Welcome

The intent of Pilgrim Processing is to provide commentary on the Daily Lectionary from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The format for the comment is Old Testament Lesson first, Gospel, and Epistle with a portion of one of the Psalms for the day as a prayer at the end.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

19 September 2012




Job's response to God is "I am an idiot."  He sees that what he has done is magnify himself and his experience in such a way as to lose perspective.  He is willing to bow before the Lord and confess that he is insignificant in the grand scheme of things but the truth is Job is significant, the Lord had noticed him in the beginning and now troubles to reveal Himself to Job.  Job knows the Lord sees him and hears him.  The three friends come in for rebuke for speaking wrongly for and about the Lord (what about Elihu?) and they are required to make sacrifices for their sin.  Job is asked to pray for them and when he does, the Lord greatly blesses Him.  We need the humility of Job to inform our lives lest we make the same mistakes he and his friends made.

What does it mean to hate this life?  Are we to be unconcerned about this life?  Surely we are not meant to live by the motto, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die."  We are to hate this life in the sense that we place the value of eternal life higher than this temporal life.  We must be willing to risk everything if need be for the sake of eternity.  We have been given a life to use for the glory of God, to make Him known in a sinful and broken world but in order to do so we have to give up all claims to self-glorification and recognize that what Jesus has done for us is so incredible that we will do anything for Him, not from obligation but from love.  He has shown us the way, speaking of the time having come to be glorified while knowing that means death on a cross.  The Greeks signify the rest of the world, now the world is looking for Jesus, the time has come.

The slave girl had a spirit that pointed out the truth, that Paul was a servant of the Most High God so why was Paul annoyed?  The Spirit of Divination was not from the Lord, and the girl was simply to be pitied as she was nothing more than a means of making money to her owners, she was a slave to the spirit and her owners.  She needed deliverance and Paul did not need a false spirit to gain glory in this way.  The Spirit in Paul overcame and cast out the spirit in the girl, proving that it was not from God.  The loss of income, however, angered the girl's owners.  Paul and Silas get a beating and imprisonment for their righteousness and kindness to the girl.  Life isn't fair.

No comments: