Paul Worries About Visiting Corinth Again

Text: 2 Corinthians 12: 11-21

Reflection and Question: Paul is clearly apprehensive about his next possible visit to the church in Corinth. Some there are accusing him of skimming from the collection for Jerusalem and he is suspecting that some of them have fallen without repentance into the vices he lists. Sounds a bit like my church, any church, every church, sometime or other. What is my place in my church and how can I be an instrument of God’s peace?

Prayer: Make me, O God, an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury pardon, doubt faith, despair hope, darkness light, sadness joy. O Divine Master, let me not so much seek to be consoled as to consol, to be loved as to love, to be understood as to understand. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dieing that we rise to eternal life.(St. Francis)

This meditation is based on the Daily Lectionary Year 1 from the Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (1993).