URC Daily Devotion 11 November 2025

St Matthew 6: 24

Jesus said: ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Reflection

The First Nations Bible renders this as, “No one can be loyal to two rival chiefs. You will have to choose between them. You will either hate one chief and love the other, or honour one and resent the other. You cannot be loyal to the Great Provider and to possessions at the same time.” Utterly true. For possessions add any other focus – object, ideology, person, media stream, pursuit.

Yes, we know.   How on this earth do we possibly enact this aspiration? The fundamental thing about the Gospel is that when we’re willing to face raw reality and ask questions, we are given understanding and grace to answer. We face reality, grieve or rejoice about what we see, then get hopefully enriched life.

Instead of giving ourselves lists of ‘musts’ and ‘must nots’ (which may change) we can believe that we may freely accept and enter the experience of partnership with God. We can remember that God isn’t out there somewhere, stuck in a cloud or in some other galaxy. Jesus/incarnation says God is right here, where you sit to read and I sit to write. Through Spirit inside us, we have courage to ditch the ‘must’ lists into the compost heap. Instead, we look into each day as a set of revelations about where our love can make the most difference. Sometimes, we love ourselves first to make ourselves safe because we finally named a painful reality. Sometimes we love another first to ease their lives or situation and, in the process, dare to help them name realities.  

What we know from watching selfish greed roll out on an industrial scale is that putting anything other than God as our priority doesn’t do much long term good for any kind of life. Putting greed last is counter-cultural. Let’s love our Great Provider first and giggle as we watch communities get strong. When we see our lives as serving love first, the results can be incredible.

 Prayer

God, it always seems easy 
when I read what someone else wrote 
about what we’re supposed to DO with you.
Help us know in our bodies 
that whatever we do or don’t do, 
your physical presence is not fake news.
As we read this, help us stop, 
breathe in…..out…and listen inside.
Your love quickens our pulses 
to tell us we’re not alone.
With you, we can act your Gospel. 
Today’s way. Alleluia, Amen.