Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent: Jeremiah 18; Matthew 20

Today’s readings are about the threat of persecution. In The Hebrew scriptures, the people of Jerusalem contrive a plot against Jeremiah; in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem and tells his followers that a plot will be formed against him.

And I wondered at this litany of persecutions that the Bible contains. What percentages of our scriptures are devoted to healing, to praise, to joy, and how much to persecution. I realize that in this time of Lent, we’re likely to hear more about persecutions, but it’s still something to think about.

Like many of you, my life has been pretty complex lately. Yesterday, for example, the blog was in a “read-only” mode, meaning I couldn’t post, and it took most of the day to find the time to get it going again. Ergo, no Lenten reflection yesterday. Lots of errands and appointments, but no blog post.

But that’s the way life is right now: multi-doing because there’s so much doing! I finally got an email off to wordpress support and they got everything working again, but by then it was evening.

I expect your life isn’t any more reasonable; and I expect most of us feel pretty persecuted from time to time by the complexity of our lives. But I also expect none of us have people plotting to end our lives.

Since today is full again, here’s a Psalm 31 prayer for you and for me, also from today’s reading: “My times are in your hands; rescue me…save me Holy One, in your steadfast love…”