First Church of the Nazarene: Daily Bales of Straw

The Revised Common Lectionary is an historic list of texts for each Sunday and for each day. The lectionary always gives a set of texts for each day from the Pslams, from the Old Testament, from the Epistles, and from the Gospels. The Sunday lectionary is divided into a three year cycle, but the Daily Office is divided into two – Year One and Year Two. It is easy to know which cycle we are on because Year One falls on odd years and Year Two on even.

I like the lectionary for a couple of reasons. It isn’t perfect, and it probably isn’t for everyone. But for someone like me who has struggled to keep a strong devotional life, it gives me a place to start. And I like that it puts me in various places in the Scripture allowing me to hear from a variety of Scriptural voices each day.

I’m terrible at keeping a journal, primarily because I often can’t read my own writing. And so I’ve started typing my reflections. Some are probably good for no one but myself, but I thought there might be others out there who would like to also read the lectionary texts and reflect with me on them.

I’ve called this blog “bales of straw” in reference to two great stories. The first is the Exodus story. If you remember, Pharaoh forced the Israelites to make more bricks with less straw. What a gift at that point in their life a huge flatbed full of straw would have been. The Word is like that for all of us. In the day-to-day grind, the voice of God’s Spirit through the Scripture does not absolve us from our daily work, but becomes the straw we at times need to hold it all together.

But I also love that at the end of St. Thomas Aquinas’ vast scholarly work the Summa Theologica – after he had written volumes and volumes about God – he realized that in the face of God all the words he had written was like so much straw. There was still so much to say about God that his massive volume of theology was just a drop of water in the ocean. And so I also recognize that this kind of pursuit, writing daily thoughts about God, is simply that, a bale of straw.

But I hope it might be helpful to some. I can’t promise to write each day. My schedule and lack of discipline are often much stronger than my good intentions. But here goes…

Here is a link to a website that gives the Daily Office Readings for each day: http://www.esvbible.org/devotions/bcp/

Pastor Scott