Deus Misereatur

  [From my letter to my congregation sent out today, 6 March 2024] I find it interesting that Christian people were suspicious of Paul. In fact, there were individuals suspicious of Paul in the church at Corinth: “ I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh ” (2 Corinthians 10:2). To recognize that suspiciousness was in the earlier church, and even more, it was a suspiciousness of Paul, causes me to pause when I find suspiciousness rising up in my own heart. “Maybe,” I think to myself, “I should be suspicious of my own suspiciousness.” Yes, I do talk to myself a bunch.   And so, I was quite fascinated this morning as I was reading “Spurgeon’s Lectures to His Students”. These are lectures he gave to young men who were studying to become Baptist and Independent ministers in the late 1800s. In Lecture 21, “The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear,” he is encouraging

  O Lord, we lift up our voices with the Psalmist (Psalm 28) and in the name of your Son, Jesus our Lord: To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary. / O Lord God we pray for and with those who are bearing heavy strains from work or joblessness; from disease and disorder; from cracked up and crumbling marriages; from rocky and wrecked families; from darkness and depression; from agitation and anxiousness (…). Hear their plea and hear us as we join with them. Like the blind man who came to Jesus, the woman with an issue of blood who snuck up on Jesus, and the Canaanite woman who pleaded with Jesus on behalf of her daughter; may they hear you say “ Great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire ” and be refreshed and restored! Do not drag me off with the wicked, with the workers