C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The thing you long for summons you away from the self. Even the desire for the thing lives only if you abandon it. This is the ultimate law—the seed dies to live, the bread must be cast upon the waters, he that loses his soul will save it. But the life of the seed, the finding of the bread, the recovery of the soul, are as real as the preliminary sacrifice. Hence it is truly said of heaven ‘in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.’ But it is also said ‘To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it’ [Revelation 2:17]. What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Silence

We may find a violence in some of the traditional imagery which tends to obscure the changelessness of God, the peace, which nearly all who approach Him have reported—the “still, small voice.” And it is here, I think, that the pre-Christian imagery is least suggestive. Yet even here, there is a danger lest the half conscious picture of some huge thing at rest—a clear, still ocean, a dome of “white radiance”—should smuggle in ideas of inertia or vacuity. The stillness in which the mystics approach Him is intent and alert—at the opposite pole from sleep or reverie. They are becoming like Him. Silences in the physical world occur in empty places: but the ultimate Peace is silent through very density of life. Saying is swallowed up in being. There is no movement because His action (which is Himself) is timeless.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Today's Reading

Let us suppose we possess parts of a novel or a symphony. Someone now brings us a newly discovered piece of manuscript and says, ‘This is the missing part of the work. This is the chapter on which the whole plot of the novel really turned. This is the main theme of the symphony’. Our business would be to see whether the new passage, if admitted to the central place which the discoverer claimed for it, did actually illuminate all the parts we had already seen and ‘pull them together’. Nor should we be likely to go very far wrong. The new passage, if spurious, however attractive it looked at the first glance, would become harder and harder to reconcile with the rest of the work the longer we considered the matter. But if it were genuine then at every fresh hearing of the music or every fresh reading of the book, we should find it settling down, making itself more at home and eliciting significance from all sorts of details in the whole work which we had hitherto neglected. Even though the new central chapter or main theme contained great difficulties in itself, we should still think it genuine provided that it continually removed difficulties elsewhere. Something like this we must do with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Here, instead of a symphony or a novel, we have the whole mass of our knowledge. The credibility will depend on the extent to which the doctrine, if accepted, can illuminate and integrate that whole mass. It is much less important that the doctrine itself should be fully comprehensible. We believe that the sun is in the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Today's Reading

On Self-Understanding

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in Words to Live By

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TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the need to take care of oneself and not of things.

8 January 1963

I don’t mind betting that the things which ‘had to be done’ in your room didn’t really have to be done at all. Very few things really do. After one bad night with my heart—not so bad as yours, for it was only suffocation, not pain—my doctor strictly rationed me on stairs, and I have obeyed him. Of course it is hideously inconvenient: but that can be put up with and must. What worse than inconvenience would have resulted if you had left those ‘things’ undone? Do take more care of yourself and less of ‘things’!

Still snow-bound.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Today's Reading

Menelaus sat still. He had the sense that some outrage was being done to him. One could not argue with these foreign devils. He had never been clever. If Odysseus had been here he would have known what to say. Meanwhile the musicians resumed their playing. The slaves, cat-footed, were moving about. They were moving the lights all into one place, over on the far side near a doorway, so that the rest of the large hall grew darker and darker and one looked painfully at the glare of the clustered candles. The music went on.

“Daughter of Leda, come forth,” said the old man.

And at once it came. Out of the darkness of the doorway.

• From The Dark Tower

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Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ.

• From Letters to Malcolm
• Compiled in Preparing for Easter

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Today's Reading

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life. At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at a thousand removes—through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine said, the rapture of the saved soul will “flow over” into the glorified body.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Truth

“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark.

“Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”

• From That Hideous Strength
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, whose difficulties with her daughter and son-in-law continued: On the experience of forgiving; and on the tedium of dying.

6 July 1963

All one can say about Lorraine is that if she is really so brainwashed as you think, she is then no more morally responsible than a lunatic. I fully admit that as regards her husband you have been set as difficult a job in the forgiving line as can well be imagined.

Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years: and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago. So the parable of the unjust judge comes true, and what has been vainly asked for years can suddenly be granted. I also get a quite new feeling about ‘If you forgive you will be forgiven.’ I don’t believe it is, as it sounds, a bargain. The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the very same thing. But one is safe as long as one keeps on trying.

How terribly long these days and hours are for you. Even I, who am in a bed of roses now compared with you, feel it a bit. I live in almost total solitude, never properly asleep by night (all loathsome dreams) and constantly falling asleep by day. I sometimes feel as if my mind were decaying. Yet, in another mood, how short our whole past life begins to seem!

It is a pouring wet summer here, and cold. I can hardly remember when we last saw the sun.

Well, we shall get out of it all sooner or later, for even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Let us pray much for one another.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The golden apple of selfhood, thrown among the false gods, became an apple of discord because they scrambled for it. They did not know the first rule of the holy game, which is that every player must by all means touch the ball and then immediately pass it on. To be found with it in your hands is a fault: to cling to it, death. But when it flies to and fro among the players too swift for eye to follow, and the great master Himself leads the revelry, giving Himself eternally to His creatures in the generation, and back to Himself in the sacrifice, of the Word, then indeed the eternal dance ‘makes heaven drowsy with the harmony’. All pains and pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations in the movements of that dance: but the dance itself is strictly incomparable with the sufferings of this present time. As we draw nearer to its uncreated rhythm, pain and pleasure sink almost out of sight. There is joy in the dance, but it does not exist for the sake of joy. It does not even exist for the sake of good, or of love. It is Love Himself, and Good Himself, and therefore happy. It does not exist for us, but we for it.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Worry

A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The surprising thing was how small it looked. He thought he could account for this. The lack of atmosphere forbade nearly all the effect that distance has on Earth. The serrated boundary of the crater was, he knew, about twenty-five miles away. It looked as if you could have touched it. The peaks looked as if they were a few feet high. The black sky, with it inconceivable multitude and ferocity of stars, was like a cap forced down upon the crater; the stars only just out of his reach. The impression of a stage-set in a toy theatre, therefore of something arranged, therefore of something waiting for him, was at once disappointing and oppressive. Whatever terrors there might be, here too agoraphobia would not be one of them.

• From Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

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Screwtape Twists the Gift of Pleasure

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it’s better style. To get the man’s soul and give him nothing in return—that is what really gladdens Our Father’s heart. And the troughs are the time for beginning the process.

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

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TO HIS BROTHER, at the end of a long description of a delight-filled winter walk: On thanksgiving as the necessary completion of a pleasure.

9 January 1940

It seems almost brutal to describe a January walk taken without you in a letter to you, but I suppose ‘concealment is in vain’. . . .

...I dined at the Harwoods that night and came away—on Tuesday morning—as you said in your last letter ‘thanking the Giver’ which, by the way, is the completion of a pleasure. One of the things about being an unbeliever is that the steam or ‘spirit’ (in the chemical sense) given off by experiences has nowhere to go to.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 17, 2023

FAITH FORMATION LEADER CONNECTION ONLINE MEETING - When Kat Green first arrived at her current call as director of Children’s Ministry at Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church in Severna Park, Maryland, recruiting volunteers was her first priority ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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When the time comes to you at which you’ll be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to use openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

• From Till We Have Faces

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Dr. Anna Carter Florence

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 16, 2023

REV. DR. ANNA CARTER FLORENCE, GUEST ON ‘LEADING THEOLOGICALLY’ PODCAST - n the tradition of beloved writers including Frederick Buechner, the Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence has written “A is for Alabaster: 52 Reflections on the Stories of Scriptures,” recently published by Westminster John Knox Press. Carter Florence, the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary, appeared alongside the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty of the Presbyterian Foundation on his show, “Leading Theologically” ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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TO KEITH MANSHIP: On the slow process of being more in Christ; and on doing one’s duty, especially the duty to enjoy.

13 September 1962

You state the problem very clearly, and the fact that you can do so really shows that you are very much on the right road. Many don’t even get so far.

The whole problem of our life was neatly expressed by John the Baptist when he said (John, chap 3, v. 30) ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ This you have realised. But you are expecting it to happen suddenly: and also expecting that you should be clearly aware when it does. But neither of these is usual. We are doing well enough if the slow process of being more in Christ and less in ourselves has made a decent beginning in a long life (it will be completed only in the next world). Nor can we observe it happening. All our reports on ourselves are unbelievable, even in worldly matters (no one really hears his own voice as others do, or sees his own face). Much more in spiritual matters. God sees us, and we don’t see ourselves. And by trying too hard to do so, we only get the fidgets and become either too complacent or too much the other way.

Your question what to do is already answered. Go on (as you apparently are going on) doing all your duties. And, in all lawful ways, go on enjoying all that can be enjoyed—your friends, your music, your books. Remember we are told to ‘rejoice’ [Philippians 4:4]. Sometimes when you are wondering what God wants you to do, He really wants to give you something.

As to your spiritual state, try my plan. I pray ‘Lord, show me just so much (neither more nor less) about myself as I need for doing thy will now.’

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Alexander Michl via Unsplash

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 15, 2023

PC(USA)’S SYNOD OF THE COVENANT OFFERS UP LARUE’S CLUES FOR PREACHING - When the Rev. Dr. Cleo LaRue hears a sermon, he’s listening for four things ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Our prayers for others flow more easily than those we offer on our own behalf. And it would be nice to accept your view that this just shows we are made to live by charity. I’m afraid, however, I detect two much less attractive reasons for the ease of my own intercessory prayers. One is that I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him. And the other is like unto it. Suppose I pray that you may be given grace to withstand your besetting sin (short list of candidates for this post will be forwarded on demand). Well, all the work has to be done by God and you. If I pray against my own besetting sin there will be work for me. One sometimes fights shy of admitting an act to be a sin for this very reason.

• From Letters to Malcolm

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo Courtesy of fpcphila.org

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 14, 2023

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA COMMEMORATES 325 YEARS - The Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly, is also executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. On Oct. 8, she traveled to the heart of the mid council and a congregational cornerstone of the denomination to preach about First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia turning 325 ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Silence

[The demon Screwtape writes:] Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise— Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Contributed Photo

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 13, 2023

PRESBYTERIAN GIVING CATALOG RELEASES CHRISTMAS EDITION - While Georgetown, Texas, may be best known as home to the famous “Christmas Stroll,” there’s no place in town Christina Bondesen would rather be at Christmas than at Georgetown’s First Presbyterian Church.

That’s home for her.

“Advent and Christmas at First Presbyterian give our members — young and old — an opportunity to actively respond to God’s love for us by giving to others,” she said.

It was the congregation’s commitment to embodying Christ’s love at Christmas by caring for its neighbors near and far that led Bondesen, who serves as the church’s office manager, and the Mission Committee, chaired by Robert Cravens, to choose the Presbyterian Giving Catalog as the foundation for the church’s Advent mission offering last year ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion.

And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor over-the-Sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia. But after one glance at the Lion’s face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn’t say anything but then he didn’t want to say anything, and he knew he needn’t say anything.

The High King above all kings stooped toward him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.

• From The Horse and His Boy
• Compiled in A year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Gregg Brekke

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 12, 2023

STEWARDSHIP KALEIDOSCOPE - Churches rely on members with more money to power ministries that help those with less. Yet our attitudes about money can fuel or deplete our power to help ourselves and others.

Sherry Kenney, a certified financial planner and ruling elder at Central Presbyterian Church in Denver, explored these assertions in “Is it Wrong to be Rich?” The workshop was part of the annual Stewardship Kaleidoscope conference in Minneapolis, an annual conference sponsored by the Presbyterian Foundation ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "St. Nicholas’ Episcopal Church to hold Lessons and Carols"

• Service with West Texas Winds Ensemble on December 17

Staff Report
• Midland Reporter-Telegram

MIDLAND, TEXAS - Prepare for Christmas with beautiful songs and scripture readings when St. Nicholas’ Episcopal Church holds its annual Lessons and Carols service at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 17. The West Texas Winds ensemble will accompany the church choir.

Rather than a traditional worship service that anchors around a sermon, this style of service consists of Christmas songs interspersed with scripture readings, explained the Rev. Amy Haynie.

“This service is ideal for anyone who wants to hear the story of God, or re-hear it, to remind themselves of the holiness of the season of Christmas,” she added ...

• Read the rest of this MRT report ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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In the earliest days of Christianity an ‘apostle’ was first and foremost a man who claimed to be an eyewitness of the Resurrection. Only a few days after the Crucifixion when two candidates were nominated for the vacancy created by the treachery of Judas, their qualification was that they had known Jesus personally both before and after His death and could offer first-hand evidence of the Resurrection in addressing the outer world (Acts 1:22). A few days later St Peter, preaching the first Christian sermon, makes the same claim—‘God raised Jesus, of which we all (we Christians) are witnesses’ (Acts 2:32). In the first Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul bases his claim to apostleship on the same ground—‘Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus?’ (1:9).

As this qualification suggests, to preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection. . . . . The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the ‘gospels’, the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already converted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it. . . . . The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this ‘gospel’ no gospels would ever have been written.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Randy Hobson

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 11, 2023

REV. DR. JERRY CANNON PREACHING AT THE POLITY, BENEFITS AND MISSION CONFERENCE - It was up to the Rev. Dr. Jerry Cannon to wrap up the Polity, Benefits and Mission conference with preaching laced with both insight and inspiration, and Cannon did plenty of both during closing worship.

Cannon, Vice President for Ministry Innovation at the Board of Pensions, preached as others had during the conference on Ephesians 3:20–21. In addition to accomplishing abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, what else does Scripture say God has done? ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

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Today's Reading

After that talk with the Lady things got worse in two different ways. In the first place the country was much harder. The road led through endless, narrow valleys down which a cruel north wind was always blowing in their faces. There was nothing that could be used for firewood, and there were no nice little hollows to camp in, as there had been on the moor. And the ground was all stony, and made your feet sore by day and every bit of you sore by night.

In the second place, whatever the Lady had intended by telling them about Harfang, the actual effect on the children was a bad one. They could think about nothing but beds and baths and hot meals and how lovely it would be to get indoors. They never talked about Aslan, or even about the lost prince, now. And Jill gave up her habit of repeating the signs over to herself every night and morning. She said to herself, at first, that she was too tired, but she soon forgot all about it. And though you might have expected that the idea of having a good time at Harfang would have made them more cheerful, it really made them more sorry for themselves and more grumpy and snappy with each other and with Puddleglum.

• From The Silver Chair
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 10, 2023

HUMAN RIGHT DAY - Human rights violations are far too common in our world today. These violations come in the form of exploitation, discrimination, violence and many other horrors. These rights are God-given by our nature of being human and being God’s children. However, they have been simultaneously named by society and have been declared human rights by documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and countless examples of legal repercussions for those who have violated the rights of others. As Deuteronomy says, all people shall receive equal judgment and equal respect, regardless of identity, citizenship or political standing. The text also mentions that any question that is too tough for us to tackle as mortal beings should be brought unto God ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "'Help the Stocking"

OA File Photo

• Time is winding down ...

Staff Report
• The Odessa American

Time is winding down to help needy Odessans with a Merry Christmas with only eight more days in this year’s Empty Stocking Fund campaign.

The Parks Bell Foundation gave the Odessa Empty Stocking Fund a huge boost Wednesday with a generous $10,000 donation.

That boosts the daily total to $17,060.

All donations are also being matched dollar for dollar by a generous $50,000 matching challenge from the Sewell Family of Companies.

Many in our community need help this year as a Merry Christmas meal and gifts for the kiddos are simply out of reach. Will you help the needy in Odessa have a Merry Christmas? ...

• Read the rest of this OA Report, and learn how you can help

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Screwtape offers a helpful image:

Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his Will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from Our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Randy Hobson

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 9, 2023

MATTHEW 25 STORIES SHARED AT THE POLITY, BENEFITS AND MISSION CONFERENCE - Panelists from the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy and the Presbytery of the Pacific regaled those attending the Polity, Benefits and Mission Conference with the innovative Matthew 25 work going on in their jurisdictions — one related to affordable housing and the other to racial justice ...

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C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Our nature is no purer for the saint

That worships, nor from him that uses ill

Our beauty can we suffer any taint.

As from the first we were, so are we still:

With incorruptibles the mortal will

Corrupt itself, and clouded eyes will make

Darkness within from beams they cannot take.

• From Narrative Poems

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Randy Hobson

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 8, 2023

AUTHOR MARK ELSDON GUEST SPEAKER AT THE POLITY, BENEFITS AND MISSION CONFERENCE - Joining the recent Polity, Benefits and Mission Conference via Zoom, the Rev. Mark Elsdon delivered on the message of his 2021 book of the same name: We Aren’t Broke.

Elsdon, a Presbyterian pastor who’s executive director of Pres House Campus Ministry and the Pres House Apartments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founded RootedGood, told the nearly 300 people in attendance he’s “well aware of the narrative of scarcity” commonly heard in churches struggling with shrining membership and budgets ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "Highway 191 Cross hosting 'Christmas' Story today"

OA File Photo

• “It’s a special time but we want the kids to know the true meaning of Christmas”

Staff Report
• Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - People Pride Scholarship Program students and John Bushman, program founder and chairman of the Investment Corporation of America, will gather Thursday, Dec. 7, at the Calvary Cross on Highway 191 for an explanation of the true meaning of Christmas.

Students from Odessa elementary schools will attend with their parents and teachers.

The event is scheduled at 4:30 p.m. at the Calvary Cross, on the south service road of highway 191 about 3 miles east of Faudree Road. Parking will be offered on a new parking area adjacent to the cross, accessed from 191, parking will not be allowed on the shoulder of the service road. Please use caution entering and exiting.

“It’s a special time but we want the kids to know the true meaning of Christmas,” Bushman stated in a news release. “We take this time to gather our scholarship students and honor them with this special story.”

Damian Christian, local singer, will perform along with students. Kyle Rodgers, minister of St. Andrew Cumberland Presbyterian Church, will help facilitate the program.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, [Uncle Andrew] had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia, awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, baying, and howlings.

• From The Magician's Nephew
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan