Scripture: James 1:27
True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.
Thought for the Day: All last week, I looked at the first chapter of James. I decided to do one more devotional with the last verse from the first chapter. The word that catches my attention is the word contamination. In the original Greek, it is: aspiloo. It looks a little like a spill, and since the word spiloo is the Greek word for spot, it kind of makes sense. What I hear from James is a clear vision of what a follower of Jesus looks like. As followers, we care for those who are weak and often forgotten, and to do so, we must be careful not to allow the world to spill all of it selfish and self-serving garbage on us. For James, the world (that is, creation) is not bad, but there is plenty of bad mojo in this world that seeks to invite us to follow something other than Jesus.
Prayer: Through James and other voices of the faith, continue to provide for me a vision of how you’d like me to represent Jesus. I ask you, O God, for there are plenty of voices around me suggesting a very different vision. Amen.
A NEW WORSHIP SERIES
