Prayer: Dear God, I invite you into my life. I put my hope and trust in you, and I thank you for your great love. With it, I am forever wealthy. Amen. Reading: 1 Timothy 6: 6-19 (Click to read text) Stop and GROW: After reading the text, discuss/ponder the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Book of Faith questions, which are part of Camp Mount Luther's GROW Time with campers. QUESTION 1: What scares, confuses, challenges, or doesn’t make sense to me in this text? QUESTION 2: What delights me in this text or is my favorite part of the story? QUESTION 3: What stories or memories does this text stir in me? QUESTION 4: What is God up to in this text? Reflection: While studying abroad in Cameroon, Africa, I was invited to a women's council meeting. We sat in an un-air conditioned room (in fact the meeting space was no more than a building under construction, open to the outside world through numerous broken windows). The chairs were covered with dust, and each one had to be wiped off with rags that the women had brought to the meeting for that purpose. We didn't start our meeting with appetizers. We didn't even have water. We drank bottles of beer and soda because it was easier to get. All around me, I saw poverty. When the meeting was about to begin, we positioned ourselves in a tight circle, and held hands. I noticed immediately that the woman to my left wouldn't take my hand. Everyone else in the circle was holding the hands of both neighbors, and I quickly grew anxious, aware of my presence and worried that it was simply this presence that had created the gap in the circle. I reached out my hand again and looked at the woman. With a knowing smile, she shook her head. "It is for God," she told me. "This way he can enter in." In that moment, looking around at these women, their foreheads damp with sweat, and the unfinished paint on the floors, and the cement bags piled up under fragmented window frames, I was being commanded not to put my hope in money. I was being commanded to put my hope in God. And in that moment, all I saw was great wealth. --Courtney Dunn
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors
Anyone is welcome to contribute! If you'd like to write for us, please e-mail [email protected] Email
Get our daily devotions delivered to your e-mail box each day by signing up below:
Archives
May 2022
Subscribe |