Daily Devotion

This daily devotion is based on the Morning Office. It comes with selected readings from the appointed Psalm and another Scripture text, accompanied by reflections and prayers. It will be best to both read and listen. The link to the entire Morning Office today is provided at the end of each devotion. This project started on Ash Wednesday, 2025 and are offered daily except for Sundays. On Saturdays, it comes without any reflections.

21st March – “Why do you seek to kill me?”

Audio

Prepare

Today is Friday, 21^st of March, and the seventeenth day of Lent.

Psalm Reading

We begin by listening to verses 6 to 13 from today’s appointed psalm, Psalm 40.

⁶ In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
    but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
    you have not required.

⁷ Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
    in the scroll of the book it is written of me:

⁸ I delight to do your will, O my God;
    your law is within my heart.”

⁹ I have told the glad news of deliverance
    in the great congregation;
behold, I have not restrained my lips,
    as you know, O Lord.

¹⁰ I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart;
    I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
    from the great congregation.

¹¹ As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain
    your mercy from me;
your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
    ever preserve me!

¹² For evils have encompassed me
    beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
    my heart fails me.

¹³ Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
    O Lord, make haste to help me!

Scripture Reading

We continue with our reading today from the New Testament, John 7:14-24.  Here we read verses 14, 19, 21b to 24.

¹⁴ About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. … ¹⁹ “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” …  ^21b “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. ²² Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. ²³ If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? ²⁴ Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

Reflection

Jesus asked the Jews in the temple in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles – “Why do you seek to kill me?” (v.19) “[A]re you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well?” (v.23). Jesus was referring to an earlier incident where he healed an invalid man by the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. We read this account from John 5 earlier, in this series of devotions on 10 March 2025.

Jesus said, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” We will see later that this was precisely what the Jews did not do when they finally crucify the Saviour on the cross.

Today is the anniversary of the execution of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.  He lived from the year 1489 to 21 March 1556. He played a leading role in the English Reformation. He started the Book of Common Prayer project. His goal was to bring prayer and worship to the common people in their language: English.

In the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer (the “BCP”), published in 1549, Cranmer explained in its Preface the reasons behind the BCP:-

“So that here you have an order for prayer (as touching the reading of the holy Scripture), much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers, and a great deal more profitable and commodious, than that which of late was used.”

“It is more profitable, because here … is ordained nothing to be read, but the very pure word of God, the holy Scriptures, or that which is evidently grounded upon the same; and that in such a language and order as is most easy and plain for the understanding, both of the readers and hearers.”

Because of his work, we have the liturgical treasures in the Anglican Church today. Such as the daily offices which these devotionals are based on.

Years later, Cranmer, along with some of his contemporaries, was tried for high treason. He was found guilty, condemned to death, and were publicly burnt at the stake.  What had he done to receive such a terrible end?

Like Jesus, was he wrongly judged simply because of the politics of the day? One thing we can be sure is that it can be very costly to follow Jesus.

Prayer

Take a moment to give thanks for many of our past leaders and saints. They have labored and sacrificed for Christ and His Church.

In our day and age, will you be willing to likewise labor for His cause? Will we do our part that others may say, like the Psalmist today, “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

We end with the Collect of the Day

Merciful God, through the work of Thomas Cranmer
you renewed the worship of your Church
by restoring the language of the people,
and through his death you revealed your power in human weakness:
Grant that by your grace
we may always worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Link to today’ Morning Office