Daily Lesson for January 19, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ephesians chapter 4 verses 25 through 32:

25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. 26Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27and do not make room for the devil. 28Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up,* as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

What a scripture for the days we are living in.

We are to put off falsehood and speak the truth to one another. We can be angry; but we are not to sin in our anger. We are not to seethe in it either. No evil talk is to come from our mouths, "but only what is useful for building up."

Perhaps its the words of Lincoln's Second Inaugural that best capture what is necessary for all of us now:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds . . ."

The words are conciliatory, but not weak; peaceful, but not pacifying.

The work we are in still requires strength; it requires courage and conviction. But the strength must be tender; and the courage and conviction must be kind.

We must be kind, and forgiving, even as God has been kind and forgiving unto us. For Christ came "full of grace and truth"; and we must be the same.

"And the measure we give will be the measure we get."

And perhaps even more . . .

Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.