Collect of the Week for 18th Sunday After Pentecost (September 26, 2021)
Let us pray. Everlasting Father, source of every blessing, mercifully direct and govern us by Your Holy Spirit that we may complete the works You have prepared for us to do; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
At the time it seemed like the very end of her world. The business she had carefully constructed over years of hard labor had collapsed through no fault of her own. These things happen, but they are painful when they happen. So many hopes and dreams had been wrapped up into that enterprise, along with a lot of her resources. She had managed to save some in the good years, but it was not how she was planning for this to go.
She took a position in company, an administrative assistant to a director. It was hard to step back into the world of being an employee after being her own boss. She needed the money, however, and this place did good work. It needed to make a profit, but it helped vulnerable people. In her job, she had access to some of the tragic details of the people whom her new company helped. It was not long before she was an advocate for them. She was engaged in the mission. It was more than just a means to work until she could retire.
When she did retire about a decade later, she had a completely different view of her business’s collapse. She looked back upon it and saw the hand of God. He had called her to a new vocation as an advocate and servant of people who were vulnerable and had been on the receiving end of some terrible things.
We pray in this prayer that the Holy Spirit would direct and govern us so that we might accomplish the works that God has prepared for us to do. These last two years have seen what is likely a generational upheaval. The plague years have had a personal effect on each of our lives. As your life has been disrupted, take time to grieve and mourn what is lost, but also open your heart and listen. God may be calling you to something different and better. In Grace, Christ is restoring, confirming, strengthening, and establishing you.
Today’s “a devotion for you…” is edited and adapted, with permission, from original content from colleague and friend, Phil Brandt.
Amen. Good to hear especially today as I struggle for guidance.
Thank you and wish your family good health.
Thank you for sharing this devotion. It spoke to me on a deep level.
The peace of the Lord be with you and your family, Pastor.
This is so helpful to see how God works to move us into doing his good work. It’s such a relief to know I’m not in charge. 🙂