Sixty

By Rick Hoover

Runing late in the morning? Got a minute? Take 60 seconds with these short, pithy devotionals, each matched with a Bible verse from Genesis to Revelation. You'll have something to keep percolating in your thoughts all day long.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pelican Wings
• Release date: Mar 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463882177

Rick Hoover

I'm a retired deacon in the Episcopal Church. I served at a parish in central Florida. I've worked in radio, television and several jobs that included public relation efforts. As a Christian, I have discovered one of the things I enjoy most is spending time in a prayer closet with Jesus, learning to be still so He has space to speak. I shared about my first month as a Smashword author at my blog: https://deaconrick.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/editing-the-author/

Book preview

SIXTY

SIXTY-SECOND DEVOTIONALS

TO START YOUR DAY

Rick Hoover

Copyright © 2020 by Rick Hoover

The devotionals are based on material

that originally appeared in Good News Daily

published by the Bible Reading Fellowship,

Winter Park, Florida.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible™,

a Public Domain translation available at worldenglishbible.org.

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Devotionals

About the Author

Introduction

Ten years ago I was a member of a church commission. At meetings I found myself sitting next to a sister deacon in my diocese. I found out that her husband was an editor at the Bible Reading Fellowship, publishers of a devotional guide I had admired for many years. I told her that but did not say that I had often wished that I could write something for this devotional.

In the Lord’s kindness, I didn’t have to. A few weeks later the deacon approached me and passed along exactly that invitation from her husband!

The first assignment was a week’s worth of one-minute devotional thoughts based on the Revised Common Lectionary readings a few months away. I did those, turned them in, and more assignments followed.

This collection, SIXTY, is based on the nearly 100 short devotionals I wrote for them over the past decade. I have polished and expanded them (as well as caught a few more typos in my own archival copies that I hope did not get past the alert eyes of the editors when they were originally published!).

I have re-sorted the original pieces to go in the order of the verses as they come up in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. In ten years’ worth of verses, I was interested to find I had only gone back to the same verse twice. (I leave it to you, gentle reader, to find those Easter eggs.)

I was also intrigued to discover that by reordering the assortment of devotionals in this way, the entries begin and end posing the same question. I take it as a subtle reassurance that our Heavenly Father is indeed desiring a personal relationship with us.

There was a very personal coincidence I did not discover until I went back to compile all these entries. I found that the first set of short devotionals had been published the week my father died. The first line of the entry for the day he passed was:

Jesus always had his eyes on the Father's purpose, not his own comfort.

It's a lesson all his disciples must learn.

Two years later a stroke forced my retirement from any further normal church ministry. I was left able only to type with one hand at my computer. Not comfortable. But it also closed off distraction from writing. I am grateful to my editor friends at BRF for giving me the opportunity to continue to do so for them.

Rick Hoover

Lent, 2020

† † †

The Devotionals

Genesis 3:9 Where are you?

Late at night a policeman saw a man searching the pavement under a streetlight. Loose something? the policeman asked. My car keys, said the man. He pointed to a shadowy area beyond the streetlight's illumination. I lost them over there but the light is better here.

Our choice in life is often just the opposite. We need help, but prefer to look somewhere that will not reveal our shabby condition, the very reasons we need the help. We search earnestly, but shy back at the same time. The Psalmist knew that the mysterious King of Glory who had been promised to Israel would be Almighty and therefore scary and not in our control. As Adam had done, we would want to hide in shadows from the One Who came to help us.

God nevertheless chose to send His Son out in the dark to find us. He sent him in peace. And he sent him in the least scary way possible, as a baby who would himself need our help and care at first.

Genesis 8:21 The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.

God looked over the results of sending a flood upon the earth in judgment and saw the essential problem: the intention of man’s heart. Here we see foreshadowed the reason why the first commandment would head the list. I must have no other gods before me, even if they are my own best intentions.

My first impulse is always to consult my own desires, my own cravings, rather than to submit to God’s directions for me. That’s what makes my intentions evil. They do not line up with God’s will. No wonder that when Jesus began to preach, he started with the simple commandment repent! Turn back to God! Until I do that, no direction I take will bring me closer to Him or fulfill any of His plans for my life. Before I take a step I need to declare as the Psalmist did, You are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.

Genesis 12:1 Get out of your country and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.

Over and over God seems to address us with