Walter Wangerin Jr. - Acts of the Almighty: Meditations on the Story of God for Every Day of the Year

ZONDERVAN

Acts of the Almighty

Copyright 2019 by Walter Wangerin Jr.

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Epub Edition August 2019 9780310356899

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version. Public domain.

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Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover illustration: visuallanguage

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O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the works thy hand hath made,

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed,

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee,

How great thou art. How great thou art.

Contents

You might think of yourself as reading these daily devotions in your kitchen or your living room or in your bedroom or wherever and whenever you choose a regular and consistent time. But in a sense, I am with you as a friend. We are partners.

This book contains 366 devotions (because I have included leap year).

From January 1 to December 31, we will work through the highlights of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in a storylike sequence. Therefore, I suggest that you read these devotions as a continual story. Some of you may have dipped into other devotional books here and there as you pleased. If you do the same with Acts of the Almighty, you might be baffled by a devotion that is separated from the others.

Whenever a prayer at the end of a devotion says I, it refers to both of us.

Before I began to write each page, I prayed this prayer, May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer (Psalm 19:14).

Be at peace, my friend. Christ has guided me. He loves you. All is well, and everything very well.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

JANUARY 1

Genesis 1:115

In the beginning there is God and... nothing. The void. I cant imagine a nothing-ness, no space no time, because Im always there, a something that fills the nothing.

The Hebrew word for deep can mean a roaring, surging, limitless water.

God says, Light, and that word was light issuing from his mouth. He names the light Day and the darkness Night. An evening and a morning make the first day, and God has created time.

Then he calls into being a hard, blue dome to divide the raging waters above from the raging waters below, and God has created space. He names that blue dome Sky and names the land below Earth. God has created space, a place for every other thing he will create.

And God says, Good. But good isnt a mere observation. It is a shout, the way we shout and pump our fists when our team has won the game.

PRAYER

Lord, your hands created a world. All glory to you, and thanksgiving for-evermore! Amen.

JANUARY 2

Genesis 1:1425

These verses explain how to tell time.

God puts two lights in the sky, a greater one and a lesser one, and scatters stars in it. He doesnt name them because pagans will name them and worship them, the sun and the moon and the constellations. But there is only one true God.

The big light rules the day, and the lesser light rules the night. The moon marks the months. The sun marks the days and the four seasons.

God says, Swarm, and birds swarm the skies. Again he says, Swarm, and schools of fish swim in the seas. Wheat flourishes in spring and summer and is harvested in the fall. Creeping things come to life, the four-footed beasts that roam the earth and feed on green things and those that roam on two feet and those that live in trees.

Good!

PRAYER

Step by step, good God, you created the round globe, this earth we walk on and the air we breathe and the soil we sow today. We delight in your handiwork and do our best to preserve it. Amen.

JANUARY 3

Genesis 1:2631

God creates humankind in his image. He creates them male and female. Sometimes a man will consider himself to be the image of God, or sometimes a woman will think the same.

In fact, the image resides in them both when they are conjoined. Male and female he created them, the two together. Gods image resides in their mutual needs and their love.

Gods gift is a blessing and not a command. Those who are blessed must bless. Fill the earth and subdue it, says the Lord. But subdue emphatically does not mean that humankind gets to do with creation whatever it wants to do: take charge, dominate, act as if it were the worlds taskmaster. It means to do best by Gods creation, to take care of it, to keep the earth as though people were farmers working for God.

PRAYER

Lord, I have loved my wife through the past fifty years. People love their children, their friends, their partners, and their neighbors. We might think love springs from our own hearts. But you first loved us, and our ability to love comes from you. Amen.

JANUARY 4

Genesis 2:725

Now God rolls a hunk of red, wet clay into a ball, and then, as if it were modeling clay, he shapes it into the human form. The Lord God leans down as if to kiss the man and blows life-giving breath into his nostrils.

In Hebrew and Greek and Latin, the word for breath also means wind and spirit. Every baby is the clay. Gods wind expands its lungs, and the spirit sparks life in the infants body.

God gives thought to the man, Adam, and says, No one should have to live lonely and alone. But the beasts cant be good company. God named his creationsthe sky, the earth, and the seas. But human beings cannot create by naming. They can name only the things that have already been created. Heres a cow, heres a hawk. But wheres a being like me?

So God creates that being. Adams sleep is not like the sleep we get in our beds at night. It is deep. It is so deep that Adam has nothing to do with the womans creation. God chooses. God remains the true creator. And here she is. Adam wakes and sees his companion and shouts a sort of whoop-de-do! Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! he cries, delighted, then he makes a pun on their separate genders. The pun is the same in both Hebrew and English: She shall be called a wo