{"id":23246,"date":"2025-02-28T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/urc\/urc-daily-devotion-friday-28th-february-2025"},"modified":"2025-02-28T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T06:00:00","slug":"urc-daily-devotion-friday-28th-february-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/urc-daily-devotion-friday-28th-february-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"URC Daily Devotion Friday 28th February 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

St Luke 14: 25 – 33<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them,  \u2018Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him,  saying, \u201cThis fellow began to build and was not able to finish.\u201d  Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?  If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.  So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.<\/p>\n

Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing this in Advent 2024 when John the Baptist forms part of the Church\u2019s preparations for Christmas. He too did some straight talking about the religious folk of his day.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is one of the supreme handicaps of the church that in it there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples\u2019 (from William Barclay\u2019s DSB of Luke\u2019s gospel,1953). That harsh verdict is justified by the text before us. Would he have written that of the church in Britain in 2025? Of our society today?<\/p>\n

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in The Cost of Discipleship) wrote \u2018The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity, from a life which is observable and calculable into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous, out of the realm of the finite, into the realm of infinite possibilities\u2019.<\/p>\n

Where in all of this are we to take encouragement? Faithful folk need  encouragement as much as chastisement. Jesus gives us a clue based on two well known activities of the human race, building construction and war making. To succeed in either needs intentionality. By that I mean all our awareness (physical, mental, spiritual) needs to be focussed on the endeavour in which we\u2019re involved. In this way our lives are open to the leading of God\u2019s Spirit. This shouldn\u2019t be interpreted as a plea for greater effort, the kind of effort that can lead to \u2018burn out\u2019. It is the disposition of heart, mind, body and spirit focussed on following the gospel of Jesus Christ, together, day by day.<\/p>\n

Prayer <\/strong><\/p>\n

Gracious God
grant that what we sing with our lips,
we may believe in our hearts;
and what we believe in our hearts,
we may practice in our lives.
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St Luke 14: 25 – 33 Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them,  \u2018Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “URC Daily Devotion Friday 28th February 2025”<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}