The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, who had been pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He led a nonviolent protest by boycotting the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama. On December 31, 1955, Rev. King stated: “If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, ‘There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’

William J. Federer. American Minute

Have we taken Christ?
Faith is the bond of the union.
Christ is joined to us by his Spirit,
and we are joined to him by faith.
Faith ties the marriage knot.
--- Thomas Watson


What is it all going to amount to?
It should work out into rest in God
which means oneness with God,
a oneness which will make us
not only blameless in His sight
… but a deep joy to Him.
… Oswald Chambers


The best of all is, God is with us. Farewell.
--- John Wesley – his last words

... from here, there and everywhere

ש     30 Charm can lie, beauty can vanish,
but a woman who fears ADONAI should be praised.
ת     31 Give her a share in what she produces;
let her works speak her praises at the city gates.

Stern, D. H. (1998). Complete Jewish Bible-OE
: An English version of the Tanakh (OT) and
B'rit Hadashah (NT) (1st ed.). Clarksville, Md.: Jewish
New Testament Publications.

                Yesterday

     The God of Israel will be your rereward. --- Isaiah 52:12.

     Security from Yesterday. “God requireth that which is past.” At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

     Security for To-morrow. “For the Lord will go before you.” This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our rereward. God’s hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.

     Security for To-day. “For ye shall not go out with haste.” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.

     Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

Chambers, O. (1993). My Utmost for His Highest

Whose address was the corridors
  of Europe, waiting for the summons
  to be interrogated on their lack of guilt.

  Their flesh was dough for the hot
  ovens. Some of them rose
  to the occasion. The nerves of some

  were instruments on which the guards fingered
  obscene music. Were there prayers
  said? Did a god hear? Time heard

  them, anticipating their requital.
  Their wrong is an echo defying
  acoustical law, increasing not fading.

  Evil's crumbling anonymity
  is at an end now. We recognize
  it by the eternal phosphorous

  of their bones, and make our way on
  by that same light to the birth
  of an innocence that is curled up in the will.

The Poems of R.S. Thomas , (Fayettesville: University of Arkansas Press), 1985

     The darkest times are ripest for revival. John Foxe observed: “What time there seemed to be no spark of pure doctrine remaining, Wycliffe, by God’s providence, sprang up, through whom the Lord would waken the world.” John Wycliffe was a brilliant professor at Oxford whose logic and popularity made him England’s leading theologian. But to the horror of the church—and long before Luther—Wycliffe denounced the arrogance, power, and wealth of the Catholic clergy, rejecting the infallibility of pope and council. Taking the Bible as the only source of truth, he proclaimed the gospel of justification by grace through faith. Wycliffe wasn’t the first to criticize the papacy, but he was among the first to attack the doctrines that undergirded papal theology. For that reason, he’s called “the Morning Star of the Reformation.”

     Church authorities counterattacked: It hath been intimated that one John Wycliffe, professor of divinity, hath gone to such a pitch of detestable folly, that he feareth not to teach and preach, or rather to vomit out of the filthy dungeon of his breast, certain erroneous and false propositions and conclusions. … But Wycliffe enjoyed support from the people. When the archbishop of London prohibited his preaching, Wycliffe spent his time preparing the first English translation of the Bible.

     The strain of his public battles aged Wycliffe, and in his sixtieth year, on the last Sunday of 1384, presiding over the Lord’s Supper, he was struck with paralysis and fell to the ground. His friends carried him to bed where he died on December 31, 1384. Forty-one years later, still hated by his enemies, his bones were exhumed, burned, and thrown into the river. As an ancient biographer wrote, “They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world.”

     God blesses those people who refuse evil advice and won’t follow sinners or join in sneering at God. … Those people succeed in everything they do.
--- Psalm 1:1,3.

Morgan, R. J. On This Day 365 Amazing And Inspiring Stories About Saints, Martyrs And Heroes

     Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
--- Psalm 73:25–26.

     God’s glory is made our chief purpose when three things concur: (Thomas Boston, “Of Man’s Chief End and Happiness,” downloaded from The Boston Homepage, at www.geocities.com/~thomasboston, accessed Aug. 21, 2001.)

     1. When the glory of God is one of our purposes in acting. If the nourishment of our bodies is the only intent of our eating and drinking, it is sinful and out of the due order.

     2. When God’s glory is not only our purpose, but is our main and principal purpose, our chief intent. But when, on the contrary, someone eats and drinks (for instance) more for the nourishment of the body than for God’s glory, it is plain that God’s glory is not the chief purpose of the individual in that action. Hence we read of some that are “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:4 KJV).

     3. When it is the ultimate purpose, the top and perfection of what we design, beyond which we have no more view and to which all other intents are made subservient and as means to that end. Thus we should eat that our bodies may be refreshed; we should desire that our bodies may be refreshed that we may be the more capable to serve and glorify God in our stations. Thus we are obliged to seek salvation that God may be glorified and not to seek God’s glory only that we may be saved, for that is to make the glory of God a stepping-stone to our own safety.

     See the excellence of the human above other creatures on earth! We are made for a noble purpose—to glorify and enjoy God, while other creatures were made for us. How sad it is that people should thus forget their dignity and turn slaves to those creatures that were made to serve them! And how deplorable and lamentable is it that people, in place of making God their ultimate purpose and placing their chief happiness in him, should make their appetites, their lusts, and idols their gods and place their chief felicity in the gratification of sensual and brutish pleasures. Our hearts by nature are set on the earth that we tread on, and our desires reach up to those things that we should make stepping-stones of. Let us earnestly implore divine grace to cure this disorder of our hearts and give them a bias to more excellent things and the enjoyment of that which will survive the grave and not perish with the wrecks of time and the dissolution of the world.
--- Thomas Boston

Wallis, D. (2001). Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church's Great Preachers

DECEMBER 31
YEAR 2

Psalms (Morning) Psalm 46, 48
Old Testament 1 Kings 3:5–14
New Testament 2 Corinthians 5:16–6:2
Gospel John 8:12–19

Index of Readings

PSALMS (MORNING)
Psalm 46, 48

To the leader. Of the Korahites. According to Alamoth. A Song.

1 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
6 The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

8 Come, behold the works of the LORD;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.”
11 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

A Song. A Psalm of the Korahites.

1 Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, 2 beautiful in elevation,
is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
the city of the great King.
3 Within its citadels God
has shown himself a sure defense.

4 Then the kings assembled,
they came on together.
5 As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
they were in panic, they took to flight;
6 trembling took hold of them there,
pains as of a woman in labor,
7 as when an east wind shatters
the ships of Tarshish.
8 As we have heard, so have we seen
in the city of the LORD of hosts,
in the city of our God,
which God establishes forever. Selah

9 We ponder your steadfast love, O God,
in the midst of your temple.
10 Your name, O God, like your praise,
reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
11 Let Mount Zion be glad,
let the towns of Judah rejoice
because of your judgments.

12 Walk about Zion, go all around it,
count its towers,
13 consider well its ramparts;
go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
14 that this is God,
our God forever and ever.
He will be our guide forever.

OLD TESTAMENT
1 Kings 3:5–14

5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” 6 And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7 And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8 And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9 Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11 God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12 I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. 13 I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. 14 If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.”

NEW TESTAMENT
2 Corinthians 5:16–6:2

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

6 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says,

“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

GOSPEL
John 8:12–19

12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” 13 Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18 I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.” 19 Then they said to him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”


ON THE SAME DATE | VIGIL | CHRISTMAS
EVE OF HOLY NAME
YEARS 1 & 2

Psalms (Evening) Psalm 90
Old Testament Isaiah 65:15b–25
New Testament Revelation 21:1–6

Index of Readings

PSALMS (EVENING)
Psalm 90

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

3 You turn us back to dust,
and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night.

5 You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning;
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.

7 For we are consumed by your anger;
by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
our years come to an end like a sigh.
10 The days of our life are seventy years,
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.

11 Who considers the power of your anger?
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
12 So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.

13 Turn, O LORD! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,
and as many years as we have seen evil.
16 Let your work be manifest to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—
O prosper the work of our hands!

OLD TESTAMENT
Isaiah 65:15b–25

15 You shall leave your name to my chosen to use as a curse,
and the Lord GOD will put you to death;
but to his servants he will give a different name.
16 Then whoever invokes a blessing in the land
shall bless by the God of faithfulness,
and whoever takes an oath in the land
shall swear by the God of faithfulness;
because the former troubles are forgotten
and are hidden from my sight.
17 For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—
and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the LORD.

NEW TESTAMENT
Revelation 21:1–6

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

The Episcopal Church. Book of Common Prayer Lectionary