Friday after the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on October 4, 2024 by under
Scripture: James 3:13-18 (NKJV)
3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. 16 For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. 18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Devotion
As Michaelmas might lead us to wonder at God’s wisdom in surrounding us with a host of beings to serve and protect us whom we cannot see, our natural concern for ourselves tends toward “wisdom” that is demonic. We have legitimate bodily needs, so the devil triggers our fallen flesh that has trouble trusting God to provide. The devil attempts to lead the New Man away from faith through our earthly concerns. “Envy and self-seeking” are accompanied by “confusion,” as much as by “every evil thing.” Wisdom that seeks self-interest by its own works finds, instead, that the best interests of the self are not actually served. While the earthly things that are gained might boast and lie against the truth successfully for a while, they ultimately leave us with nothing but the knowledge of their loss and of how much more we could have had—and held forever—in the Lord.
True wisdom seeks what is pure, because such is peaceable: it neither puts us at odds with God, nor is clamored for by the world so that we should be robbed of it. Such wisdom is like the mind of Christ shown to us in Philippians 2:5–11, setting aside any concern with rights and privileges, ready to yield service to any who are in need. Being not hypocritical play-acting, but the fleshing out of the true realization that only by God’s mercy we live, God thereby brings righteous fruit to maturity.
Collect: O God, forasmuch as without Thee we are not able to please Thee: Mercifully grant, that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
