The marginalized
Don’t mistreat widows or orphans or foreigners or anyone who is poor, and stop making plans to hurt each other. ~ Zechariah 7:10 (CEV)
Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? ~ 1 Corinthians 1:28 (MSG)
SUMMARY SENTENCE
God calls us to walk alongside the marginalized because they are the ones through whom he is changing the world.
PRAYER
Thank you, God, for including me in your plan. I'm definitely a minor league player in your kingdom. Forgive me for allowing my aspirations for security, power, and influence to blind me to the poor and marginalized. Show me how to walk alongside the left-out so that I can continue to participate in your new creation. I seek this in the name of Christ Jesus, who left his throne above to walk and die among the broken on earth. Amen.
*ABOUT THE
DAILY TEXTS
The Daily Texts have been published by the Moravian Church since 1731. In 2015 I started posting these Bible verses for my spiritual formation students at Pacific Islands University. In the process of responding to the verses, I found the rhythm of looking for a common thread and writing a prayer based on that key idea to be helpful for my own soul. The prayers are more or less modeled on the TRIP method, which is what I ask my students to do in their journaling. ~ Brad Boydston
TRANSLATIONS
ABP = Authorized Boydston Paraphrase -- a freestyle biblical adaptation -- somewhere between paraphrase, commentary, and sermon
CEB = Common English Bible (©2011, the Common English Bible)
CEV = Contemporary English Version (©1995, American Bible Society)
MSG = The Message (©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)
NIRV = New International Reader's Version (©1996, 1998, Biblica)
NIV = New International Version (©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011, Biblica)
NLT = New Living Translation (©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, Tyndale House Foundation)
