Perhaps dread and despair. Maybe a mixture. It is likely that no matter what we are feeling we know someone who is feeling the opposite. Such is the nature of our polarized society these days.

But regardless of the situations we now face we each must own up to our responsibilities going forward. The election may have made that work easier or more difficult. Either way, much is expected of us. Much work is to be done to reconcile with our neighbors, our friends and our families. Healing must begin.

Especially now our actions can make a difference. People watch our living day in and day out. As the Brazilian lyricist and novelist Paulo Coeho said “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”

Again, I don’t know where you find yourself today. And I don’t know where I will be. But I do know our lives can make a difference for good. Let’s get to work.

Prayer

God of my being. May I experience and share healing and reconciliation today.

Devotion Author

Dennis Bolin