Today's promise:
God's timing is perfect
Enduring
love
Give
thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.
Psalm 136:1 NLT
The unforgettable responsive reading
It
was midnight on Thursday, February 8, A.D. 356, and Athanasius, a leader in the
early Christian church and passionate defender of the deity of Jesus Christ,
was leading a worship service. Suddenly loud shouts and clashing armor could be
heard outside the church. Soldiers had come to arrest him.
But
Athanasius said, "I didn't think it right, at such a time, to leave my
people," so he continued the service. He asked a deacon to read Psalm 136
and then requested the congregation to respond with the refrain, "His
faithful love endures forever," which they did twenty-six times over the
din of the soldiers outside.
Just
as the final verse was completed, the soldiers rushed into the church,
brandishing their swords and spears and crowding forward up the nave toward
Anthanasius. The people yelled for Athanasius to run, but he refused to go
until he had given a benediction. Then some of his assistants gathered tightly
around him, and, as he recounts it, "I passed through the crowd of people
unseen and escaped, giving thanks to God that I had not betrayed my people, but
had seen to their safety before I thought of my own."
Athanasius
was portraying to his people God's love, which endures forever. He was willing
to lay down his life for his flock — just as Jesus had laid down his life for
his flock a few centuries earlier.
Since
God's "faithful love endures forever," why is there ever any need to
worry?
adapted
from The One Year® Book of Psalms
with devotionals by William J. Petersen and Randy Petersen (Tyndale) entry
for November 8
Content
is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications
of Tyndale Publishing House
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