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Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

To Submit My Day to God

Almighty God, who has given me life and breath, and another day: I do not know what this day might bring. For men make plans, and their plans come to naught, as you will it. Thus I take this day out of my hands and submit it to your will. Make me this day your servant, that I might find my hand at the tasks you have meant for me to do, and might do them as well as I can. For there is nothing better than a person should rejoice in his work, to your glory and for the love of his neighbors, as you have commanded us through your Son. In His name, I pray, let my day be yours, and let it be filled with goodness and faith.

Mason Barge 4/4/2014

For a Blessing on the Families of the Land

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who sets the solitary person in the comfort of families; I commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them, I beseech you, every root of bitterness, the desire of boastful vanity, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh; turn the heart of the parents to the children, and the heart of the children to the parents; and fill us all with true love and charity, so that we put aside petty differences and act with kind affection and the sympathy of brotherly love; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Benediction

May I go in peace, with God and with his other children, and may we love one another as Christ taught us. May I follow the example of good men of old, and may God comfort and help me and all who believe in Him, both in this world and in the world which is to come.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

1 Corinthians 11:26-34 (ESV)

The Lord’s Supper [3]

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another — if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home — so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

Notes on the Scripture

aving chastised the church members in Corinth for their behavior when they came together for the Lord's Supper and then put them in mind of the great moment their worship celebrated (1 Cor. 11:17-25), Paul now “lays down the law.” They would be expected to take to heart Christ’s teachings, and behave accordingly, when they came together for worship. Simply showing up for a service to eat and drink would bring God’s discipline upon them in this world.

This is not the “wrath of God,” but rather, the physical, earthly correction that the Holy Spirit will give to us sometimes to correct wrongful behavior; a spanking, as it were. We see this kind of correction in great sins of today. Reformed drug addicts will often say that they had to “hit their bottom” before the lesson came home to them, a painful lesson of physical or moral degradation, perhaps prison, perhaps the death of a fellow traveler; and generally, they will find God in climbing out of the hole their behavior has dug for them.

Pride, adultery, anger, theft — there is no sin that the Holy Spirit will not see fit to correct, at some point, not as judgment but as correction, for God wants nothing more than for us to come to Him and be saved. This is God's love, not His wrath; for He seeks to divert us from conduct that will condemn us when His judgment comes.

The poor behavior at worship would have to stem from a general failure to grasp the duty of love to one's fellow man; one who loves his brothers would not watch them go hungry, at a church meeting, while eating supper. And by the same token, how could they grasp the significance of the Lord's Supper and behave thus? So Paul’s teaching is harsh, although logical: such conduct is equivalent to responsibility for causing Christ’s death; it is the attitude of a thoughtless bystander who could be led to yell, “crucify Him.”

Farewell of Paul and Peter, by Alonzo Rodriguez (16th century).

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