I grew up with the childhood hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But it’s one thing to read about God’s love in a book, and another thing entirely to experience it in the form of God’s “voice.”

My father passed away when I was in my late 30s. We did not have a particularly close relationship, and throughout my entire life, I cannot think of a single time when he told me he loved me. I can, however, recall any one of a number of very hurtful things he said. As I got older, I realized that he said these things not because he was a cruel person, but because of his own feelings of insecurity and fear. That said, he showed tremendous dignity and courage in facing death from a very nasty form of cancer.

A day or two before he died, I was visiting with him while he lay in bed. He was at a point where he simply couldn’t get up any longer. We spoke mostly about how Mom was doing, and what would happen with the family business going forward. When it came time to leave, I walked to the door and turned to say goodbye. “I’ll see you later, Dad,” I said. As I reached the door, however, I heard God’s voice saying, “You don’t know that you’ll see him again. You have to go back in there and tell him you love him.” I did. And he told me he loved me. Those were the last words we said to one another.

That was the first time I can really remember hearing God’s voice, but thankfully not the last. It is the love that God has expressed at those times that has enabled me to overcome the fears and insecurities that keep me from not only loving others but loving myself.

Lord, I thank you for speaking to us. Help us to realize that your voice is always below the surface of our fears, and grant us the serenity to listen. Amen.
-Michael Boss

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” -Psalm 51:1

This psalm was uttered in the aftermath of David’s behavior in sending Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to war and having him die on the front line of battle so that he (David) could have Bathsheba as a wife. David knew that he had sinned grievously, and there were consequences from that sin. (The story is in 2 Samuel 11:1-12:23 if you need more context.)

The Greek word for sin is άμαρτια (“hamartia”) and according to Strong’s Biblical Lexicon, one of the definitions is “to miss the mark”. This jives with the inclusion of this verse as part of the opening words in the Morning Prayer section of the “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” in the Book of Common Prayer. (It is on page 137 for those reading this in manuscript form and is here for those who are reading this online.) I find its inclusion appropriate because I know I miss the mark with my life way more often than I like to admit, and I think it helps us to start off the day with a clean slate while reminding us that our God is a God of mercy.

The agape aspect of this comes in the form of our sins being put on Christ who died for them, giving us life instead of death. God loves us so incredibly much that He sent His son to die for us. That is the deep-reaching and soul-changing aspect of why the Greek language distinguishes this form of love from the others.

Gracious God, thank you so much for your mercy and forgiveness. Help us remember that we can come to you and confess our sin to you when we miss the mark with our lives. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.” -Psalm 13:5

I had attended a missions conference called Urbana during my Christmas break in 2000 with 20,000 other college students and missionaries, and my entire chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a pan-Christian organization for college students, came home with varying degrees of bronchitis and pneumonia. I had already ended up in the emergency room needing nebulizer treatments before I even attended the conference, so my bronchitis was hitting me harder than most people. Because I was so sick, the energy that usually went to keeping my brain chemistry balanced was diverted to help my body heal, and this was causing me to deal with serious depression.

That particular day, my mom had taken me back to the campus of UC Santa Cruz where I was finishing up my senior year. When she left my dorm, she handed me a late Christmas present, a calendar with pictures of nature interspersed with quotations from the book of Psalms. When I unwrapped it, today’s Scripture appeared on the picture for the month of January. I decided to look up the Psalm and was astonished at what I found:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

I wept because it was exactly how I was feeling. I mean, where was God in this situation where I was suffering so much? Then, I read the last two verses and started weeping harder:

But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

It was a reminder that we are to trust in God’s love and that we can approach God with the things that are causing us trouble.

The lesson of that calendar page has stuck with me, and even on days like today when the panic and anxiety get to be too much, I know I can call out to God for help. As Jim Wallis, editor of “Sojourners” magazine said at the end of a podcast, “God is so much bigger than all the things we fear.”

Gracious God, thank you for dealing bountifully with us even when we just cannot see it through the tears and the panic. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.” –Job 10:12

Poor Job! He has led a virtuous life. In all things, he has been blameless. But now, God allows Satan to put Job to the test: will Job still praise God if his life becomes total misery? “Betcha he won’t,” Satan says. “Betcha he will,” God counters. And Satan goes to work. Job’s livestock is carried off and all his servants killed. Job is suddenly impoverished. His ten children are killed when a house collapses on them. Then in Satan’s second act, Job is covered with loathsome sores and misery. Job’s helpful friends show up to point out that Job must have been a terrible sinner because this wouldn’t have happened to a virtuous man. Standard theology of the day. Fess up, Job.

Even Job’s wife says, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.”

And yet Job persists. Angry? Yes. Wanting to confront God? Yes. But ready to back out of his relationship with God? Not now. Not ever.

Things do go wrong in our lives. Terrible things happen to good people, things they don’t deserve. But isn’t that universal? I don’t know anyone who hasn’t suffered loss, pain, wounds. There have been extreme times when we were near despair. So in tough times do we still praise God? In our futures will there be light in the dark times? Will we wonder: where is the light? Where is God?

Jesus never said life would always be easy. But he did say that he, love itself, would be there with us. And he has been. Is now. And will be.

If Job can confess, “You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit,” maybe, just maybe, you and I can do the same.

Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah is a prayer that catches Job’s attitude. He writes…

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
-Tom Worrell

On a late September day in 1978, six sailor friends and I set off from Rockport, Maine toward Huntington, N.Y. We left Penobscot Bay on a stiff wind and pointed the compass south-southeast toward Long Island. As day dissolved into evening, the weather deteriorated and we found ourselves in the eye of a powerful Atlantic storm. Battered by 30-foot waves, our Irwin 39’ eventually lost power, all radio communication, and the mast. We lurched from port to starboard as the vessel continuously tried to right itself.

At the mercy of weather and every crest and swell of frigid waves, I had a choice: panic or acceptance. I chose the latter and descended into a state of utter calm. If this was my time to die, at 21, that was God’s will. As my friend, the captain of Liberty, sent up fizzling red flares into the dark sky; I sang:

Kumbaya, my Lord,
Kumbaya;
Kumbaya, my Lord,
Kumbaya;
Kum bay ya, my Lord,
Kumbaya,
O Lord, kumbaya.

Yes, come by here, my Lord, I prayed. Come by here.

Many moments later—a few hours? A lifetime?—a blinding white light shone from the horizon. It was not yet dawn. As the light approached, the silhouette of a huge naval destroyer gained on us. After many harrowing hours, we were found and rescued, one person at a time ascending a Jacob’s ladder to safety onto a 448-foot U.S. Naval vessel. All the hours we didn’t know if anyone had seen our flares, they did.

God did too. This experience taught me the power of God’s protection and love. While we were floundering, He was on the way. Another lesson? I have counted every day since a gift (now at 63). God is good. God is faithful. God is love.

Dear Lord, help us to receive each day as a gift and abide in the knowledge that You are ever good, faithful, and loving. Amen.
-Ashley Sweeney