Today we hear the last half of Paul’s moving farewell address to the Church in Ephesus. There is so much for us to take out of this reading! Read it sentence by sentence and let God speak to you through Paul’s awesome address!
In the Gospel reading today, we’re back in John 17, listening in on Jesus’ prayer to the Father for His disciples. He says that they are in the world, but “they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” He goes on, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.” In other words, we are to be “in the world but not of the world.”
It would be easy for us to at times want to withdraw from the world. It’s a tough go out there, especially for those who stand up for Christ. But we must resist that temptation. Our job is to go out into the world and effect change. We can’t do that if we crawl under a rock. And that’s not what Jesus wants. He says to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” We are called to make a difference in the world. How will you do that today?
Father, thank you for sending us into the world to bring the light of Christ. Show us opportunities today to do just that. Amen.
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