Scripture: James 1:26-27
If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, rx they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.

Thought for the Day: We are the conduits for God’s activity in the world. When we discover how intimate our relationship is with God, we have a duty to let God work through every cell of our body. Theoretically, when we discover God, when we feel the awe of the universe coarse through our veins, it should completely change the way we think and act. This is God’s activity in our lives. It’s always there. We just have to notice. After we notice, we’re obligated to act. Otherwise our faith is empty.

We are receivers of God’s love, God’s wisdom, and God’s mercy. Like everything else in the universe, we are created as an emanation from the very being of God. Yet, we too often squander our gifts, or worse, ignore them completely. Humans pretend we are the lone intelligence in the universe—masters of our domain, with no accountability to anyone—not to each other, not to God. But this hubris continues to destroy us.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job of messing up the world. Our economic and political systems are a joke—when teachers can’t afford housing and working at McDonald’s can’t pay your bills, but McDonald’s can buy all the politicians it can stick in a pink slime machine, something is terribly wrong.

But this can all change, and the first, easiest step, is to stop believing in the power of the free market, and start believing in the power of a loving God, with us all the time, who weeps at our continued oppression and is at work, even as we read this, to liberate us from the chains that keep us from fulfilling our true human potential, which is perfect unity with God. Because it’s in the realization of that unity that everything changes. Can you realize it?

Prayer: I can see your world new world inching closer every day, Creative God! I pray your mighty hand touches the heart of every warlord, of every politician, of every merchant, and opens their minds to a new, more equitable and just world, aligned in love, and based on the needs of the many, rather than the desires of a few. Amen.