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  Psalm 114 Listen to today’s devotional Psalm 114 remembers and celebrates God's deliverance. Through the psalm, Israel looks back on the Exodus. That was a moment when the slaves of Egypt became God's people. Notice how creation is caught up in the storytelling. The sea runs away. The Jordan turns back. Mountains skip like animals. And in the middle of it all comes an almost playful, taunting question:  “Why is it, O sea, that you flee?” I wonder if the psalmist wants us to laugh as we're asking it. What made the sea move like that? Now, the answer is there, but barely. In Hebrew, verse 2 doesn’t name God directly. It uses the pronoun  He.  It's almost as if God’s presence and power are so obvious it doesn’t need explanation. The sea didn’t flee because of wind patterns or some weather event. It fled because  He  was there. But that raises a question for us. When we look back on our own lives, how do we know what was  Him ? Because not every moment i...

  Esther 3:12-15 Listen to today's devotional Haman's personal vendetta against Mordecai is a major part of the plot of Esther's story. His power, fear and ego all feed his desire to "destroy, to kill and to annihilate all Jews." This ancient story shows how one person's pettiness impacted many other people. For Haman, cruelty, not justice or morality, was the point. We notice in the story that Haman's plans easily come with the king's approval. All Haman had to do was talk about the people in a negative way. The king gave Haman his signet ring to establish any decree he wanted against the Jews with no proof. Just prejudice. Classic scapegoating meant to demonize and dehumanize an entire group of people. It's striking to me how our history's headlines mirror each other in this way. Haman sent out letters with the decree and he called "on all the peoples to be ready for that day." After all, it was such an important task, it had to be ...

  Psalm 124 Listen to today's devotional Beloved, we are a people who have been delivered. The word  Hebrew  is thought to mean "from the other side." That might point to a geographical beginning, ancestors who crossed rivers and borders. But it also stirs memories of God delivering Moses and the people from Pharaoh across the other side of the sea. In that sense, God's deliverance means we were there and now we're here. And the people of God have long seen deliverance as part of their identity. You see it repeatedly throughout the psalms. God parted seas, broke chains and made the impossible possible. Thankfully, that story doesn't stop with the Old Testament. God's beloved today live in deliverance. In Jesus, God has broken our captivity. We are freed from our sin, shame, fear and even the sting of death itself. As our liturgy affirms, Jesus frees us for joyful obedience. So, we may not call ourselves  Hebrew , but God has brought us from the other side....