PrayerBits for Thursday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Thursday

Scripture lesson:2 Samuel 11:1-15 David and Bathsheba

Time to reflect: “Power corrupts.” Even King David yields to temptation that is clearly stupid and contrary to God's Will. We all need protection from ourselves, and we need people to speak the word of truth even if we don't want to hear it. (David had the prophet, Nathan for this purpose.) (One technical note: Uriah refused David's offer to go home to his wife (and thus mask her infidelity – they could have blamed the pregnancy on Uriah) because the Hebrew laws for sacred battle forbade intercourse until the fighting had ceased. Uriah, the foreigner was a better follower of the Law than was the Israelite king, David!)

Moving through the day: Who/what do you have to prevent you from talking yourself into things that are not right?

Scripture:

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

 2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then [a] she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

 6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.

 10 When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"

 11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"

 12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.

 14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."

PrayerBits for Wednesday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Wednesday

Scripture lesson: Exodus 34:1-10 God tries again

Time to reflect: God had every right to just abandon Israel at this point (this is right after the Golden Calf incident). Instead, God patiently issues the 10 Commandments again.

Moving through the day: Pray a prayer of thanksgiving over the fact that God doesn't give up on us.

Scripture:

The LORD said to Moses, "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain."

So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

  Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. "O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes," he said, "then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance."

Then the LORD said: "I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you.

PrayerBits for Tuesday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Tuesday

Scripture lesson: Genesis 11:1-9 The tower of Babel

Time to reflect: Long recognized as a reference to the ziggurat in Babylon and an explanation of the multiplicity of languages, the writer of Genesis uses it to teach lessons, especially about human self-confidence and the desire to be like God. For a good part of the 20^th century, we were convinced that science was going to be the answer to everything and that everything is solvable. We now know that this isn't to be, and, in fact, some of the worst aspects of modern life are a result of science for the sake of science without a moral rudder. We kept building bigger engines for a boat without a rudder.

Moving through the day: Meditate on the difference between doing something because we can and doing something because it will be helpful.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

  So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

PrayerBits for Monday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Monday

Scripture lesson: Genesis 8:15-22 The forgiving God

Time to reflect: This passage ends with the promise of the “Covenant of Noah” that no matter how rotten we are God will not get fed up and wipe us all out.

Moving Through The Day: Pray a prayer of thanksgiving for God's grace.

Scripture:

Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

  So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

  "As long as the earth endures,
       seedtime and harvest,
       cold and heat,
       summer and winter,
       day and night
       will never cease."