The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:

First Reading: I Samuel 1:4-20; I Samuel 2:1-10
Psalm: Canticle I Samuel 2:1-10
Second Reading: Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Gospel Reading: Mark 13:1-8

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

Hannah kept coming back.  It is the heart and soul of all this—of this whole faith business—that we come back to the place where we pour before God all that we are and all that we have, and we ask God to fit us into God’s larger plan for our life.  That we ask God to take all that we are and all that we have and use it for God’s glory and goodness.

That is prayer.  That is stewardship.  That is faith!

Those disciples with warning of tumbling stones—they would need to come back to that.

Before long that temple would no longer stand—it could not be the locus and focus of their faith.  The central piece, the heart and soul of their faith, had to be the extent to which they fit into the larger plan of God for their lives.  They had to keep coming back to the central reality of praying that they would fit into God’s larger plan for their lives.

The stones of our lives—the stones of our self-constructed lives—ultimately they tumble.  They keep tumbling.  As they do, we have to keep coming back to that heart and soul of faith.  God.  God gets us—when no one or nothing else does—God has us and God is always faithful, and we are to come back and pray that we are living into God’s plan for us.

Keep coming back.  Keep praying.  And then pray some more.  And come back some more. 

Such coming back that is faith.

—

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
Chief Imagination Officer
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk