462. Monday after Twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity.
God, thou desirest truth
in the inward parts;
and in the hidden part
thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
Matthew 5, 13-16. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
❦
Lot was the salt in Sodom; Noah, in the last days before the deluge; and the faithful in Jerusalem, before the destruction of the city. As long as the righteous dwell among the ungodly the judgments of God are warded off; but when the saints disappear the eagles gather about the carcase. The proud men of the world do not know that the prayers of God’s children are the props which sustain the country and nation. But if this be true, it behooves the faithful to strive the more earnestly after zeal and holiness. Let it again be said of us with full truth, as it was written of the early Christians:
They live among the others; but they distinguish themselves before them in a wonderful way by their conduct. They sojourn in their fatherland, but as strangers; they live in the flesh, but not according to the flesh; they dwell on earth, and live in heaven. They are misjudged, persecuted, condemned of all; yet they love all. They are poor, yet make many rich; they have nothing, and yet possess all things; they are cursed, and yet they bless. In a word, what the soul is to the body the Christians are to the world. The soul is in the body, but not of the body; the Christians are in the world, but not of the world. The flesh hates the soul, though this only prevents the flesh from giving itself up to its ruinous lusts; and the world hates the Christians, though these only resist its wicked and corrupt ways. . . . The soul is housed in the body, but it sustains the body; the Christians are housed in the world, but they sustain the world.
— Epistle to Diognetus
Away with all false pretense; with all hollow, ostentatious religion, which is a mere matter of form! Let the true life of the Spirit, the love born of God’s love, burn and glow in our heart; that the light may shine round about, and the name of the Lord may be glorified! — Come, Lord Jesus, live in me; and let me always and everywhere live in thee. Let the celestial fire of thy love burn in my soul, and glow through my entire being; that my whole life may radiate thy love, and shew forth its praises. Amen.*
My God, I love thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby;
Nor yet because if I love not,
I must forever die.
Not with the hope of gaining aught;
Not seeking a reward;
But, as thyself hast loved me,
O ever loving Lord!
[Evangelical Lutheran Hymnal 405; listen here]
* Here the head of the family says a short morning or evening prayer in his own words, and closes with the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction. This is to be done every day. If the stanzas are not sung, they may be read in their proper place before the impromptu petition and the Lord’s Prayer.