MORNING REFLECTION
READY:”Teach us to count our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Ask God to make this verse come alive as you study this psalm.
READ: Read through the text twice.
REFLECT: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” Meditate on God’s love and how it satisfies and makes us glad.
REPENT: V. 8, says, “You have set our iniquities before you,our secret sins in the light of your countenance.” Confess your secret sins out loud and bring them into the light and receive forgiveness.
REJOICE: Praise our God who makes us glad and satisfies us. He makes us glad for as many days as we have been afflicted.
EVENING READING Mark 7:1-23
The Death of John the Baptist
1Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands,* thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it;* and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.*) 5So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live* according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ 6He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
7in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
8You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
9 Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” 11But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God*)— 12then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’
14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’*
17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
EVENING REFLECTION
READY: As you prepare to read this text think about what the word, defile, means to you.
READ: Read the text through slowly.
REFLECT: Jesus teaches that it is what comes out of the heart that defiles a person, not what goes into their stomach. Meditate on what defile means to Jesus
REPENT: Spend time praying about the things that have come out of your heart that are defiled. Jesus said that, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’ How does our heart being far from God and things coming out of our heart being defiled relate.
REJOICE: Give thanks and praise to God who can take hearts that have had evil intentions and make them clean and new.
