March 14, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 95 Exodus 16:27-35 John 4:1-6 FIELD NOTES Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;    let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving    and extol him with music and song. . . .4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,    and the mountain peaks belong to him.5 The sea is his,…

March 13, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 95 Exodus 16:9-21 Ephesians 2:11-22 FIELD NOTES As a former English teacher, I am always bothered when casual readers of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” claim Frost believed, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Look again. Frost is repeating the line his next-door neighbor says, and Frost does not agree…

March 12, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 95 Exodus 16:1-8 Colossians 1:15-23 FIELD NOTES Today’s readings begin with Psalm 95, a call for us to worship joyfully the Rock of our Salvation, the Lord our Maker, the Giver of all good things. But it is also a reminder that dissension and conflict are a hindrance to…

March 11, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 128 Ezekiel 36:22-32 John 7:53-8:11 FIELD NOTES Several times in the Gospels, Jesus is accused of not living up to the law of Moses. He is called to account for breaking the Sabbath by healing and by allowing his disciples to pick some grain when they were hungry. At…

March 10, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 128 Isaiah 65:17-25 Romans 4:6-13 FIELD NOTES Isaiah 65 asks us to imagine God’s new creation, where infants thrive and grow up in God’s grace, where old folks have long, useful lives, enjoying the house they built or the garden they planted. There, even former enemies live together in…

March 9, 2020 DAILY READINGS This weekend’s reading: Job 19:13-25 Read the psalm aloud with expression and feeling. How does this psalm compare to the way you pray when you feel like the writer does? Psalm 139 (A psalm of David) You have searched me, Lord,    and you know me.You know when I sit and when I…

March 7, 2020 DAILY READINGS 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. John 12:27-36 This weekend’s reading: Job 2:11-13 FIELD NOTES On the first day of creation God created light and then separated the light from the dark.  There’s an old Jewish Midrash saying that goes,…

March 6, 2020 DAILY READINGS Exodus 6: 1-13This weekend’s reading: Job 2:11-13 FIELD NOTES Our story today opens with God declaring: Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh!  And then in verses 2-8 God reminds Moses: that God has been there with his ancestors in the past, that God currently hears the…

March 5, 2020 DAILY READINGS Psalm 91This weekend’s reading:Job 2:11-13 FIELD NOTES One of the lessons I learn every Lent is the power of letting God be God. Of course, this requires me to surrender a lot. I must surrender my expectations of timing, my need to have things done in the way I want…