Recognizing God

He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.
Psalm 111:4
How to recognize God in the world. Perhaps it's easy when we're singing a rousing hymn in church or communing with nature. But most of our lives are not so conducive to holy thoughts or clear understanding. There's conflict and noise and confusion. And so we wish God would intervene with a wondrous miracle, or with a thunderclap or a bolt of lightning. Then it would be clear: This Is God.

But very often, it is not through the miraculous, but through grace and mercy that God is known. And grace and mercy are decidedly less conspicuous than a bolt of lightning or an earthquake. 

When a couple of obscure disciples were walking to Emmaus the afternoon of the first Easter, they encountered an interesting stranger whose religious insights were right on-point. At the close of day they invited him to supper, and it wasn't until then that they knew who he was, for they knew him in the breaking of the bread. In the grace and mercy of sharing a meal they recognized the One who had given his life for them.

As in the earliest days of Christianity, may insight and kindness and forgiveness still reveal God in our midst.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
 Luke 24:30-31
Prayer after thinking about today's devotion:
Be known to us in breaking bread,
but do not then depart;
Savior, abide with us, and spread
thy table in our heart.

There sup with us in love divine;
thy body and thy blood,
that living bread, that heavenly wine,
be our immortal food.
✙ 
After your own thanksgivings & petitions, close with the Lord's Prayer.

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