THE WEEK OF TRINITY VII - TUESDAY

LESSON: PSALM 37:16-26

With God nothing will be impossible. Luke 1:37

Faith is the firm foundation upon which I wait for that which I do not see. Hence, I must always have enough. Before faith would ever experience dire need, the angels would come from heaven and dig bread out of the earth so that a believer with such faith should be fed. Heaven and earth would have to pass away before God allowed such a person to suffer want in clothing or any other necessity. The comforting, powerful words of God’s assurances and promises call for such certainty and conviction on our part.

But if one took counsel with human reason, one would soon get the reply, “It is not possible. You will have to wait a long time before roast ducks fly into your mouth.” Reason sees nothing and grasps nothing. There is nothing there.

This was also the reaction of the apostles with their questions, “How can one feed these men with bread here in the desert?” They thought, of course, that it would be quite impossible. Had they seen a big heap of money, butchers’ stalls and bakers’ shops ready at hand, they would have found it easy to offer advice and to afford some comfort here. This would have provided them with a good, rational solution to their problems. But when they saw nothing, they could offer no useful advice. They regarded the feeding of these people as an impossibility in the absence of the wherewithal to do this.

SL 11:1370 (9-10)

PRAYER: Your mercy and goodness towards us, heavenly Father, are unending and beyond all our powers of telling. We praise and thank You for all this goodness which we experience in body and soul, in the name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Editor’s note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today’s sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 4:202-210.