SCRIPTURE: Ezra 2-3; Luke 8

Luke 8:16-18
“No one lights a lamp and then covers it with a washtub or shoves it under the bed. No, you set it up on a lamp stand so those who enter the room can see their way. We’re not keeping secrets; we’re telling them. We’re not hiding things; we’re bringing everything out into the open. So be careful that you don’t become misers of what you hear. Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes.”

OBSERVATIONS: Transparency. I’m trying to show what I’m doing and the things that I’m accomplishing. Some days, that’s more than others. While I’d like for my job to have a little less “fish-bowl” and a lot more privacy, I have come to understand that at least part of my job is to set an example.

APPLICATION: My words and my deeds, and those of our congregation for that matter, should be items of public record inasmuch as the example of Christ is offered. That is not to say that we should hide our failings, but it is to say that it is more important to demonstrate the power of sanctifying (growing in Christ) grace than to demonstrate the grace of forgiveness for our failure.

PRAYER: God, let me diminish that others may see right through me. Let me be a lens for your love, that you might be seen all the more clearly. Through Christ I ask it, amen.