God reaches out to us, as we are going about our lives, and touches us. And then waits for our response. We can choose to respond or not. If we do, we’ll be different. Other people won’t understand. We won’t understand all the reasons and implications. But we know that God touched us, and we bear witness to that touch. And as we live in obedience to that touch, our understanding and relationship with God will deepen.

+++

For our hospital Sunday services, we use the Revised Common Lectionary. From it, we have readings from the Old Testament, the Letters, and the Gospels.

The texts for Sunday included two stories familiar to me, and perhaps to you. The Old Testament story was from I Samuel 16, about Samuel’s trip, at God’s direction, to anoint David as the second king of Israel. The Gospel reading was all of John 9, about a man who was born blind and what happened after Jesus made mud with dirt and spit and rubbed it on his eyes.

As I read the two passages, I tried to understand how to summarize them, or teach them, or something. What I finally did was to write a very short sermon which I gave three times. Once as it is, the second time with illustrations from the texts, and the third time as it is again.

Rather than unpack it all for you, I’ll simply let you read it, and read the texts. Although it is possible that I may unpack a couple parts that intrigued me as I was reading and reflecting.

For today, it is enough to offer you the message:

God reaches out to us, as we are going about our lives, and touches us. And then waits for our response. We can choose to respond or not. If we do, we’ll be different. Other people won’t understand. We won’t understand all the reasons and implications. But we know that God touched us, and we bear witness to that touch. And as we live in obedience to that touch, our understanding and relationship with God will deepen.

Peace be with you.