Six Weeks of Prayer: Sunday, October 1, 2017
What’s the one thing that … It is a question asked in various ways throughout our lives. Without too much effort, it quickly goes to what lies at core of your soul. My children. A chance to do it again. Love. If I knew it would be all right. To be free from it.
When we think about the one thing that recognizes what needs to be communicated fundamentally, it comes down to hearing the news that Christ died for you. Everything else merely sets up this single event of hearing this word. Paul calls it the word of Christ: the word of “Christ and him crucified”, that it is finished. Putting all the eggs in that one basket feels somehow so vulnerable and weak, as so much can crowd out the hearing. What if I miss it? I can be so easily distracted. But we remember that the word is carried by the Spirit, waking our ears to hear. God speaks and creates. That which he wants to happen will happen. He speaks and we hear. We are given the gift of faith, and so we believe and confess that Christ died for me.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)
PRAYER
Almighty God, by whose spoken word all things were brought into existence, and by which all things are sustained: speak your word that we may hear and believe, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.