Daily Lent Devotions from Church Street UMC
Saturday, March 20
By Mrs. Mamie Lee Finger, Jr., February 19, 1978
Life Within You and Me
Read: John 1-17
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. …He came to bear witness to the light,… that all might believe. …And the Word became flesh…full of grace and truth. …From his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.”
With the coming of the movie, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, I went back to Hannah Greene’s original written words. Again, I was moved by the reflective and deep thoughts of this young out-patient from the hospital:
“Over the text of John Stainer’s ‘Seven-Fold Amen’, she looked out into the congregation on
Sunday and wondered if they ever thanked God for the light in their minds, for friends, for cold
and pain responsive to the laws of nature, for enough depth of insight into these laws to have
expectation, again for friends, for the days and nights that follow one another in stately rhythm,
for the sparks that fly upward, for friends . . .
Did they know how beautiful and enviable their lives were? She realized more and more that
her few spare hour pastimes provided too little in which to test and exercise her fragile ‘Yes’
to a newborn reality.”
I began to wonder – do we actually test, or exercise, our sometimes fragile YES to reality, which can be newborn for us each day?
DO WE?
CAN WE?
WILL WE?
Prayer
Thank you, God, for the gifts of our life – for the light in our minds – for friends, for the expectations of living. May we be transmitters of life, agents of Your activity, facilitators of living fully. With Faith and in hope, may we break open and see the world of opportunity that is ours as we ourselves are open. Then, through Grace and Truth and Light, may we lay claim to our greatest potential, Christ within us. Amen.
