Daily Lectionary Readings for Tuesday 7 November 2006

Daily Lectionary Readings for Tuesday 7 November 2006

Read the full texts at: http://www.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/lectiond.cgi

DAILY LECTIONARY:

Morning: Psalm 42:1-11
Zephaniah 1:14-18
Revelation 14:14-15:8
Luke 13:1-9
Evening: Psalm 102:1-28

Today there's a lot of wrath:

Zephaniah
[14] The great day of the LORD is near...[15] That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness

Revelations
[19] So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. [20] And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles.

Luke
[6] Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. [7]So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'
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Not exactly comforting. With the morning and evening psalms to "bookend" this stuff, it's pretty clear that storing up treasures on earth is not the way to go. Not in building up cities, not in gathering wealth, not in victories over enemies - none of that will do it. But besides what we shouldn't do, what are we to do? What should the figs on our fig trees be like? Which fruits of our labors would be the ones for harvest?

rpv