Memory Verse; Adonai is my portion and my cup.
You cast my lot. My boundary lines fall in pleasant places
—surely my heritage is beautiful. Psalms 16:6 TLV
Romans 7:7-8 Psalms 50
It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes, I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments, I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gulag Archipelago.
Merciful God, you must grieve over our broken earth as King David mourned the death of his disobedient son, Absalom. Break our own hearts with the things that break yours. Make us voices in the wilderness that cry out for your kingdom to come on earth. Amen. (commonprayer.net)
