(I have decided to continue writing these little devotions based on the Daily Lectionary. I will also resume writing the Glimpses of God’s grace that I see in everyday experiences. FLK)

Devotional Text: John 14: 1-14.

Text: In my Father’s house there are many mansions; I go to prepare a place for  you.” (v. 2, KJV)

I prefer the King James “mansion” to the more modern “dwelling places.” It sounds more extravagant and God’s grace is nothing if not extravagant! Jesus spoke these words on the last night that He was with His disciples. After washing their feet, He sat down with them and talked about His “leaving”–His death. At the time they did not understand. They did not understand until after the Easter experience.  Only by looking back at what He said and did, did they understand.

The night my mother died, I drove my father to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. I had only returned to my hometown to accept a call a few weeks earlier. In the darkness of the early morning as we made our way down a winding road my father said to me, “I guess that this is why God brought back to Peoria.” The implication was in order to take care of him. If that was “the purpose”, it was short lived because he joined my mother in that “place of many mansions” three nights later.

Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that we can only see the Hand of God in our lives as we look back over our life. At the time an event occurs, we can’t see God’s hand. I believe that God speaks to us, more often than not, not through burning bushes or flashes of lighting. God is more subtle than that. God speaks to us through the circumstances of our lives.

There are some things in life we will never understand. Other things will become clear as time passes. But in each event it is through faith that we learn to trust in the God who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

A Prayer for the Evening: “In the beginning, O God, your Spirit swept over the chaotic deep like a wild wind and creation was born. In the turbulence of my own life and the unsettled waters of the world today let thee be new birthings of our Spirit. In the currents of my own heart and the upheavals of the world today let there be new birthings of your mighty Spirit. (J. Philip Newell)