Week of Proper 29, Year Two
[Go to Mission St Clare for an online version of the Daily Office including today’s scripture readings.]
Today’s Readings for the Daily Office:
Psalms 140, 142 (morning) // 141, 143:1-11(12) (evening)
Zechariah 14:1-11
Romans 15:7-13
Luke 19:28-40
The most famous Biblical image of escape and liberation is the Red Sea, parted by blowing winds. But in today’s first reading, God’s people find another escape route. The prophet Zechariah proclaims a day when God will vindicate the captivity, robbery, sexual assault, and exile that his people have endured. On that day, God’s “feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives,” and the mountain “shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley.” Then, God’s people “shall flee by the valley of the Lord’s mountain.”
It seems that God’s feet, firmly planted on the mountain, drive it apart until God straddles a valley wide enough for God’s people to find their way to true freedom and security. And God hovers over the whole earth as one who knows the way to justice and peace.
These images of God parting seas and splitting mountains remind us that God makes many ways to the kingdom. Not only that, but some of these ways, like today’s valley, are very wide. Whether our paths are clear or completely surprising, and whether the way before us seems narrow or wide, may we find the ways that God is creating for us. God’s ways show us how to inhabit this earth alongside one another as a just people. We just have to do the walking.
Lora Walsh blogs about the Daily Office readings at A Daily Scandal. She serves as Priest Associate of Grace Episcopal Church in Siloam Springs and assists with adult formation and campus ministry at St. Paul’s in Fayetteville, Arkansas.