Lent Day 22 (Day 368 of Experiment)

Scripture: Ps 83, 86; Genesis 46:1-7, 28-34; 1 Corinthians 9:1-15; Mark 6:30-46


Scripture standout: Ps 86: "⁸ Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; 
   no deeds can compare with yours.
⁹ All the nations you have made
   will come and worship before you, Lord;
   they will bring glory to your name.
¹⁰ For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
   you alone are God."

His Deed/The Day: Yup! You got it! More nursing Marley back to health for today's deerderly do! But I have a new — much healthier — perspective on it today. With just a spoonful of sugar, I'm ready to make some medicine go down today. I'll be a regular Mary Poppins! Read below.


Deedcslosure: Feed the person standing beside you. Could it be that simple? Today it is easy to reach out around the world and throw $50 at an orphanage in Uganda or to a skateboarder nonprofit group helping children n Kabul, Afghanistan (true, 'nuff...such a thing exists!) And it helps, a worthy gesture indeed. Not to mention, with today's global connections we MUST be aware of and help meet needs of all humans on this planet.


But maybe our daily calling to be a good servant begins with those right around us. I liken it a little bit to my work. I am the editor of two community newspapers. Our coverage area are the historic neighborhoods flanking downtown Jacksonville. We publish stories about baseball games, about school fundraisers, about parties people are having and local city council issues. People LOVE reading our papers! We've found a nice little niche. It's simple to find out what's going on in India or Germany or Alaska — but the stuff people really want to hear about, what they're neighbors are up to, is far less attainable. We have found success by focusing on the issues that are close at hand.


This resonated with me today. It's the daily devotional from the Episcopal Church's Forward Day by Day. Enjoy, and don't forget to feed the person next to you!

Mark 6:30-46. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”

Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” He knew and articulated that politicians can speak of national and global issues, but they will not succeed unless they understand and respond to the priorities of their constituents.

As the Son of God, Jesus taught us the global. But one gift of the Incarnation is that Jesus understood the local issues. As a human being who experienced hunger, he understood that local need. When his disciples wanted to send people away for food, Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.”

We can talk about the cosmic and the theological all we want, but people are much more moved by the local than by the global. It’s convenient to talk in grand terms about theology, but it’s more important to think of the person standing beside us. Of that person, Jesus tells me plainly, “You give them some-thing to eat.”