Devotion - May 11

[Psalms 51-55 / Proverbs 11 / Isaiah 65:17-25]

Our theme this week is worship — believing that during this COVID-19 pandemic we are invited back to the training ground of personal worship. We have an online group here at West Side (in Realm) that shares posts on what we are reading at home. Tiffany shared a post on the book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. If you’ve read it, maybe you recall the famous quote, “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Worship is the activity that teaches us to long for the endless immensity of the sea — and we need this, given that so much of life is gathering wood or assigned tasks and work. Worship directs our longings toward the endless immensity of God and God’s kingdom. What if our insatiable desire to go back to the way things were before the pandemic were redirected to an insatiable desire to move forward into the vision of a renewed creation?

I wonder if you have noticed that while there are visions in the Bible of the throne room of God, there isn’t much for the imagination to take hold of about heaven. There is, however, a great deal about the vision of the new earth, when God’s kingdom is established and his dwelling place among us. What if we had an insatiable longing for God’s kingdom — “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ...”

The psalms cultivate that longing. So do the prophets. Today’s reading is from Isaiah 65. Verse 20 is especially poignant in this pandemic. Today, let the vision of the new heaven and earth guide our prayers.

Hoping along with you,
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