Saturday after the Seventh Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on July 20, 2024 by under
Scripture: St. Luke 11:34-36 (NKJV)
11:34 The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.”
Devotion
What our eyes behold fills the rest of us. In other words, what we look at and focus on will affect our life. In Colossians 3:2, St. Paul encourages us, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” We are to fix our eyes on Christ’s love and perfection. His Word and His Spirit are the oil and flame that light the lamp of our eyes.
Christians should especially keep these verses in front of us at all times. We are constantly surrounded by temptations to focus on poisonous dark things of the world, which encourage us to be prideful, rebellious, perverted, and lazy. We treat our Christian life as a part-time endeavor that only concerns us ‘as needed’, while we think that our worldly work and leisure are the more important, full-time concerns. Every hour of every day should be shaped by the light of our life in Christ Jesus. That does not mean that we only sit around reading the Bible, praying, and thinking about how we need to be perfect. It means that every task and vocation we have ought to be done with the Lord’s commandments in mind.
Our Lord warns us against sin and hypocrisy because that is the darkness that turns our eyes in on ourselves, and the darkness that proceeds from our own hearts is truly dangerous. Our regular jobs and our recreational times should be carried out with thanks to God and love for others, all according to His good will!
Collect: O God, Whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth: We humbly beseech Thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us; 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.
