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Mark 2:23-3:6<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Prayer for the day:<\/strong><\/span> Question for reflection:<\/strong><\/span> ~ Kim Ebersole, Director of Family Life and Older Adult Ministries<\/p>\n Congregational Life Ministries of the Church of the Brethren is offering these simple prayers and questions in connection to this year’s\u00a0Lenten Devotional\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>written by Duane Grady, pastor of Cedar Lake Church of the Brethren (Available from\u00a0Brethren Press<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>in print and E-Book formats). Join us as we look and listen for the coming of the Word through the reading of scripture, Duane’s reflections, times of prayer, and conversations on t<\/em>his\u00a0<\/em>blog.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mark 2:23-3:6 Prayer for the day: Give me strength, Holy God, to do what is right. Amen Question for reflection: As we read in these two stories, the Pharisees were intent on catching Jesus in the act of doing something they considered wrong. They remind me of an old-fashioned private eye lurking in the shadows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[269,399,458,683,687,708,921,1005,1109],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional","tag-conform","tag-ethically-right","tag-follow","tag-law","tag-lent","tag-love","tag-prayer","tag-right","tag-strength"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGive me strength, Holy God, to do what is right. Amen<\/p>\n
\nAs we read in these two stories, the Pharisees were intent on catching Jesus in the act of doing something they considered wrong. They remind me of an old-fashioned private eye lurking in the shadows or a hungry cat waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse. But Jesus was fully aware of what the Pharisees were trying to do and continued to show the world a \u201cnew thing\u201d\u2014putting the law of love <\/i>above the love of laws<\/i>. Have there been times when you have been pressured to conform to the ways of the world and forsake what you know to be morally or ethically right? Where did you get the strength to follow the ways of Jesus instead?<\/p>\n