Daily Prayer for July 9

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Ephesians 3:14–17a, NIV Lord our God, you are our Father, and we human beings know that our innermost hearts belong to you. Hold us firmly through your Spirit, we pray, so that we do not live on the level of our lower natures but remain true to the calling you have given us, the high calling to what is eternal. May all our experiences work in us for good, bringing us the joyful certainty that you rule us with your Spirit, that you further the good everywhere in the world and make more and more people sensitive to what is good, right, and perfect. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough Daring to Follow the Call E. Stanley Jones, Barbara Brown Taylor, Teresa of Ávila, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King Jr., Eberhard Arnold, Meister Eckhart, Leonardo Boff, C. S. Lewis, Hermas, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer Insights on the Sermon on the Mount from a wealth of traditions. Read now What My First Psychiatric Patient Taught Me Abraham M. Nussbaum Sharon could hardly leave the house. She showed me the wonder and limits of therapy. Read now An Animated Film That Asks Questions Casey Kleczek Gints Zilbalodis’s film Flow is a work of art my young family could wrestle with as well as enjoy. Read now Desire, Use, Repeat James Mumford An addict looks for a way out. Read now A Disabled Savior Devan Stahl The wounds of a resurrected God help us live with ours. Read now

Daily Prayer for July 8

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:17–18, NIV Lord our God, our Father in heaven and on earth, we are thankful that you have a people to whom you say, “You are mine.” Grant that we too may belong to this people. Strengthen us in the faith that we belong to you, so that we can come to know your rule and your justice. Protect us on all the paths we follow during our time on earth. The times are evil, but come what may, every single one of us has in his heart the certainty, “We are yours.” You have long watched over us and kept us safe. Again and again we affirm, “We are yours, Lord our God, through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Amen.   Recent articles on Plough What My First Psychiatric Patient Taught Me Abraham M. Nussbaum Sharon could hardly leave the house. She showed me the wonder and limits of therapy. Read now An Animated Film That Asks Questions Casey Kleczek Gints Zilbalodis’s film Flow is a work of art my young family could wrestle with as well as enjoy. Read now Desire, Use, Repeat James Mumford An addict looks for a way out. Read now A Disabled Savior Devan Stahl The wounds of a resurrected God help us live with ours. Read now What Families with Autistic Children Know Sam Tomlin For parents of neurodiverse children, church and school can be another hurdle. Read now

Daily Prayer for July 7

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23, NIV Lord our God, we thank you for all you have done for us, for all you are doing for us, for deliverance from need and death. We thank you for all the signs you give us that you hear our prayer when, without wavering or weakening, we set our hopes on you. We thank you that we can be without fear of sin and death, for you stand by us in everything. In spite of our imperfections you show us your goodness again and again. May the light in our hearts never be extinguished, the light that enables us to look into heaven and earth and see the good that is on its way to us today. May joy remain with us, and may we have the strength to be a community that follows the paths of life which bring praise and honor to you. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough An Animated Film That Asks Questions Casey Kleczek Gints Zilbalodis’s film Flow is a work of art my young family could wrestle with as well as enjoy. Read now Desire, Use, Repeat James Mumford An addict looks for a way out. Read now A Disabled Savior Devan Stahl The wounds of a resurrected God help us live with ours. Read now What Families with Autistic Children Know Sam Tomlin For parents of neurodiverse children, church and school can be another hurdle. Read now Abraham’s Warring Children Kelsey Osgood After October 7, can a Muslim-Christian-Jewish center in Abu Dhabi make any difference? Read now

Daily Prayer for July 5

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Romans 8:22–24a, NIV Lord our God, we thank you for the great calling you have given us. We thank you that in all the evils of today’s world you give us the hope and faith that you are leading us to a goal that is good, and you make us free. You make your children free so that throughout humankind a new spirit may come, a new life and a new power to serve you in time and eternity. Praise to your name that we can always have hope; nothing can discourage us, but everything must work together for good in accordance with your great purpose. Grant that your compassion may come to all the world, to all peoples, whom you have looked upon with mercy in sending Jesus Christ as Savior. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough A Disabled Savior Devan Stahl The wounds of a resurrected God help us live with ours. Read now What Families with Autistic Children Know Sam Tomlin For parents of neurodiverse children, church and school can be another hurdle. Read now Abraham’s Warring Children Kelsey Osgood After October 7, can a Muslim-Christian-Jewish center in Abu Dhabi make any difference? Read now Merelots: Armenia’s Day of the Dead Narine Abgaryan “What use do the departed have for liturgy?” an Armenian mother reflects on a visit to the grave of her stepson, in this short story. Read now The Exploitation of Immigrant Care Workers Hazel Thompson Hidden in plain sight, foreign health aides in UK care homes face exploitation. Read now

When the Way Out Is Through

What do we do in the middle of our challenges and problems with no plan in sight?   Most folks are at least a little familiar with the LORD‘s* deliverance his people from the Egyptian army through the Red Sea. Many folks have seen the old Charlton Heston movie, “The Ten Commandments” since it is on TV most Easter weekends. Several new generations have been re-acquainted with the story through “The Prince of Egypt” that was seen by kids, parents, and grandparents. This great story of deliverance is a reminder that God will see us through when we reach one of those difficult times in life. When there is no way out or around our problems, the LORD will help us find a way through those problems. Here’s the story in a nutshell. Israel is stuck between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army of soldiers and their charioteers on their back side. The Red Sea blocks their way from going forward (Exodus 14:5-12). They have every right to be afraid because Pharaoh’s charioteers were feared by the armies of all other nations. The Israelites were untrained for war, having been slaves for 400 years. All Israel had to lead them into battle was an 80-year-old shepherd with a stick! So if deliverance was going to come for God’s people, their obedience and the LORD‘s grace and power would have to produce it. That is exactly what happened. God’s deliverance involved five incredible steps of grace and power: God’s presence in the pillar of fire and the cloud moved from in front of the people to their rear to protect them (Exodus 14:19-20) Moses obeyed the LORD and stretched out his staff over the waters. God then parted the waters and dried the land in between with an east wind (Exodus 14:21). The Israelite people passed safely between the wall of waters on dry ground to the other side (Exodus 14:22). The presence of God in the pillar of fire and the cloud confused the Egyptians as they tried to pursue the Israelites through the sea. Their wheels jammed in the mire of what had been dry ground further adding to the confusion (Exodus 14:23-25). When Moses obeyed and stretched his staff over the waters a second time, the waters buried and destroyed the army of Pharaoh (Exodus 14:26-28). This great story of deliverance is a powerful reminder to us as a people and as individual disciples that the LORD will make a way through for us when there seems to be no way! God’s gracious and powerful presence will lead us, accompany us, and protect us until he gets us safely to where he wants us to be. This is great news. This is an incredible promise — one that God’s people put to music in the celebration song after their great victory: In your unfailing love you will leadthe people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide themto your holy dwelling (Exodus 15:13). This is our story. It is not just a Bible story. This story reminds us of the character and courage that is in our spiritual DNA. We have the same God with the same power today as those people had in their day. We have the same promise that the LORD will get us to our destination (Philippians 1:6). Yet the nagging doubt and repeated complaint that I hear goes something like this: Yeah, Israel only had an 80-year-old shepherd with a stick to lead them into battle, but that old shepherd was Moses. We don’t have anyone near the leadership quality of Moses. So it’s hard for me to wait or to follow or to trust when our leaders don’t seem to have it together. There doesn’t seem to be a plan. If our leaders have one, they sure don’t seem to be executing it! That’s why after reading this story from the Bible many times, what I found this last time was so unexpected and powerful — something that I seemed to have missed. Moses didn’t know God’s plan! What Moses first told God’s people to do was only half right. Yet while he didn’t know the LORD‘s plan, he knew the LORD! While he didn’t know the way the LORD was going to deliver his people, he did know to obey the LORD in all that he asked: As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD…. Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground (Exodus 14:10-16). What Moses told the people was only half correct. God would work deliverance, and the pursuing army would be destroyed. Moses was also half wrong! The people were not to stand still and wait. They were to advance toward God’s future following Moses’ lead. They were to let the LORD handle the deliverance part, and they were to obey the LORD‘s call to cross the sea! What do we do when there is no way around or past our problems and challenges? We go through them trusting the LORD will sustain, empower, and guide us! But our leaders are not Moses! Yes, but our assurance isn’t based upon having a Moses. Our assurance is based upon ours leaders being committed to obey the LORD even if they don’t know the way through what they are facing. Sometimes the only way out or around our challenges is for us to go through them. In the middle of

Daily Prayer for July 3

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy – being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:4-6 Dear Father in heaven, we thank you for the work you are doing. We thank you for working through people of all kinds and of all vocations and through the many hearts that know your goodness. We thank you for the great work led by the Lord Jesus, who will overcome the world with patience and with gentleness. He will overcome the world, opening the door wide for all, including the poorest of the poor, to come to you, their Father in heaven. Grant that with the light we have been given we may remain firm and true. Do not let us come into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours forever. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough Abraham’s Warring Children Kelsey Osgood After October 7, can a Muslim-Christian-Jewish center in Abu Dhabi make any difference? Read now Merelots: Armenia’s Day of the Dead Narine Abgaryan “What use do the departed have for liturgy?” an Armenian mother reflects on a visit to the grave of her stepson, in this short story. Read now The Exploitation of Immigrant Care Workers Hazel Thompson Hidden in plain sight, foreign health aides in UK care homes face exploitation. Read now Against Self-Optimization David Zahl The wellness industry sells you a version of yourself it can’t deliver. Hope lies elsewhere. Read now In Defense of Pint and Pipe Malcolm Guite Smoking and drinking carry known risks. Here’s why I haven’t given them up. Read now

Stretching for Our Gods

What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve or find? Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it (Matthew 16:24-25). I will show him how much he must suffer for my name (Acts 9:16). Some people will go to almost any length to look good — literally, go to any length. The Chinese Ministry of Health has issued an official statement that one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in large Chinese cities poses serious risk of disfigurement. Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan warns that the surgery, which is available in many clinics alongside more conventional cosmetic procedures, “must only be carried out for strict medical reasons and performed in authorized hospitals.” At least ten people are reported to have been badly disfigured by the surgery in the past year. The surgery in question is leg-lengthening. It involves (grab hold of something) breaking the legs and stretching them on a rack. Apparently, height is often listed as a requirement for most jobs and many schools in China. Many employers require a height of 1.65 meters for women and 1.75 meters for men. Height has also become increasingly important to potential mates, as both men and women want taller children. Because of those expectations and ideals, many Chinese are choosing to undergo the painful and potentially disfiguring surgery. I wonder where the Chinese got the idea that being thought of as attractive, or getting a better job or into a better school, was worth suffering for? I wonder how they could have possibly come to the conclusion that having your body broken, manipulated, rearranged, and altered by a surgeon simply to meet their society’s standard of beauty is worth paying for? That’s so … so … American. Really though, despite the fact that we live in a country in which people pay large percentages of their income to have their noses broken and reshaped, or their tummies tucked, or fat sucked out of one part of their body and injected into another, or botulinum toxin injected into their faces, America has hardly cornered the market. Human beings have always practiced the “modifying” of the body to meet certain standards of aesthetic or moral value. Frequently those modifications are painful, and sometimes even horrific. It seems that human beings all understand that some things are worth suffering to achieve. It’s just a question of what matters most. The media tide that rises around our knees every day carries images and ideals — idols, even — that human beings choose to believe is worth their suffering. If we aren’t willing to have surgery, many of us sweat at gyms hoping that a treadmill will transform us into the body type our gods demand. Or we pay ridiculous amounts of money for labels and styles and fabrics that the fashion gods decree are “holy” — or at least popular in Milan and Paris. Many studies suggest that eating disorders among young women and even young men are rising to unprecedented levels. The harsh gods of Beauty and Style even make a claim on what and how we eat. So we know what it is to suffer for our gods. Strange that we don’t seem to be so willing to suffer for our faith. Christianity, throughout its history, has all too often morphed into some sort of unrecognizable civic religion that creates good citizens, but not real disciples. It’s been packaged and promulgated by many well-intentioned people as a faith full of promises and short on demands. “Cheap grace,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it. Cheap grace is receiving the favor of God without recognizing that his favor comes with some demands on the transformation of our character. As Bonhoeffer elegantly put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” And Bonhoeffer didn’t make that up out of thin air. Jesus equated being a disciple with carrying a cross — and a person only carried a cross to his death. In a great contradiction, he claimed that life is not found in holding on to it with a white-knuckled grip, but in giving it up for him. It’s human nature to preserve the self, of course. Quite intelligently, we shy away from stepping out onto limbs that look too thin to support our weight. And yet that’s what Jesus asks us to do: take note of the fact that the limb doesn’t look like it’ll hold us, and then step out onto it anyway, knowing that whether it holds or breaks we’re following our Master. It was onto just such a limb that Jesus invited Paul, then called Saul, to step. The Lord called Saul to leave behind a life of relative ease, comfort, and respect for a bending, swaying branch of constant travel, death threats, poverty, prison, and turmoil. And, no doubt trembling a little, Saul took the step, because what else could he do? Jesus had spoken to him. His Lord had bid Saul to come and die, and so Saul went and died. If we think that Saul’s story is unusual, it’s only because we have such a limited idea of what following Jesus involves. It doesn’t always make life easier; sometimes it makes life harder. It doesn’t always answer all our questions; sometimes it just raises new ones. In this age when churches trip all over themselves to provide more services to their “customers,” in the end, following Jesus isn’t about consuming services as much as it’s about being consumed by service. It’s pouring out our lives, offering up our preferences and desires and dreams and hopes in favor of his. “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name,” Jesus said to Ananias about Saul. He could say it about any of us, too. And we need to hear. We need to hear him tell us

Daily Prayer for July 2

I instruct you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble. Proverbs 4:11–12, NIV Dear Father in heaven, you are our God. You rule and guide us, and our trust remains in you even when many needs pull at our hearts and try to draw us into their whirlpool. Protect us, we pray. May your divine hand govern us so that we remain aware of the calling we receive from you and always have a light shining into our lives to show us how to serve you. Let your power work wherever hearts respond to you on this earth, wherever the strength of Jesus Christ is revealed, so that people acknowledge his deeds to your honor. Be with the lowliest and least noticed of your children. Keep them in your hands and enable them to be fellow workers who persevere courageously and confidently until the time when you reveal yourself to all peoples on earth. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough Merelots: Armenia’s Day of the Dead Narine Abgaryan “What use do the departed have for liturgy?” an Armenian mother reflects on a visit to the grave of her step-son, in this short story. Read now The Exploitation of Immigrant Care Workers Hazel Thompson Hidden in plain sight, foreign health aides in UK care homes face exploitation. Read now Against Self-Optimization David Zahl The wellness industry sells you a version of yourself it can’t deliver. Hope lies elsewhere. Read now In Defense of Pint and Pipe Malcolm Guite Smoking and drinking carry known risks. Here’s why I haven’t given them up. Read now In Pursuit of Homefulness John Swinton The biblical understanding of health is not biomedical. Read now

Daily Prayer for July 1

People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last. Luke 13:29–30, NIV Dear Father in heaven, Almighty God, grant that the nations come under your rule, under your judgment from morning to evening, from east to west, from north to south. For your will must be done, and your name must be honored among all nations. Yours alone is the kingdom; all kingdoms belong to you. Your heavenly kingdom must come so that at last we learn to be at peace and become your children, who submit to you. For your Christ shall carry out your loving, merciful, and perfect will throughout the world. We thank you for all the good you want to provide for us. May your angels watch over us this night. Be with us in all we do or leave undone. Help us with your strong hands, that we may rejoice at heart in all the good you give us. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough The Exploitation of Immigrant Care Workers Hazel Thompson Hidden in plain sight, foreign health aides in UK care homes face exploitation. Read now Against Self-Optimization David Zahl The wellness industry sells you a version of yourself it can’t deliver. Hope lies elsewhere. Read now In Defense of Pint and Pipe Malcolm Guite Smoking and drinking carry known risks. Here’s why I haven’t given them up. Read now In Pursuit of Homefulness John Swinton The biblical understanding of health is not biomedical. Read now What Is Health? Peter Mommsen My grandfather’s best summer was the one he spent dying. Read now

Daily Prayer for June 30

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” Matthew 11:25, NIV Lord our God, we thank you for your Word, which is light and strength to us. We thank you for all you give us. We thank you that we may be counted among the simple-hearted, among the children. We do not want to be anything great in the world. We want only to be with you as your children, helpless little children, watched over by you, the Creator and Father of all. Grant us your blessing. Help us in all that is good and right, also in our daily work, so that we can be your children and do what you have commanded. May your name be honored at all times, your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us the wrong we have done as we forgive those who have wronged us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.   Recent articles on Plough In Defense of Pint and Pipe Malcolm Guite Smoking and drinking carry known risks. Here’s why I haven’t given them up. Read now In Pursuit of Homefulness John Swinton The biblical understanding of health is not biomedical. Read now What Is Health? Peter Mommsen My grandfather’s best summer was the one he spent dying. Read now The Myth of the Nature Cure Polly Atkin In the English Lake District I found companionship in nature, not a cure. Read now The Strange Love of a Strange God Esther Maria Magnis When my father got cancer, we prayed desperately. No answer came. Or did it? Read now