Archives: Episodes

As You Go Through Life

Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind
And look for the virtue behind them.
For the cloudiest night has a hint of light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding;
It is better by far to hunt for a star,
Than the spots on the sun abiding.

The current of life runs ever away
To the bosom of God’s great ocean.
Don’t set your force ‘gainst the river’s course
And think to alter its motion.
Don’t waste a curse on the universe—
Remember it lived before you.
Don’t butt at the storm with your puny form,
But bend and let it go o’er you.
The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whims to the letter.
Some things must go wrong your whole life long,
And the sooner you know it the better.

It is folly to fight with the Infinite,
And go under at last in the wrestle;
The wiser man shapes into God’s plan
As water shapes into a vessel.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Alternate Reading: Micah 6:1-8.

Jesus at Work in his Home Town

Moved by the power of the Spirit, Jesus returned to Galilee. Reports about him spread through all that neighborhood; and he began to teach in their Synagogues, and was honored by every one.

Coming to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, Jesus, as was his custom, went on the Sabbath into the Synagogue, and stood up to read the Scriptures. The book given him was that of the Prophet Isaiah; and Jesus opened the book and found the place where it says—

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, For he has consecrated me to bring Good News to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to captives and restoration of sight to the blind, To set the oppressed at liberty,
To proclaim the accepted year of the Lord.”

Then, closing the book and returning it to the attendant, he resumed his seat. All eyes in the Synagogue were fixed upon him, and Jesus began:

“This very day this passage has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

All who were present spoke well of him, and they were astonished at the beautiful words that fell from his lips.

“Is not he Joseph’s son?” they asked.

“No doubt,” Jesus said, “you will remind me of the saying— ‘Doctor, cure yourself,’ and tell me to do here in my own country all that you have heard took place at Capernaum. Believe me,” he continued, “no Prophet is acceptable in his own country. There were plenty of widows in Israel, I assure you, in Elijah’s days, when the sky was closed for three years and a half, and a severe famine prevailed throughout the country, and yet it was not to one of them that Elijah was sent, but to a widow at Sarephath in Sidonia. There were, too, plenty of lepers in Israel in the time of the Prophet Elisha, yet it was not one of them who was healed, but Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the Synagogue, as they listened to this, became exceedingly angry. Starting up, they drove Jesus out of the town, and then took him to the brow of the hill on which their town stood, intending to throw him down. But Jesus passed through the middle of them and went on his way.

—Luke.

Jesus

Jesus spoke with the sublimest eloquence.

—Thomas Jefferson.

The best of men that e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer; a soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, the first true gentleman that ever breathed.

—Thomas Dekker.

The one name above all glorious names—Jesus.

—Bishop Porteus.

If Jesus Christ is a man,—
And only a man,—I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him,
And to Him will cleave alway.

If Jesus Christ is a God,—
And the only God,—I swear
I will follow Him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air.

—Richard Watson Gilder.

Jesus wrote no book; He formed no system; His words were jets of truth, and chose their own forms. The Empire was not in the consciousness of Jesus: His only point of contact with Rome was the cross. When His followers wished to make Him king, He shuddered and fled as from an insult. As for wealth, it seemed so dangerous that He laid poverty as a condition of discipleship, and Himself knew not where to lay His head. You cannot trace Jesus: you cannot analyze Jesus. His intense spirituality of soul, His simplicity of thought, His continual self-abnegation, and His unaffected huimility descended on a worn-out, hopeless world, like dew upon the dry grass.

—John Watson.

Alternate Reading: Acts 2:14-42.

Benjamin Franklin’s Birthday

“Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.”

—Benjamin Franklin.

Paragraph from Franklin’s Speech in the Federal Convention, in Favor of Opening its Sessions with Prayer

“I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our little partial local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest

“I therefore beg leave to move,—

“That henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.”

Franklin’s Morning Prayer

“O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to Thy other children as the only return in my power for Thy continual favors to me.”

Alternate Reading: Isaiah 42:1-21.

Jesus Befriends an Officer with a Sick Child

After these two days Jesus went on to Galilee; for he himself declared that “a prophet is not honoured in his own country.” When he entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, for they had seen all that he did at Jerusalem during the Festival, at which they also had been present.

So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. Now there was one of the King’s officers whose son was lying ill at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had returned from Judea to Galilee, he went to him, and begged him to come down and cure his son; for he was at the point of death. Jesus answered:

“Unless you all see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

“Sir,” said the officer, “come down before my child dies.”

And Jesus answered: “Go, your son is living.” The man believed what Jesus said to him, and went; and, while he was on his way down, his servants met him, and told him that his child was living. So he asked them at what time the boy began to get better.

“It was yesterday, about one o’clock,” they said, “that the fever left him.”

By this the father knew that it was at the very time when Jesus had said to him, “Your son is living”; and he himself, with all his household, believed in Jesus. This was the second occasion on which Jesus gave a sign of his mission on coming from Judea to Galilee.

—John.

Looking for a King

They were all looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high;
Thou earnest a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.

—George MacDonald.

The Soul Wherein God Dwells

The Soul wherein God dwells,—
What church could holier be?—
Becomes a walking tent
Of heavenly majesty.

How far from here to Heaven?
Not very far, my friend,
A single, hearty step
Will all the journey end.

Though Christ a thousand times
In Bethlehem be born,
If He’s not born in thee,
Thy soul is still forlorn.

The cross on Golgotha
Will never save thy soul,
The cross in thine own heart
Alone can make thee whole.

Wait thou! where runnest thou?
Know heaven is in thee—
Seekest thou for God elsewhere,
His face thou’lt never see.

O, would thy heart but be
A manger for His birth;
God would once more become
A child upon the earth.

Go out, God will go in,
Die thou—and let Him live,
Be not—and He will be.
Wait and He’ll all things give.

O, shame a silk-worm works
And spins till it can fly,
And thou, my soul, wilt still
On thine own earth-clod lie.

—Anonymous

Alternate Reading: Romans 8:12-28.

The World Stage

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

—William Shakespeare.

Facing the Future Unafraid

One who never turned his breast, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right was worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
“Strive and thrive!” cry “speed—fight on, fare ever there as here.”

—Robert Browning.

Alternate Reading: Proverbs 8.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again, with a great waking light,
And showed the names whom the love of God had blessed,—
And, Lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

—Leigh Hunt.

The Gift Without the Giver

For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.

—James Russell Lowell.

Alternate Reading: Job 28:12-28.

The Prayers of Nations

“Oh, World-God, give me Wealth!” the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was answered. High as heaven behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Annies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet;
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street;
His priests were gods; his spice-balmed kings, enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh’s race to-day, and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.

“Oh, World-God, give me Beauty!” cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble; his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sunshine race; ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.

“Oh, World-God, give me Power!” the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride;
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close meshed code;
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home;
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
Th’ imperial race of everlasting Rome.

“Oh, Godhead, give me Truth!” the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted. He became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greeks beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath foresworn, and Wealth and Power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land;
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.

-Emma Lazarus.

And Another:

Oh, Father God, give me love, the American cries.
May this prayer be granted! May he play the noble part
Of brother of man; and by pity for him who lies
In any human need, be known as the tender heart.
May his sympathies reach the farthest man of earth,
Whether rich or poor, of high or lowly birth;
Whose life is not a striving for selfish treasure,
Whose glory is not gold, nor power, nor narrow clan.
But abundant living without stint or measure,
And everywhere stands a true, brave American.

Alternate Reading: Proverbs 3.

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain

“Do not judge, that you may not be judged. For, just as you judge others, you will yourselves be judged, and the measure that you mete will be meted out to you. And why do you look at the straw in your brother’s eye, while you pay no attention at all to the beam in yours? How will you say to your brother “Let me take out the straw from your eye,” when all the time there is a beam in your own? Hypocrite! Take out the beam from your own eye first, and then you will see clearly how to take out the straw from your brother’s. Do not give what is sacred to dogs; nor yet throw your pearls before pigs, lest they should trample them under their feet, and then turn and attack you.

Encouragement to Prayer

“Ask, and your prayer shall be granted; search, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. For he that asks receives, he that searches finds, and to him that knocks the door shall be opened. Who among you, when his son asks him for a loaf, will give him a stone, or when he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, wicked though you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in Heaven give what is good to those that ask him!

The Golden Rule

“Do to others whatever you would wish them to do to you; for that is the teaching of both the Law and the Prophets.

The Two Roads

“Go in by the small gate. Broad and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and those that go in by it are many; for small is the gate, and narrow the road, that leads to Life, and those that find it are few.”

—Matthew.

And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness His rest.

—Elizabeth B. Browning.