Gospel-Bearers - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/29/2025 •
Tuesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 12) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; 2 Samuel 3:6–21; Acts 16:6–15; Mark 6:30–46 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)  

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 12 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

2 Samuel. There are not nice, neat Sunday school applications to be drawn from today’s passage in 2 Samuel. It’s a world of civil war, concubinage, broken promises, busted up marriages. Unworthy motives and less than honorable means toward a worthy goal: the establishment of a united kingdom under Yahweh’s anointed.  

It’s important to remember that the Bible isn’t always being prescriptive (telling us what we ought to do). A passage like this one is more descriptive (telling us what happened). The Bible is realistic about the fallenness of the creatures through whom God is working his plan. To my mind, it’s part of what gives the Bible the ring of truth. Some actions are recorded not to inspire emulation, but to evoke from us, “Lord, have mercy. Give us grace to see your hand at work in the world around us, because bringing good out of evil is what you do. Praise be.” 

In the wake of King Saul’s death, war breaks out between the house of Saul and the house of David. Abner, Saul’s former general, offers to go over to David’s side after Saul’s son Ishbaal accuses Abner of “going in” to Saul’s concubine. (Apparently, Ishbaal suspects Abner of making his own play to become Saul’s successor.) David accepts the offer under the condition that Abner bring him Michal, Saul’s daughter whom Saul had betrothed to David but had given instead to a different husband. Weeping, Michal’s husband, Paltiel, accompanies Michal and Abner until he is told to go home. 

Today’s passage ends with the solidification of the pact between Abner and David, chiefly marked by Abner’s promise that he will convince all the generals from Israel (the northern tribes) to join David, thus uniting all Judah and Israel under David, just as Samuel had predicted.  

Image: San Jose, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Mark. Thankfully, among the things the Bible describes are the unique acts by which God invades his fallen world to bring redemption and rescue. All four gospels celebrate one of those redemptive acts: the feeding of the 5,000. Here, anticipating the offering of himself in the Eucharistic feast, Jesus “takes … blesses … breaks … and gives” the bread and the fish (Mark 6:41). By God’s grace, what should feed only a handful of people nourishes a multitude. God comes to replace scarcity with plenty, and hunger with satisfaction.  

Acts. As though to illustrate the dynamic of multiplication that Jesus’s Eucharistic act enacts, today’s reading in Acts shows breakthroughs in the gospel’s progress — the invasion of light into darkness.  

Unwilling to force God’s hand (the Spirit has said “No” to their attempts to evangelize western and northern Asia Minor [“Asia” and “Bithynia”]), Paul and his itinerary wait in Troas on the western shore of Asia Minor. (It may be noted that Troas is the site of ancient Troy, the staging area for the Persian king Cyrus’s attempt to invade Greece and Europe centuries earlier.)  

Paul has a nighttime vision of a man from across the Aegean Sea: “Come over to Macedonia (northern Greece) and help us” (Acts 16:9). Paul and his group decide that the Lord is calling them to take the gospel to Greece. The long-lasting effects of this incursion of God’s tiny army of evangelists from Asia to Europe will prove to be far more significant than Cyrus’s failed invasion. Europe will be forever changed by this boatload of gospel-bearers.  

(Incidentally, for the first time, the narrator of Acts (Luke) includes himself in the account: “…we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them” — Acts 16:10-17; and see also, 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1–28:16). Most commentators think this is a significant note. Some suggest the man from Macedonia was Luke himself, and that he himself came over to Troas from Greece and appeared before Paul that night. Alternatively, the “vision” may have been a true “vision.” The Greek Luke may have already been a part of the traveling band, and who now begins to write himself into the story as the gospel begins its foray into his homeland.)  

In Philippi, the first named convert is a woman named Lydia, a merchant in expensive purple cloth. The Lord opens her heart to believe (one of several notes indicating Luke’s understanding that faith itself is God’s gift — see Acts 16:14; and also 13:48; 18:27). She becomes host and patron to Paul and his company. These are profound breakthroughs for the gospel — reminiscent of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes — from Asia to Europe, with the anchoring of ministry in the home of a woman.  

Collect for Proper 12. O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Hot Mess in Need of Fixing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/28/2025 •
Monday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 12)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Psalm 58; 2 Samuel 2:1–11; Acts 15:36–16:5; Mark 6:14–29 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Image: "Good news bad news" by PORTOBESENO is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 12 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

I made the mistake this morning of checking the news services before beginning my devotions. Evil and folly have such a grip on our world! I’d list examples, but you can fill in the blanks. Tomorrow’s examples will be different. Except they won’t be. They’ll be different expressions of the same old same old.  

Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. The world I found when I finally read today’s biblical texts is like ours: a hot mess badly in need of fixing. Abner, former commander of recently deceased king Saul’s army, refuses to accept David’s rule. Paul and Barnabas split up because they disagree about John Mark’s reliability. Herod Antipas beheads John the Baptist. Their world and ours are aptly described in the words of the Eucharistic prayer: “When we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death….”  

Always, though, always, the God of the Bible is working to reclaim a world and people he created and that he has never stopped loving.  

2 Samuel: the messy unification of the kingdom. This week’s readings in 2 Samuel begin with David’s anointing as king of Judah (in the south), and they will conclude on Friday with his anointing as king of Israel (in the north). Amidst a great deal of intrigue, betrayal, and Realpolitik, a united kingdom is coming together under the Lord’s Anointed. Despite our fallenness (including the fallenness of our heroes), God is advancing his plan ultimately to redeem the world through his one true King of one united People.  

Acts: when even the good guys can’t get along. The power of evil and folly emerges within the apostolic band — Paul and Barnabas and John Mark are made of the same stuff as we. For unspecified reasons, the young John Mark abandoned the mission during the first missionary journey after success on Cyprus (Acts 13:13). He is cousin to Barnabas, and he may be upset by a reorganization of a mission that began as “Barnabas and Saul” but is now “Paul and Barnabas.” Regardless of the reason, when it’s time to begin a second missionary journey, Paul is unwilling to have on the team someone whose loyalty or dependability he can’t count on. Barnabas lobbies Paul unsuccessfully for John Mark’s inclusion. These two gospel-allies are at an impasse.  

This story could have taken any number of destructive turns, but it doesn’t. Rather than seek some sort of severe sanction against each other, they separate, and continue ministering the gospel. Barnabas takes John Mark back to Cyprus. Paul makes Silas his number two (Silas likely, years later, becomes the amanuensis for Peter) and heads into mainland Asia Minor, where he adds Timothy as young protégé. Through division, the ministry expands. What’s more, evidence from three of Paul’s later letters (Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Timothy) indicates that over the course of more than a decade of ministry, the breach between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark is healed. On the eve of his martyrdom very nearly the last words Paul pens are these: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry” (2 Timothy 3:11).  

Our best intentions, it turns out, are themselves in need of redemption. The Bible knows that. I’m so glad for that.   

Mark: when fools are “large and in charge.” Somehow, buffoons wind up at the head table. Reckless fools are given power over life and death. It’s that way now. It was that way then. “King Herod” is case in point. Note the quotation marks. Mark is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek when he refers to Herod Antipas this way. Antipas’s father King Herod “the Great” (would-be assassin of baby Jesus) divided his kingdom into fourths, so that each of his sons was a “tetrarch” (ruler of a fourth), not a king.  That first Herod’s ego was so “great” it would not allow any son to become greater than he.  

Antipas fancied himself “king,” but he wasn’t. His promise to Salome (early historian Josephus names the story’s dancer) of up to half his “kingdom” is the empty bluster of a blowhard. He has no “kingdom” up to half of which to give! Moreover, his aspiration to become a king will cost him everything. He has tried to dominate his brother Philip by stealing away Herodias, Philip’s wife (and Antipas’s own niece). To do so, Antipas has divorced his first wife, whose aggrieved father, a few years later, will defeat Antipas in war. Antipas is then  permanently and shamefully banished. Antipas is a king in braggadocio only.  

Alas, while they’re at the head table, buffoons entertain their audience. As long as they have power over life and death, they do much harm — witness the fate of John the Baptist. But in the end, they lose. In the end, John the Baptist’s promise of being followed by one greater than he comes true. In the end, the baptism of Holy Spirit and fire comes. In the end, the Baptist will rise, showing buffoonery and reckless foolishness to be exactly the sham that they are.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Our Lives Will Tell Beautiful Stories - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/25/2025 •

This week, we are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Beautiful Things” 

Denise comes to church wearing makeup to hide bruises from hands that had once been pledged to love and cherish her. Daniel comes wondering if anyone will notice scars from cosmetic surgery he hopes will slow his late Boomer life down. Jason comes resolving to find the strength to stop overeating. Ellen comes doubting whether Jesus can forgive this week’s purging.  

Each encased in a cocoon of “felt” ugliness; yet all unknowingly united on the canvas of an incomparable Artist.  

The Poetry of Redeemed Humanity 

“The king will have pleasure in your beauty,” runs a line in the one wedding song that made its way into the Book of Psalms. No telling how many royal brides of Israel “walked the aisle” to this incredible lyric (Psalm 45:11 BCP). A greater King-Groom, Jesus, takes even greater pleasure in the beauty of a yet more royal Bride. We are his song of love, for he came to make us “radiant in glory” (my paraphrase of Ephesians 5:27). We are his poetry, for he came to make us his workmanship (Ephesians 2:10, Greek: poiema, from which “poem”). It’s hard to take in, but Jesus’ loving design for us is loveliness. He will have pleasure in our beauty – yours, mine, and ours together.  

That is worship’s new song. And perhaps it’s worth thinking about while we’re on the subject of artistry in worship and the effective worship leader.  

Beautiful Maker 

The true art in worship is not ours. It’s Jesus’s, because he doesn’t just save us from destruction. Jesus does more for us than getting us out of debtor’s prison (though he does), more for us than delivering us from an eternal death penalty (though he does), more for us than preventing us from being devils’ food (though he does). He pulls us off the scrap heap and redeems, reworks, remakes, and refashions us into works of art.  

“You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust,” sings Michael Gungor, and that, rightly. In a scene in the Divine Comedy Dante describes sculptural reliefs of individuals whose lives are marked by God’s grace (Purgatorio 10). The reliefs are “living stone” tableaus of humility: Mary saying “Yes!” to Gabriel, David dancing before the Ark, a Roman emperor showing kindness to a widow. Meanwhile, in the very same scene, redeemed but pride-burdened souls carry back-bending stones – the very same stuff into which the lovely, grace-filled tableaus are carved. The promise for the redeemed is that eventually, in God’s own time, all our lives will tell beautiful stories.  

Along the way, we worship. In worship we participate in the beauty that will be complete one day, and that – at least according to the Bible – has already set in.  

How He Loves 

The “takeaway”? Simply a gospel-beautification inventory. Do our services cover a theological range of Christ as Guilt-bearer, Debt-payer, Dragon-slayer, Beauty-maker? A depth of sacred action: baptismal waters that purify, a kiss that confers peace, bread and wine that foretell a wedding banquet? An affective range of sorrow and joy, penitence and celebration?  

For me, though, the most critical question in crafting worship that participates in Jesus’ artistry is whether his interest in Denise and Daniel and Jason and Ellen is also mine.  

C. S. Lewis maintains that we are all helping one another to one of only two possible ends: either the Beatific or the Miserific Vision. We are all – every one of us – on our way to being either an “everlasting splendor” or an “immortal horror.” And in this life we can do nothing more important than take with full earnestness the question of our neighbor’s ultimate destiny.  

Healing Arts 

One of the reasons for tuning in to the voices of Christian neighbors from other generations is that sometimes their arresting idioms will recapture for us biblical truth. One of the greatest services we as worship leaders can provide our contemporary Christian neighbors is a remediation of these idioms and their healing truths.  

The anonymous 1st century composer of the Odes of Solomon sings: “My chains were cut off by His hands.” That’s good news for Denise. “I received the face and form of a new person.” It’s as though those words were penned for Daniel personally. “And I walked in him and was saved.” Jason and Ellen need to know that. More, we all could use a dose of: “Then I was crowned by my God, and my wreathed-crown is living. … I have been released from vanities and am not condemned (Ode of Solomon 17.4,1,3). Or, as John Andrew Schreiner elegantly adapts the lyric in The Odes Project: “Glory to You, Messiah. Glory to You, our God.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

There Is Only One of Us - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/24/2025 •

This week we are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Self-stewarding in a Multiplicity World” 

“Sir, do you realize you were going 26 in a 15-mile-an-hour school zone?” asked the police officer as he approached my car. Then, as he started to write my ticket, he added an almost gleeful, “Oh, and you can put your cell phone away.” 

I knew the speed limit was 25, which is how fast I thought I was going. What I had missed—because I was more present to my phone call than to my driving—were the signs with the blinking yellow lights. Those lights changed the speed limit to 15 mph when children were leaving school. 

Lesson: You really can only think about one thing at a time. According to molecular biologist Dr. John Medina in Brain Rules, our brains are wired that way. Spiritual corollary: multitasking is a myth. Our new media can extend our reach, but they cannot “disincarnate” us. 

Seduction and Captivity 

At the turn of the 20th century, sociologist Max Weber worried that people in the modern world had trapped themselves in an “iron cage.” Christianity had taught them to be productive. Capitalism had made their work profitable. But Christian belief was gone—in his opinion, at least. People were left with nothing but the technology they had created and the standard of living it had taught them to crave. Trapped. 

A hundred years later, we find ourselves stewards of an awesome new array of tools for connecting God’s people with one another and for aiding their adoration of the Lord of life. Lest we become trapped in a new iron cage, Christ’s followers need disciplines of the heart that make the new media our servants, rather than us theirs. 

Embodying Faithful Ministry 

As of this writing, I’ve been an “online minister” for two years. With all the busyness of the screen—the live streaming, the myriad “chats” going on, the scrolling avatars of logged-in worshipers, the world map with locations of worshipers—it’s astounding that worshipers can worship. But worship they do. I am grateful these brothers and sisters bring so much of themselves into our “virtual” worship space. 

I’ve discovered, though, that to do my job of hosting people’s worship, I have to make a conscious decision not to “leave” the service to check email, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo sports, or nytimes.com. 

What’s been helping me to avoid “disincarnation” is a new mediation of two ancient disciplines: fasting and Sabbath-keeping. 

Hunger Is good. 

Fasting makes you hungry. They say it makes you smarter. I know that an edge of hunger made my black lab, Lipton, unbelievably motivated in the obedience ring. But fasting doesn’t always have to be about food. I went out to dinner recently with a group of friends. I was fascinated to observe how many people in the restaurant—many obviously there on dates—were having a far more intimate relationship with their cell phone than with the person they were with. When I temporarily deprive myself of tools of connectivity and efficiency, I give my inner being an appetite for the relationships the tools are designed to enhance in the first place. 

Rest Is good. 

Some of our most creative thinking happens while we’re asleep. Really. That’s why we wake up sometimes with the perfect repartee for the conversation we had yesterday. We are hardwired to have a rhythm of work and rest. Rest restores. Sabbath recreates. So, I’ve been learning not to start the day checking email or my Facebook news feed, but with devotions. I’ve been schooling myself not to let my total existence be defined by the demand to respond to every call, text, chat, email at the moment it comes in, but by the enjoyment of a deep relationship with Jesus that requires seasons of rest. Naps. Meditation. Prayer. Simple conversation. Worship. Retreats. One day in seven for the important stuff besides work. Unplugged Sabbaths give me more to offer when I plug back in. 

What Michael Keaton’s character Doug Kinney learns in the movie Multiplicity is true for all of us. There is only one of us. An excarnate life—a cloned presence elsewhere—is a losing proposition. So we have to steward ourselves as best we can in the one place we can be at any given moment. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+

Diversions and Distractions - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/23/2025 •

This week, we are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Creativity, KOA, & the Wilderness” 

There’s no place for diversions and distractions when I have my creativity hat on. Well, there are exceptions—like when my wife says, “Full moon tonight. Let’s drive to the beach and take a walk!” Diversions are fun. Distractions, not so much. For me, creative moments are hard to come by, and it’s tough to overcome getting sidetracked. 

Then again … diversions and distractions provide a different angle of vision. Often, it’s the odd and the unplanned that make for great stories and unanticipated insights. 

KOA Diversions 

Recently, Peter Furler, former frontman for the Newsboys, visited the staff of Z88.3, Orlando’s Christian FM radio station, during our weekly devotions. He reflected on life since leaving the Newsboys in 2008. He spent a lot of that time in an RV with his wife, logging some 110,000 miles, seeing the USA, spending nights in KOAs (that’s Kampgrounds of America, for non-campers). Furler talked about the way that being with a different crowd—for some reason, his celebrity had escaped the KOA community—helped him see through other people’s eyes and gave him a chance to, well, slow down. 

The result? A closer marriage, a simpler lifestyle, and, in the end, a renewed sense of calling to the craft of songwriting and music-making. When he sings now it’s with a renewed sense of the power of familiar truths: “You hold the weight of the world, yet I don’t slip through your hands.” 

From the Wild 

It’s not just pleasant diversions that lead to creative insights. Consider David, the Bible’s best songwriter. Thirteen of David’s psalms bear superscriptions that place them in specific places in his life. Every tableau is painful, yet every psalm that results is a masterpiece. 

David paid no small price for the title “Sweet Singer of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). If our use of the psalms—whether as the basis for songwriting, prayer-composition, personal meditation, service-design—is to be more than “cherry picking,” we have to inhabit the stories from which they emerge. 

It’s when he’s hiding from Saul in a cave in a foreboding wilderness that David finds refuge in the shadow of God’s wings (Psalm 57:1; compare 1 Samuel 24:3). It’s when he’s feigning slobber-mouthed insanity among the Philistines that David discovers God has put his tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8; compare 1 Samuel 21:11-13). It’s as a result of being “outed” about his horrible sin against Bathsheba and Uriah that David turns to the One who alone can “wash … cleanse … purge … blot out” his sins and iniquities (Psalm 51:2,8,10; compare 2 Samuel 12-13). David’s “broken and contrite heart” can indeed make God “hide his face” from David’s sins (Psalm 51:10, 18). 

The Real Song 

I’m sure David knew he had a gift. I can well imagine him sitting in his palace, surrounded by lots of wives, children, and advisors: “Will everyone please be quiet? Can’t you see I’m trying to write a psalm of praise to God?!” But God’s interest in David’s creativity was secondary, I think. What God wanted was David himself—his heart, his mind, his affections, his obedience. Getting David’s heart took a barren wilderness, enemies that sought his harm, a meddling prophet, difficult children. The distractions made David look fully into his Father’s face. The creativity was reflex. 

When God calls us to a ministry in the arts, he seems to send us to strange places. Sometimes it’s to a KOA to make us slow down and consider another way of looking at things. Sometimes it’s into a wilderness so we can understand the desperation of our hearts, the hopelessness of life without our God. It’s in those strange places he draws from us what he seeks: our worship. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Character of Jesus - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/22/2025 •

This week, we are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Samurai Sanctification: The Seven Deadly Sins & the Beatitudes  

A few years ago, I took up samurai swordsmanship. It has not been easy, because the sword is not just about cutting stuff. It’s as much about how you move your body. My body doesn’t do Japanese well. When my sensei shows me what I look like to him, he bounces like Tigger and sways like John Wayne. What my sensei is looking for, instead, is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s liquid smoothness. To learn fluidity of motion I have to force myself to take on a persona — almost an alternate me — when I’m on the floor of the dojo. I feel like a total phony, because I’m saying “No!” to everything that feels natural. But every once in a while, when I glance at myself in the dojo mirrors, I see what my sensei is after.  

The “liturgy” of the dojo reshapes me so I can take on the other me that I must be if ever I wish my swordsmanship to be samurai. Christian worship does something like that for followers of Christ. Worship shapes us to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Worship invites us to take on a new persona: a persona so new it feels phony sometimes, even though it’s not.  

It’s simply the character of Jesus.  

True Selves 

In Matthew 5:3-12 Jesus announced that the Kingdom — and therefore life with and in him — belongs to the humble, the mournful, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful and peaceful, the pure in heart, the courageous in suffering. Jesus prefaced each saying with, “Blessed are….”  He was not piling on guilt to prove we need a savior. He was describing himself and issuing a promise — on the far side of his cross — of what he had come to make us into.   

In the first few centuries of the church, certain believers “followed” Jesus into the wildernesses of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, thinking the desert would be a place to free themselves from the dangers and distractions of the world so they could become more like their Lord. Unexpectedly, what many of those first monks (“monk” means “one who lives alone”) discovered was that they brought their problems with them. Thankfully, they provided a rich vocabulary of the obstacles to realizing the character of Jesus: the “seven deadly sins” of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, lust, and gluttony.  

The Deadlies 

Worship reshapes me to take on the “other” me Christ says I am in him and to lose the “default” me the desert fathers describe in “the deadlies.” There are a thousand ways in which worship does this work in us. At the Table, in particular, to borrow an elegant phrase from C. S. Lewis, “a hand from a hidden country touches not only my soul but my body. … Here is big medicine and strong magic.”  

The Table is indeed “big medicine and strong magic” for life-transformation. I love the fact that in many churches the entire communion portion of worship is offered in prayer: “We give you thanks, Heavenly Father, that the Lord Jesus, on the night before he died, took bread, and after giving thanks to you, broke it, and gave it to his disciples….” Accordingly, I find myself coming to the Table praying that the Lord would impart more of that new other me for my default “deadlies.” 

Humility 

Lord Jesus, you came in the humility of our humanity. You freely accepted a cruel and shameful death to take away our shame and guilt. Touch me now, please, in the simplicity of this bread and wine to break my pride and give me your humble heart.” 

Compassion 

“Lord Jesus, you wept beside your friend’s tomb and showed compassion to the shepherd-less crowds. By the cup of your sorrow, teach me to mourn my neighbor’s hurts. Forgive my envy of those who have more, who seem to be in a better place than I. By the bread of your suffering, may I long for their well-being...” 

Forgiveness 

“Lord Jesus, in the strength of your meekness, you broke the back of evil. Forgive my bitterness towards betrayers, my self-protective ire against reality that won’t bend to my will, my offense at the merest slight. As you have drunk to the last dregs the cup of judgment, tether my anger and show me the power of forgiving love...”  

Involvement 

“Lord Jesus, you ‘troubled yourself’ (John 11:33) to come to our aid. You gloriously rose from the dead to reign over us. Forgive the sloth of my spirit. Forgive my indifference to you — and to the good, the true, and the beautiful. As this bread and wine are a foretaste of a great wedding festival, may I rise from this Table and live as one who hungers and thirsts for all things to be made right...” 

Sacrifice 

“Lord Jesus, your coming was but the overflow of the eternal self-giving communion between Father, Son, and Spirit. Forgive my greed and avarice. Forgive my obsession with gaining things and financial security. As you give yourself to me in this bread and cup, may I give myself to you, to all who share this feast, and to your good purposes in this world...” 

Restoration 

“Lord Jesus, creator and restorer of all things beautiful, you came to us in our corruption. You loved — and love — with holy passion, clean hands, and pure heart. Forgive the countless ways I corrupt your beautiful gifts. By this bread and wine, offerings of your lovely creation, give me satisfaction in you, and use me to restore honor and beauty and nobility to the creation you love...”  

Deliverance 

“Lord Jesus, you said that it was your food and drink to do the will of him who sent you and to accomplish his work (John 4:34). You place me in a world of hunger, and all I think about is food for me. Forgive my blind eye to the way the righteous suffer and your prophets are persecuted. Fill me now with heavenly food and send me to fill others. Send me not to devour but to deliver. May this meal truly be one in which I become what I eat. May my life leave a trail of crumbs to lead others to you, life’s Living Bread...” 

“Amen.”  

As to the samurai me, I got a vision of the long-term payoff for working at samurai swordsmanship, when my sensei (who is Anglo, by the way) got promoted to some ridiculously high rank by his Japanese sensei. One of our more senior students whispered in my ear during the proceedings: “You know what this means, don’t you? Now they consider him Japanese.”  

May the Lord Jesus so feed us with his own self that we become more and more “Japanese.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Dual Realities - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/21/2025 •

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

On Plato & Boxing: The Art of Living in Two Planes 

In the “Heroes” episode of M*A*S*H’s 10th season, the show’s chaplain, Father Mulcahy, sits at the deathbed of one of his life-heroes, a retired boxer named “Gentleman” Joe Cavanaugh. As he comforts the dying boxer, Mulcahy recounts growing up as a scrawny, inner-city kid with big glasses who liked to read Plato. He loved Plato’s description of an “ideal plane,” which helped him imagine a better life: “rambling fields and trees. Sort of like the suburbs, only in the sky.” 

One of Mulcahy’s challenges was that he was an easy target for the neighborhood bullies. It didn’t help that he never fought back—thinking fisticuffs were “not very … Platonic.”

Then one night when he was 12 his father took him to see “Gentleman” Joe in a boxing match. “Gentleman” Joe was punching his opponent at will. With the crowd yelling, “Put him away!” Joe had stopped punching and told the ref to stop the fight because the man had been hurt enough.  

And I realized for the first time that it was possible to defend myself and still maintain my principles. If Plato had been a boxer, I suspect he’d have fought like you. That was when I made up my mind to keep one foot in the ideal plane and the other foot in the real world. I thought you might like to know that. And I just wanted to thank you. 

Uncommon Match 

Francis Mulcahy became an effective priest because he embraced his humanity. Now, the M*A*S*H scriptwriters never really allowed Father Mulcahy to have one foot “in the ideal world.” But they did show the way his keeping one foot “in the real world” lent power to his ministry: from rescuing orphans to performing orderly duties when the rest of the camp was sick, even to performing an emergency tracheotomy while under fire. All the while, he struggled with how useful his life was. Even with the scriptwriters’ muzzle, it always seemed to me, Father Mulcahy’s foot in the real world became a pointer to another plane of existence.     

Recently, a slender, but elegant, art book brought Father Mulcahy to mind. It was Thomas S. Hibbs’ and Makoto Fujimura’s Rouault-Fujimura: Soliloquies. The book comprises three things that, like Mulcahy’s character, remind us of the two planes of existence.  

First, the book catalogs an exhibition of paintings by Georges Rouault (1871-1958) and Fujimura (b. 1960) that appeared together in 2009 in New York City’s Dillon Gallery.  

Second, Baylor University professor Thomas Hibb compares the incarnational techniques and the Godward vision of Rouault and Fujimura. With his bold lines reminiscent of stained glass, Rouault firmly places God’s incarnate Son in this world of fallen Eves, sad clowns, imperious kings, and self-righteous judges. Fujimura has adapted a Japanese medieval technique of refracting light to take up forms and themes of modern abstract art, but with this twist: his refractions of light in abstract form are pointers to the Author of light. 

Third, Fujimura offers a personal testimony about how Rouault’s art saved him from existentialism’s “no exit,” and opened to him “a portal that peeks into ages past, and then, magically, invites us into a journey toward our future.”  

This slim (63-page) art book resonated with me because a worship leader is a lot like an artist. Artists and worship leaders both seek to communicate truth in a largely intuitive way. I share with these two artists a vision of God’s transcendent glory, and I realize that in my own way I’m called to “paint” in “the real world.” What Fujimura seeks to do by bringing medieval colors to dance, I seek to do through well selected songs and well crafted prayers: “inviting the City of God into the hearts of the City of Man.”   

Dual Realities 

By far, the hardest part of “leading worship” is doing those two things at once. “Leading” means staying in time, maintaining pitch, working at chops. “Worshiping” means leaving time and entering God’s eternal “now,” where “a joyful noise” may or may not be a technically excellent noise. “Leading” calls for paying attention to what’s happening among the worshipers. “Worshiping” calls for paying attention to no one except the worshiped.  

Sometimes I despair of doing both at once. But then hope comes as a heaven-sent gift. Regardless of how odd the form in which hope comes, I receive it. The television character Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy, was one such gift. 

Mulcahy, Rouault, and Fujimura—each in his own way—remind me it’s worth continuing to work at the craft of “leading” worship. It’s important to keep working at scales and charts. It’s important to look for tools that enhance the physicality of the worship experience for the people I serve. But I also need—and desperately so—whatever it takes to keep my worship foot and my leader foot in the right places.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

House of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/18/2025 •
Friday of the Fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; 1 Samuel 21:1–15; Acts 13:13–25; Mark 3:7–19a 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 10 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Once, the Christian singer-songwriter Gloria Gaither asked a room filled with young songwriters two questions. First, she asked how many in the room had written a song based on a psalm in the past year. Almost every person in the room raised a hand. Second, she asked how many had read through the life of David during the past year. No hands. She proceeded to show how many of those psalms depend on the context of David’s life for their meaning. She offered her opinion that to pluck them out of that context was to cherry-pick them. Now, Gloria Gaither is a most gracious lady, so her demeanor was inviting and encouraging rather than off-putting and dispiriting. But she made her point.  

Three psalms emerge from the events of today’s reading in David’s life.  

Psalm 52 and Ahimelech’s death. Fleeing Saul, David seeks refuge at Nob with the high priest Ahimelech (great-grandson of Eli and father of Abiathar). David notices that one of Saul’s mercenaries, Doeg the Edomite, is already in the camp. Perhaps wanting to protect Ahimelech from appearing to have chosen David over Saul, David dissembles about why he’s come. He claims to be on a mission for the king. Doeg isn’t buying it.  

David is clever enough to convince Ahimelech to allow him and his men to take the showbread that is ordinarily reserved for the priests and to take the sword of Goliath which David had entrusted to him. But David is not astute enough to realize that Doeg needs to be dealt with. Immediately after David leaves for Gath, Doeg goes and reports to Saul. In turn, Saul commissions Doeg to return and slaughter Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob. The lone escapee is Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son.  

David feels responsible for the murder of Ahimelech: “David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I am responsible for the lives of all your father’s house” (1 Samuel 22:22).  

To remind himself that God will in the end deal with wicked evildoers like Doeg, David composes Psalm 52, “A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech.’” All of us, I’m sure, live with some level of frustration at the prevalence of evil and foolishness in the world. Many of us, no doubt, wonder if we’ve done enough to resist that evil and foolishness. David’s song can help: “Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? … But God will break you down forever; … The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer” (Psalm 52:1a,3a,6). The God who is justice and rightness must make justice and rightness prevail in his world. That is one truth the entire Bible doggedly clings to. And so can we.  

And so, our lives can be characterized not by dismay, despair, doom, and gloom, but by thankfulness, trust, and praise: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your name, for it is good” (Psalm 52:8–9).  

Psalm 56 and Psalm 34: David among the Philistines.* David’s flight takes him all the way to the gates of Philistine Gath, where he pretends to be insane, even to the extent of drooling spittle down his beard to prove he is harmless (1 Samuel 21:10–15). He composes Psalm 56 to ask God’s mercy. Covering his shame, he knows, is the God who has “taken account of my wanderings; [and] put my tears in [his] bottle” (Psalm 56:8 NASB). He loves the coherence of God’s Word all the more: “In God, whose word I praise, In the Lord, whose word I praise . . . I have put my trust” (compare Psalm 56:1, 4, 10–11). Within the exercise of crafting words to articulate his situation and express his feelings, David arrives at a deeper sense of the trustworthiness of God himself. He can pretend to be confused — even mad — because he knows God’s Word is true; and what is happening outside himself does not threaten what is true within himself. 

Psalm 34 also comes from this period in David’s life when he is seeking asylum by feigning lunacy. His fool’s charade puts him in a unique position to understand that it is the “poor” whom the Lord hears, the “brokenhearted” to whom the Lord is near, and the “crushed in spirit” whom the Lord saves (Psalm 34:17–18). 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

*The following two paragraphs are adapted from Reggie M. Kidd, “David: Israel’s Sweet Singer and Architect of Praise,” in With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (BakerBooks, 2005), p. 55.  

The Commandments - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/17/2025 •
Thursday of the Fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; 1 Samuel 20:24–42; Acts 13:1–12; Mark 2:23–3:6 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Mark: what is “sabbath” for? Jesus deals with proper use of the sabbath. Despite the accusations leveled against Jesus and his disciples in Mark 2 and 3, gleaning and healing on the sabbath were never prohibited by the law of Moses. The word “sabbath” technically means “seven,” but theologically and metaphorically it means “rest.” On the seventh day, God’s people were told to do that: rest. What Jesus wants his detractors to understand is that sabbath is about more than not doing stuff. Sabbath is about restoration and healing.  

Image: In this 1768 parchment, Jekuthiel Sofer emulated decalogue at the Esnoga Source: [1] at Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam HS.ROS.PL.a-33. Jekuthiel Sofer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Today’s incidents about sabbath-rest provide an invitation to take a deeper look at any commandment: how does it further the flourishing and wellbeing for which we were created? You could reframe Jesus’s saying about sabbath (“People are not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for people”) to apply to any of the 1o Commandments. For in the end, the commandments are about bringing our lives into sync with God’s life. Thereby, they are about making us more, not less, alive. Does “x, y, or z” activity promote, or hinder, my love for God and for neighbor?  

Jesus’s gleaning and healing don’t, by any means, mean we are to take a casual approach to any of the commandments, including the sabbath. Exactly the opposite. This side of the Cross, each commandment needs to be filtered through the lens of the impact of Christ’s work and the apostles’ teaching. The idea is: how much greater is their weight now, rather than how much less? By becoming himself our sabbath rest (see Colossians 2:17), Christ deepened rather than diminished our responsibility for self- and neighbor-care, and for sanctifying time through worship. If there’s greater freedom, there’s also greater responsibility. (Huzzahs, by the way, to businesses that theoretically could improve their bottom line by staying open on Sundays but choose not to!)  

1 Samuel: how to “honor” parents. Our reading in 1 Samuel today invites reflection on the 5th Commandment. That commandment enjoins honoring father and mother (see Exodus 20:12). Significantly, though, Jesus, God’s own Son, will say, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37a). The bearer of our Heavenly Father’s redemptive anointing merits a higher loyalty than any earthly authority, even parents. It is important that earthly fathers and mothers understand that! It’s worth looking back from this perspective on Jonathan’s treatment of Saul, his father. In Jonathan’s day, God’s redemptive anointing has been transferred from his father Saul to his friend David. It would not be a true “honoring” of his father for Jonathan to have participated in Saul’s attempt to murder David. Jonathan gives his father every chance to show a softening of demeanor. Alas, Saul does not relent in his murderous intent. Jonathan chooses loyalty to God’s anointed. Think about what that means: Jonathan surrenders the prospect of his own anointing as successor to his father’s throne. Jonathan chooses wisely.  

Many of us as followers of Christ have had to make similar choices, even if reluctantly and as lovingly as possible. Often allegiance to Christ has meant following different career paths than our parents had laid out for us, going to churches that seem odd to our folks, taking on different philosophies of child-rearing than we’d been raised with. But Christ and the commandment call us to do so as respectfully as we can, mindful that we never know what God himself may be doing in hearts that had long grown cold to the faith. Sometimes, we find those stories turn in delightfully surprising directions.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Elasticity of Spirit - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/16/2025 •
Wednesday of the Fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; 1 Samuel 20:1–23; Acts 12:18–25; Mark 2:13-22 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“Change or die,” wrote Alan Deutschman in 2007. Since then, so many things have forced that choice on all of us: recession, racial strife, bruising political seasons, global pandemic. We’ve all faced one situation after another where we’ve wished: “Just show me the manual for how to deal with this!” But we discover that there is no manual, no script. Just the need to adapt or die.  

So it’s been all the more important to become more deeply rooted in the biblical story—the one reality that gives perspective to everything else.  

Mark: elasticity of spirit. There is one grounding truth that holds the whole Bible together, despite its range of genres, time periods, and angles of vision: God is wooing and winning a wayward world back to himself. One of the Bible’s most powerful metaphors for this dynamic is that of God as Groom and his people as Bride (Israel in the Old Testament, and the Church in the New). Among the many staggering claims Jesus makes for himself, none stands out more than this one: “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day” (Mark 2:19–20).  

The reason that Jesus can calm storms, heal the sick, and forgive sins is that he is himself God-the-Groom come for his Bride, Israel reconstituted in the Church. Hosea’s taking to himself as wife the wanton woman Gomer was like a movie trailer for this bigger story, this larger reality: the bridegroom is here! 

After eons of ups and downs on the way to this reality — of prophecies and predictions, of feeble embodiments and failed heroes and heroines — it takes a certain elasticity of spirit to accept it. Elasticity to realize you’ve been bereft of that kind of love. It’s the kind of elasticity that seemingly only people like rejected tax collectors and lost sinners are characterized by — people who know they have a deficit in the love column. Levi (Matthew) and his friends are ready to hear the call.  

The “righteous,” however, are stuck. Like old wineskins, they don’t have the elasticity to adapt to the new wedding wine God is pouring out. Like cloth that’s too old, too set in its ways, and too fragile even to receive a patch, they find themselves unprepared to be incorporated into God’s people who are being newly configured around the Messiah-Groom.  

Acts’ reality check: No, you’re not Numero Uno. Jesus’s message to Herod Agrippa (ruled A.D. 37 to 44), grandson of Herod the Great: “Dude, you really aren’t a god!”  

Maybe the hardest adaptation for many of us to the coming of God’s Messiah is, well, taking ourselves off the throne of our lives and of the little fake kingdoms we’ve built for ourselves. Agrippa’s death by rot from within is a cautionary tale. Which tale is countered by the retelling of Peter’s release from jail with his almost comical reunion with Rhoda and company (in yesterday’s reading), and by the report of the continuation of the partnership between Paul and Barnabas in ministering among the Gentiles (in today’s reading).  

1 Samuel: covenant love. There is profound joy in knowing Jesus as God’s Groom for us, as he binds himself to us by the blood of his covenant: “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many” (blending Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:29). Maybe one of the greatest joys within that joy is experiencing relationships shaped by covenant love, like that between Jonathan and David.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Smoke Goes Upwards - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/15/2025 •
Tuesday of the Fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; 1 Samuel 19:1–18; Acts 12:1–17; Mark 2:1–12 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Bono, lead singer of the band U2, describes music this way: “Music is Worship; whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, . . . whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire . . . the smoke goes upwards . . . to God or something you replace God with . . . usually yourself.”*  

The remarkable thing about David’s musical gift is that it has the power to pull him out of what could be a vortex of despair and doubt, and to take it all “upwards,” as Bono might say.  

Image: Adapted from "VFS Film Production: 'Milligan’s Stew'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

In our reading of 1 Samuel, we’ve come to a critical juncture. David was called in from the sheep fields to find out he’s the future shepherd of God’s people (1 Samuel 16). He has dispatched Goliath, a giant of an enemy of God’s people (1 Samuel 17), and he has been taken into King Saul’s house as though he were a son. There he has found a lifelong friend and soul mate in the king’s son Jonathan (1 Samuel 18).  

And yet, David’s situation is confusing. David has discovered that his songs have the dual power to calm Saul’s troubled soul (1 Samuel 16:23), and at the same time to launch Saul into a murderous rage (1 Samuel 18:10–11; 19:9–10). David’s been given military command—and yet his every victory is resented (1 Samuel 18:5–9). He’s been made son-in-law to the king—and yet with malicious intent on Saul’s part (1 Samuel 18:20–21,27–29). Finally, in today’s passage, David finds out that the king is plotting to have him assassinated.  He realizes he must flee. So many things seem to be going so wrong.  

It is a wonderful thing that today’s passage in 1 Samuel is paired in the Hebrew Scriptures with a psalm that David wrote on this occasion. The superscription to Psalm 59 reads, in part: “Of David … when Saul ordered his house to be watched in order to kill him.”  

The gift of David’s song-writing is that he is able to crystallize all that’s going on in his heart, and lift it up to the Lord—as though he were sending it up like sweet-smelling incense. In the very process of crafting a song, he also extrapolates from his personal story to Yahweh’s larger purpose to set right a world that has been off-kilter since the Garden. He prays for his own deliverance, and for the whole earth that lies in the grip of the power of evil. Through it all, he sings with joyful and even exuberant hope.  

Just a few highlights:  

“Deliver me … Rouse yourself, come to my help…” — Psalm 59:1,4b. David realizes that all his cunning and craft are not enough to secure his safety. He needs Yahweh to protect him. We can all relate to that!  

“…consume them in wrath, consume them until they are no more” —Psalm 59:13. David calls out his enemies’ pride (Psalm 59:12b), and he calls down punishment on their heads. What is remarkable — admirable, even — is the freedom David feels to express raw emotions to God. It may very well be that such honesty is the reason the Lord can provide David with the grace — the spiritual breathing space — to adopt, in the end, a different posture. For what we will see as 1 Samuel’s narrative progresses, is that when David has the opportunity to kill Saul, he demurs (see 1 Samuel 24 and 26). And when Saul is eventually slain in battle by the Philistines, David will lament his death: “How the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:25). The lesson of Psalm 59 is that the path to gospel-empathy for those who wish you evil is first to acknowledge before the Lord your feelings about them! The Lord, it seems, can accept anything except pretend piety and fake feelings.  

“But you, O Lord, laugh at them … My merciful God comes to meet me” — Psalm 59:8a,10 BCP). Despite the fact that he is the king’s own son-in-law and champion of the people, David has to be smuggled out a window in the middle of the night to escape Saul’s men (1 Samuel 19:11–17). His song records two facts that anchor his soul in that moment. First, David knows that above the chaos of his life, God reigns in tranquility, and can even have a sense of humor about it. Second, David knows that in the darkest of nights and the most uncertain of situations, he is not alone. He knows that what awaits him is not an unknown and frightening future, but God’s merciful and gracious presence.   

“Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob” — Psalm 59:13b. As David sings and prays his way through his own plight, he has an eye to the nations. David is mindful that God’s design is that Israel be a colony to reclaim the world since the Fall. What pains David is that Saul and his operatives are acting like pagan enemies of God — thus, David compares them twice in this psalm to howling and prowling “dogs” (Psalm 59:6,14). Ultimately, what Yahweh calls Israel to do is to promote God’s rule to “the ends of the earth.” For David, “the smoke goes upwards” for the sake of God’s mission in the world. May our prayers reflect this concern as well. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Bono, Introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms (New York: Grove Press, 1999), x,xi.