Today’s scripture: Romans 3:5-18 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Robert Ferguson):
I have to be honest with you. Lately I have lost my focus. Nothing bad has happened, quite to the contrary, I am actually very happy these days. Things on my job have been going rather smoothly. I even got a compliment from my boss the other day. Surprisingly, my romantic life is blooming and things with my family are humming along just fine. But when I was tasked with the job of writing about today’s verse I found that I absolutely could not focus. On the surface it seemed as if today’s reading was just not speaking to me. So I decided to do what always works best for me. I prayed about it.
As I begun to pray I realized that I hadn’t done this in a while. Sometimes as life gets to rolling along relatively smoothly it seems easy to forget that I need daily quiet time with God. These days it seems like I compare everything in my life to exercise. So forgive my analogy but this is a lot like working out. If you miss a workout you usually don’t feel too bad, but miss a week or two of working out and you start to notice a more sluggish feeling. Perhaps your favorite jeans don’t fit so well anymore. Prayer life is the same way. If I go a couple of days without prayer I hardly notice. But after a week or two I start to notice that things upset me quickly and I start to lose my ability to focus. So here we are, when faced with a task that required me to focus on God’s word and the spirit of God’s text I was glaringly out of practice.
Ironically, when I read todays verse I hear God saying that even though I am saved by Gods’ grace and have an active relationship with Christ, I am not relieved of my responsibility to continue to nurture, grow and develop that relationship. I need daily communication with the spirit of God through prayer, meditation and study. Without that daily commune I will eventually lose focus, become complacent and fall off my game. Eyes on the ball people! Let us stay focused on the true source of all strength and power.
Thought for the day: How is your relationship with God growing and developing?
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.