Daily Devotion for October 3, 2026
Prayers
Scripture
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.
Saturday is “Oldies Day,” and this hymn is so “old-timey” that I have never heard it sung in church. But my grandmother sang it.
No lovelier place in the dale
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.
Chorus:
Oh, come to the church by the wildwood
Come to the church in the dale,
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.
How sweet on a clear Sabbath morning
To list to the clear ringing bell.
It's tones so sweetly are calling
Oh, come to the church in the vale.
There, close by the church in the valley
Lies one that I love so well.
She sleeps, sweetly sleeps, neath the willow
Disturb not her rest in the vale.
There, close by the side of that loved one
Neath the tree where the wild flowers bloom.
When the farewell hymn shall be chanted
I shall rest by her side in the tomb.
Thanks and Praise
I thank You for the temporal blessings of this world — the refreshing air, the light of the sun, the food that renews strength, the raiment that clothes, the dwelling that shelters, the sleep that gives rest, the starry canopy of night, the summer breeze, the flowers’ sweetness, the music of flowing streams, the happy endearments of family, kindred, and friends. Things animate, things inanimate, minister to my comfort. My cup runs over.
Do not allow me to be insensible to these daily mercies. Your hand bestows blessings; Your power averts evil. I bring my tribute of thanks for spiritual graces, the full warmth of faith, the cheering presence of our Spirit, the strength of Your restraining will, Your spiking of hell’s artillery. Blessed be my sovereign Lord!
Concerning Forgiveness
Father, I ask you to help me to be generous when I think of the attitude and actions of others. Forgiving someone isn’t an easy option, and I know that forgiveness isn’t somehow pretending that something wrong hasn’t happened. For what I have done wrong, forgive me Father. And let me live in obedience to your word, remembering that, as we forgive others, so shall we be forgiven.
Prayer of Penitence
Almighty God, who does freely pardon all who repent and turn to Him, now fulfill in my contrite heart the promise of redeeming grace; forgiving all my sins, and cleansing me from an evil conscience; through the perfect sacrifice of Christ Jesus our Lord. And turn my heart to your will at every moment, I pray.
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.
Today’s “Remember the Bible” Question
What Bible verse specifically admonishes us not to add to God’s words?
The Skeleton at the Feast
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past ... to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.
The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
~ Frederick Buechner, from Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC.
Exodus 20:4-6 (NKJV)
The Second Commandment
ou shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Notes on the Scripture
Of the commandments given by God at Mt. Sinai, this is the most difficult to comprehend. It can be construed in several different ways. Strictly construed, most Christian churches flaunt it; Jews and Arabs, in fact, follow it more literally than we do. Jews will not depict a person or object in their temples and synagogues, and strict Muslims will not make such a depiction anywhere at any time! They do not make statues or paintings at all, and their beautiful artwork is either purely ornamentation or calligraphy.
The issues of interpretation drove a huge wedge between Catholic/Orthodox churches, on the one hand, and the extreme Protestant sects, such as Puritans and Anabaptists, on the other. During the Cromwell era (roughly 1650) in England, “Roundheads” — the Puritanical and anti-monarchist faction — would raid Catholic churches, burning paintings of saints and the Virgin, busting up statues and breaking stained glass windows.
The first cause of these difficulties is that God did not say: “Here are ten commandments: Number 1, Thou shalt not . . . ” Dividing His laws into ten parts, even dividing the Bible into verses, was done by humans. These words can more logically be read as a continuation of the words preceding them, and we might get a more accurate picture if we call it the Nine Commandments.
Four Baal idols
Put the words “You shall have no other gods before Me” in the same paragraph preceding today’s text and a more accurate picture emerges. God is talking about idol worship: building statues of Ba’al and sacrificing to them, building great Molochs with furnaces in the belly, building Asharoth poles. Families of the time would even have little “household gods,” generally clay figurines on a shelf. This was a huge issue in the Old Testament, and the next 1500 years of Judaism would center on the struggle against such gods. For the Hebrews would constantly continue to lapse into actual idolatry up until the time of Christ; hundreds and hundreds of pages of the Old Testament are, at their core, the history of this struggle.
Compounding the difficulty of interpreting these words correctly is that, with the coming of Christ, the basis of faith changes radically; we are not bound by the letter of the Mosaic law, but have a duty to follow its spirit just as stringently as the Jews.
Thus, Christ would allow violations of the literal law; but, at the same time, He extended the scope of the prohibition in ways that would have astounded Moses. Primarily, Christianity has extended the general spirit of anti-idolatry to mean the primacy of serving God over serving the visible world. In a word, anti-materialism: “You cannot serve two masters . . . You cannot serve both God and money.”
Jesus had a greater reward in mind, eventually: the reward of victory over the material world and victory over death. But mankind could not make the leap directly. First, God had to train us to worship Him, and it was a supremely difficult task that took many centuries.
An Amish church.
Thus, most Christians today follow a Second Commandment that they interpret both more strictly and more leniently than the Hebrews under Mosaic law. On the “more lenient” side, most allow representations of people (and animals, objects, etc.), although inside churches there is a continuum from the extreme Protestant churches, which will not allow even a cross in their meeting place, to the Catholic/Orthodox churches, which venerate icons and statues, and kneel before them as they pray.
But all Christians are (theoretically) stricter in extending the prohibition outside direct worship. Loving God with “all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul,” means that we do not serve (or at least, try not to serve!) anyone or anything other than God and our neighbor: money, power (politics!), sex, ego, or the other temptations of the world.
