Home > Reading > The Daily Lectionary – October 10, 2016

luke6-46

Today’s readings: Hosea 6:7–7:7; Acts 22:30–23:11; Luke 6:39–49

Can I really have a log in my own eye, and my neighbor only a speck in his? How are my sins so much greater and more damaging than another’s? How can I take the measure of my sins? What is the heavy beam and what is the organ of sight it has disabled?

In Luke’s two-volume account, the dimensions of the lumber in my eye correspond exactly to those required for a Roman crucifixion. Acts 3:15 says it point blank: “You killed the Author of Life.”

Jesus discloses both the extent of my sins and their harrowing effect by showing what I have done to God. He is the God of flaming nebulae and far-flung galaxies, yet because of my rebellion, this—the humiliation of being whipped, cursed, spit on, and hammered to a plank by his own strutting creature—this is what was necessary for him to be the God of me.

The organ of sight is the act of kneeling before the cross of the dying Christ, seeing there the dimensions of God’s love, and measuring both my neighbor and myself by nothing else.

Prayer: Father, forgive my sins and my blindness to them. Amen.

Today’s devotion was written by Gary Blobaum, Pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church, in Sumter, SC.

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Tomorrow’s readings: Hosea 7:8–16; Acts 23:12–24; Luke 7:1–17