In the past, I always got side-tracked during the late summer and early fall as I read Day by Day We Magnify Thee (also available in an updated reprint)*. Somehow, the July-to-September readings on sanctification and fruit and citizenship and good works always seemed so oppressive that eventually I just kinda sorta didn't get around to reading it each day. I'd pray my psalms and collects, but would climb out of bed and "forget" to read Day By Day.
As time went on, as I continued to listen to true preaching, as I began to understand the freedom of a Christian and the way the Gospel (not the Law!) works in us to change hearts and lives, I began to realize that my Day by Day wasn't getting set aside during summer. Those things that Luther had written became joyful and good and comforting, and were no longer seen as the demands that I'd always felt them to be.
But now that we're in the three-year pericopes, now that the readings in Day by Day are disconnected from the flow of one week's sermons into the next, it's getting hard again to keep reading them through this time of year. I find this sad, and I don't quite know what to do about it.
* Footnote -- Interestingly, now that the book is back in print, the price on the used copies of the original has dropped from $40-100 down to $1-4. That's how good this book is, that people were willing to pay $40 or more to buy it when it was out-of-print.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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The three year series messed me up a little with the Day by Day as well. I am not as "theologically advanced" as you! so I e-mailed pastor and asked, "where am I suppose to be??? I'm so confused!!!!" haha. He helped me out, of course. However, even if the Day by Day reading doesn't flow during this three year series, I can pick a day and it ALWAYS hits home for one reason or another.
ReplyDeleteIt DOES help that he's been marking the "Congregation at Prayer" with "Whateverth Sunday after Pentecost" instead of the propers number. So when I got lost for Day By Day, I can just subtract one number from the number on CaP, and then I know where we are in the Sundays after Trinity. Somehow, though, I feel like I'm trying to keep my bearings according to the one-year calendar, like as if somebody decided I needed to use metric and, since I couldn't think metric I just had to keep translating into the system I DO understand (which is the one-year pericope). Maybe someday I'll get used to it.
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