Keep calm and pray on Ceilon Aspensen, February 1, 2024February 4, 2024 Get the FREE worksheet for this program here. The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is to keep calm and pray on. My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this: Exodus 13-14 – When God delivers us, the first thing we should do is to worship and give thanks. That is also what we should do when we face battles in our lives, because God will fight the battle for us when we do. Mark 4 – We are the seeds and the crop. We are expected to place ourselves in fertile soil and yield a great and bountiful harvest. This parable means exactly the same thing as the parable of the talents. (Revisit the blog entry for Day 6: How does one create rich soil? How do we prepare ourselves for the mission God gives us?) Psalms 32 – God hears my cry for help, even when I have failed and made mistakes. He rescues me and has mercy on me when I admit I am wrong and ask for his help. Proverbs 1 – Wisdom and intelligence come from God, and all anyone needs to know about how to live with integrity, make wise choices, be prosperous, respond to adversity or the harm done to us by others, can be found in the book of Proverbs. When we seek to learn, God gives us guidance. When I face difficulties, I tend to worry and stew about it. Most of us do. In today’s readings in Exodus, we see an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” situation for the Israelites. Pharoah has finally let them go, but once again he has changed his mind and sends his whole army after them to prevent them from leaving. They lament and cry out and wonder why they didn’t just stay in in Egypt where suddenly they seem to think they didn’t have it so bad. There are two things that stand out to me from these passages. The first is that once they have been released by Pharoah, God tells them to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving and remembrance. The second is that God always finishes his work and never leaves us hanging. When they find themselves being chased by Pharoah’s army, they also find themselves surrounded by “the angel of God,” who hides them. So much personal distress can be avoided if we simply pray, give thanks, and trust God. I used to read the passage in Mark and think that we are one of these planting conditions, and what we are supposed to do is figure out which one and rectify the situation. However, after years of reading this passage I now understand that throughout our lives we experience all of these conditions in various cycles. Our job is to figure out which one we are in at the moment and do what we need to do to shift into the “fertile soil” condition. The “lamp stand” passage that follows is the remedy. When we are not in the “fertile soil” condition, it’s usually because our lamp is is hidden and our light is dim or burned out. Then Jesus goes back to a seed-sowing parable and describes the frustration we can feel when we are actually doing what we’re supposed to be doing but it doesn’t seem to be producing results. When that happens, we can find ourselves going into prevention and protection mode, attempting to keep the enemy out of our garden. However, that’s not our job. Our job is to do all we can to keep our lamp lit and sow our seeds. The rest is up to God. We have no control over the harvest, only our part in the sowing. Just lately, I keep seeing a meme pop up all over the Internet that says, “Don’t Judge Each Day by the Harvest You Reap but by the Seeds that you Plant.” That is the subtitle from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Admiral Guinea. That’s good advice for us as we seek to be light and hope in a dark world, and sow seeds of kindness and goodwill wherever we go. The last part of this chapter in Mark gives us the same message as the one from Exodus today. Jesus calms a storm that has all of his disciples terrified. The message for us in all storms and troubles is always the same: do not be afraid, pray, and put your faith in God. That message is underscored a third time today in the reading from Psalms. That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today? You can join the discussion in the comments, below; or you can join us in our private Facebook group that I set up specifically for sharing what we take-away from the readings each day. If you haven’t gotten the FREE “Read the Bible in a Year” worksheet yet, you can Get the FREE worksheet for this program here. It is not necessary for you to start on January 1st–you can start from the beginning on whatever date you get the worksheet. Join us! Learn more about why I read the Bible all the way through every year, and feel free to share with anyone you think could benefit. This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.” To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts. Please follow and like us: Read the Bible in a Year Spiritual Practice changechange for the betterchristianchristianityencounter with Godpositive changeread the biblesacrificespiritual