Month: April 2026

The following meditation was written by Rev. Dr. Greg Rapier, pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Sacramento, California

“Praise God with the blast of the ram’s horn! Praise God with lute and lyre! Let every living thing praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:3, 6 Common English Bible)

A friend of mine called a plumber once about a clogged drain. She’d been working for a couple of days to fix it before she finally gave in. The plumber walked around the small room, assessed the curvature of the drain, and cleared the mess in about fifteen seconds. That’ll be twenty dollars, ma’am. My friend was shocked that he charged so little; she’d ordered sandwiches that cost more. So she pressed for details.

The plumber had a cross necklace that patted his chest as he spoke, and he explained how, for him, each service call is an act of honoring God. He’d been working for decades, and he knew all the tricks people in his profession used to squeeze a few extra dollars from their clients, but his faith made him refuse. Honest prices for honest labor—simple as that.

With his hands covered in God-knows-what, that plumber expressed something holy. And the woman with the clogged drain caught a glimpse of it—whether she knew it or not. This short visit wasn’t just a service call. It was prayer.

Psalm 150 ends the entire psalter with an explosion of praise—trumpets, harps, lutes, cymbals, dancing. Every instrument imaginable, every voice, everything that makes noise unified in a scene of chaotic, ecstatic praise. The psalm suggests anything you’ve got can be used to praise God if you let it. Even a plunger.

We often imagine prayer as something we carve out and separate from ordinary life: a quiet devotional in the morning, a Sunday service, a few simple words before a meal. These things matter, and the time we separate for God matters too. But Psalm 150 makes a wilder claim, that the whole range of human expression—absolutely everything under the sun—belongs to God. The trumpet and the tambourine, yes. But also, the garden, the kitchen, the workbench, and the pipe wrench. Over the centuries, a rich tradition has developed of breath prayers and walking prayers, where an entire life falls under the auspice of a conversation with God. Let every living thing praise the Lord—absolutely. Not just during a quick devotion. Not just when we hit pause on the rest of life. Always.

Joy,

The following meditation was written by Rev. Dr. Bruce Main, President and Founder of Urban Promise Ministries in New Jersey.

“… while it was still dark, Jesus got up and left the house…” Mark 1:35a (New International Version)

“Boil it down,” I pressed. “You’ve invested thousands of dollars and hours of meeting time … what’s the most memorable thing he ever said?”

Startled by the question, my host paused momentarily.

I actually was curious. Retaining an expensive leadership consultant is a luxury I never could afford. Here was a chance to glean good insight on someone else’s dime. Bargains are my love language. 

Given a few uninterrupted hours with a successful real estate developer (who freely operates outside the budgetary constraints of a non-profit leader), I had an opportunity to glean valuable wisdom. For over a decade, this CEO had engaged in the services of a prominent consultant, advising him on everything from complex personnel issues, strategic planning, and intergenerational leadership dynamics.

A memorable nugget of truth I desired.  

“Okay … one day our leadership team gathered for our weekly meeting,” my host reflected. “Now Bruce, you’ve got to understand these are hard-charging, Type-A real estate folk.”  I tried to imagine the scenario. He continued.

“What do you mean?” chuckled the CFO, rolling his eyes. “I pop in my Keurig K-cup, make my espresso, and head to the car.”

“My house is chaotic,” chimed another “My wife gets the kids ready for school. I just slip quietly out the back door.”

“I skim the Wall Street Journal,” added the director of sales. “Jump in my car and turn on sports talk radio.”

For the next 20 minutes, his leaders circled the conference table, sharing their morning routines.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” concluded the consultant. “Before leaving your house in the morning, find your spouse, partner or kids. Take their hand, look at them in the eye, tell them you love them, and hope they have a great day. It’ll change everything.”

Silence blanketed the room. Not the message a bunch of high-octane executive leaders wanted to hear.

“For the next two weeks,” summoned the CEO, breaking the ice. “We’ll put this challenge into practice. No results? We’ll move on.”

Two weeks later the team assembled. “It changed the dynamics of my marriage in a really positive way,” confessed one. “My kids thought it was weird at first, but now they are looking for me before I leave for work,” echoed another. “It reminded me why I go to work each day,” chimed a third. “It helped me focus on what’s really important in life. I treat my colleagues differently.”

Ironically the most consequential truth shared by the consultant had nothing to do with spread sheets, forecasting, or goal setting.  Simple. Start the day with an intention. Take an extra 60 seconds. Connect and express love to those closest to you. 

So I’ve been chewing on this idea for the past few weeks. How do I leave my house in the morning? How do I prepare my heart for what I might encounter during the day?

Reading the Bible recently, I stumbled across this verse. Jumped off the page. “Very early in the morning,” writes the gospel writer Mark. “….while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed?”

A few verses later—maybe later that morning—Jesus bumps into a leper on the road. Beautiful is his response. “Filled with compassion,” Mark emphasizes. “Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man …”  The process of healing begins with a compassionate heart.

I’ll be honest, meeting a leper at 8:10 a.m. on a Monday morning is not how I want to start my week.  Lepers were outcasts. Lepers were avoided. Lepers were the untouchables. I’m highly doubtful an abundance of compassion would flow from me.  But Jesus was ready. Dialed in, some might say. 

So it begs the question. Did Jesus respond compassionately because he’s God, and gifted a few extra compassion genes?  Or, as Christian orthodoxy ascribes, Jesus was fully human who “grew in wisdom and stature”—potentially including compassion? 

Like you and me, Jesus left his house each day to meet a complex and demanding world.  Perhaps his early routine of solitude—a few minutes of silence and prayer—opened his compassion spigot, creating a keen sense of attentiveness toward ALL who crossed his path.

Joy,

The following meditation was written by Rev. Nathanael Hood, Pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Junction City, Kansas.

“He also said to them, ‘Imagine that one of you has a friend and you go to that friend in the middle of the night. Imagine saying, “Friend, loan me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has arrived and I have nothing to set before him.” Imagine further that he answers from within the house, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.” I assure you, even if he wouldn’t get up and help because of his friendship, he will get up and give his friend whatever he needs because of his friend’s brashness. And I tell you: Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks, receives. Whoever seeks, finds. To everyone who knocks, the door is opened.‘” Luke 11:5-10 (Common English Bible

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Jesus of Nazareth was one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived. How many other storytellers from antiquity remain so ubiquitous thousands of years later? I don’t just mean writers, philosophers, or even the founders of other religious traditions, I’m talking about storytellers who specialized in telling tales with a definitive beginning, middle, and end. Homer? Perhaps, but some historians question whether he was a real historical person and if his surviving works all flowed from the same pen. Aesop? Certainly many of his fables are favorites among educators of small children—The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Tortoise and the Hare in particular remain perennial classics. (If I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoons based on that last one!) But again, many historians doubt Aesop really existed, as his stories were all handed down and collected by other writers.

Indeed, from this ancient dawn of recorded history, few storytellers that we know historically existed reign as supreme as Jesus. As with Homer and his epic poems and Aesop with his fables, Jesus specialized in a very specific kind of storytelling—the parable. Inspired by the writings of Israel’s prophets and rabbis, they are short stories that illustrate moral truths. And while Homer’s epics have gods and goddesses, witches and monsters and Aesop’s fables animals that act and talk like people, parables focus on ordinary everyday people doing everyday ordinary things with everyday ordinary objects. They are stories of shepherds tending sheep, workers tending vineyards, bakers making bread. They center on things like lost coins, wineskins, and lamps. And, importantly, their endings leave their meanings ambiguous. Many of Jesus’ parables have become so famous that even two thousand years later their characters have become archetypes in themselves: the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Wise and Foolish Builders.

One of these parables, the Parable of the Friend at Night, is perhaps a bit lesser known than Jesus’ more famous stories, but it’s nonetheless one of our savior’s most significant for the simple reason that it is one of the only ones he told about one of his favorite topics: prayer. It starts simply enough: in the middle of the night one friend goes to the house of another friend and tells them that a hungry third friend on a journey has arrived at their house. The rules of ancient Middle Eastern hospitality required that the first friend would feed the third, but not having any bread they go to the second and ask for some. The second friend, however, presumably tired and annoyed at having been awoken, refuses. But the first friend doesn’t take no for an answer. They continue to make a scene in their doorway until the third friend relents, not because of their mutual friendship, but because they’re ashamed of the first friend’s shameless behavior.

Many commentators have mistaken their interpretation of this parable by assuming that the shameless first friend represents someone praying, their constant late-night begging prayer, and the curmudgeonly third friend God. But this depicts a capricious God that must be badgered, cajoled, and harassed before they respond. This is far from the truth! As that great writer Thomas G. Long once explained, if a shameless, annoying person might manage to humiliate another to fulfill their needs through begging, how much more will our benevolent God give to those who simply ask for things in sincere prayer? Of course, we know that oftentimes God answers our prayers with a “no,” and often for reasons we cannot understand. But what matters in this parable is that ours is not a God who must be forced, ours is a God who delights in helping those who ask for help and guidance. Ask, Jesus assures us, and you will receive. Seek, he tells us, and you will find. Knock, he explains, and the door will be opened to you.

Joy,