Love endures, so we also may endure

Friday, April 4, 2014 Devotions: Ps 95, 102, 107:1-32; Ex 2:1-22; 1 Cor 12:27-13:3; Mk 9:2-13 Come, friends, and let us sing to the Lord, making a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving, raising songs of praise. For YHWH is the great God, a great High King over all spiritual beings. In His hands are the depths of the earth; the heights of mountains belong to Him; the sea is His, for He made it, and His hands shaped the dry land. Come, then, let us worship and bow down, kneeling before YHWH our Maker. He Is ouf God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand. Don't harden your hearts as they did who rebelled against God in the wilderness, at Meribah and Massah. That generation fell in the desert, under God's wrath; they never entered the land of promise, never came into God's rest. Let God hear and answer; my days pass like dry smoke; I groan and languish like a solitary owl, like a vulture in the wilderness. My enemies taunt me with my weakness and my sins; I eat ashes, not bread; I am cast away, and I wither like dry grass. But You, my Lord, are enthroned forever; Your name is glorious and everlasting. Let those who read this understand, so that they may praise the Lord and praise His name. He has broken my strength in midlife, but I lean on Him and I am sustained. My children and grandchildren may dwell secure and their offspring in turn will be established before our God. Let the redeemed of the Lord testify; let those He has gathered rejoice and praise Him. Let all whom He saves thank the Lord for His steadfast love, offering sacrifices of thanksgiving. Wherever people go, whatever they do, God is there to protect and deliver them from their distress. He stills storms; He guides sojourners to safety. Let the assembly of His people praise our God! Under Pharaoh's sentence of death for every newborn male baby, a Levite couple had a beautiful boy; they concealed him for three months. And when the mother could hide her son no longer, she prepared a basket of bullrushes, waterproofed it with pitch and bitumen, and had his older sister place the child in his basket along the shore of the Nile River. His sister hid nearby to see what would happen to her infant brother. Presently, one of Pharaoh's daughters came down to the river bank, accompanied by her retinue, to bathe. She noticed the basket and sent one of her attendants to fetch it; opening the basket, she saw the baby and took pity on him. The Hebrew girl stepped forward and asked if the princess wanted her to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child; she brought their mother to the Egyptian princess, who directed the woman: 'Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.' So the mother recovered her son for a time, and got paid to care for him! When the child was weaned, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and she adopted him as her son and named him Moses, saying 'I drew him out of the water.' Moses was raised in Pharaoh's household; one day, after he had become a man, Moses went out to visit the Hebrews, to look on their burdens. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew; Moses looked around, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day, he went out again, and this time came upon two Hebrews struggling together. He challenged the man who did the wrong: 'Why do you strike your fellow?' And the man replied, 'Who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?' At this, Moses understood that his crime had been observed, and when news of it came to Pharaoh, he sought to execute Moses. But Moses fled, and sojourned in Midian; he sat beside a well. The priest of the Midianites had seven daughters and they came and drew water for their father's flocks. Some shepherds came and drove the women from the well, but Moses arose and helped them and watered their animals. When the daughters returned to their father, the recounted the help the Egyptian stranger had given, and the priest sent them back to offer the man their hospitality. Moses settled in with the priestly family; the father gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses as a wife. Presently, she bore him a son, whom Moses named Gershon, for as he said, 'I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.' Paul wrote to the Corinthians: You are Christ's body, and individually, its members. God has appointed in the church, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then miracle-workers; then healers, helpers, administrators, and speakers in various kinds of tongues. No one has every gift, and each has at least one. You should earnestly desire the higher gifts. Now, let me show you a still more excellent way: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have no love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith—so much as to move mountains—but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and deliver my body to flames as a sacrifice, but have not love, I gain nothing! Jesus had told the crowd of His disciples that some among them would see the kingdom of God coming in power before they died. About six days later, Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him and led them up a high mountain. And He as transfigured before them; His garments became glistening white, whiter than any laundry on earth could bleach them. And they saw Moses and Elijah, conferring with Jesus. Peter blurted out, 'Master, it is well that we are here! Let us make three booths, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.' For Peter didn't know what to say—the three apostles were terrified. A cloud overshadowed them, and a Voice from the cloud said, 'This is My beloved Son: Listen to Him!' As as they looked around, they saw only Jesus. As they were descending the mountain, Jesus charged them to tell no one what they had witnessed until the Son of man should have risen from the dead. So they kept the matter among themselves, questioning what 'rising from the dead' might mean. They asked Jesus, 'Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come?' And He said, 'Elijah does come first, to restore all things. How is it written of the Son of man, that He should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you: Elijah has already come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, just as it is written about him.'