Grace for All

Luke 5:16Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.Barbara and I were returning from a family reunion in Alabama not long ago and making our way up the interstate highway. We encountered several impatient drivers who zoomed in and out of traffic, seeking to get to their destination quickly. They put the rest of us at risk. I’m sure that was not their intention, but the result was to make us uncomfortable and vulnerable, and create a climate that raised anxiety for everyone.I thought of the counsel of Richard Foster, who in his classic guide, The Celebration of Discipline, wrote, “Our adversary majors in three things: hurry, noise, and crowds .”Think about this wisdom: the three things that stand between us and spiritual peace are hurry, noise, and crowds. There are times when we cannot avoid hurry. And times when we can not avoid noise. Nor crowds. But none of these things contribute to our peace. In fact, they are the most significant factors standing in the way of our peace.Barbara and I had this conversation with our son and daughter-in-law. She said, “This is easy for you because you are retired. It’s difficult for us because we have to go to work every day and can’t control our situation.” She was right. But the truth remains that hurry prevents peace, noise inhibits peace, and crowds restrict peace.Jesus understood that life requires a rhythm—engagement and retreat, helping and restoring. And the very thing that enables us to help adequately is the time of quiet and prayer that replenishes our spiritual resources. Our Lord withdrew for prayer and renewal. And so must we.Keep this truth near you. Our spiritual adversary majors in hurry, noise, and crowds. We must major in rest, quiet, and solitude. This is what replenishes our spirits.Prayer:Dear God, slow me down, quiet me down, and enable me to be alone with you so that I may be the one you intended for me to be. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Herb Sadler.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Isaiah 41:10“So, do not fear, for I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”This verse is a powerful reminder that God, the Helper of Israel, and of all human kind, does not want us to live in fear. There are also a dozen times in the New Testament where Jesus encourages people not to be afraid. We should take something repeated by God that many times, as absolute truth! Yet we worry and are fearful of many things in this day and age!Chapman University, a top private University in California, in 2025 compiled their poll entitled – What Americans Fear Most. The result of that poll shows that many of us experience common fears. The Top 10 are felt by more than 50% of Americans. The following are the Top 10…Corrupt government officialsPeople I love becoming seriously illEconomic/financial collapseCyber terrorismPeople I love dyingUS becoming involved in another World WarPollution of drinking waterRussia using Nuclear WeaponsPollution of oceans, rivers, and lakesGovernment tracking of personal dataFor the 10th consecutive year, fear of “Corrupt government officials” has topped the list, with 69% of Americans making this their #1 fear in 2025.Now, I would add AI and all sorts of unknown emerging technologies to this list of things we can’t control or sometimes can’t even understand. The world can feel too big. Who is in control, we might ask, when the news of the day bowls us over in anxiety and fear! But, my friends, GOD is in control. Yet we might ask – then where is He?!Let’s consider what Jesus said about that when he walked on the earth as a man 2000 years ago… In Matthew 28:18-20 we find these words, Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.He is with us, but we may not be holding onto his promises. It’s so easy to get caught up in the news of the day, so we need to make time to read our Bibles, to pray in quiet space with Jesus, and to center ourselves on God’s LOVE and promises. He is with us, but we have to accept His presence, His promises and His peace.Let’s do that right now. Please pray with me…Dear loving, faithful God, please help me to remain centered in your promises. Help me to trust you and to focus on your strength, and your love, and not my own fear and helplessness. Help me to rest in your peace. In Jesus' name we pray…AMENThis devotion was written and read by Bernice Howard.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Romans 15:13 (NRSV) May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.In Paul’s letter to the Roman church, he spends the first eleven chapters building one long argument: Jew and Gentile stand on identical ground before God. No distinction, he says in chapter 3 — all have sinned, all are justified freely by grace. In chapter 11, Gentile believers are branches grafted into an old olive tree, sharing its root with Israel rather than replacing it.A few years before this letter, the emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome — Jewish Christians included. The church kept meeting without them, shaped by Gentile believers who'd never kept kosher and saw no reason to start. When the ban lifted, Jewish believers came home to a congregation with its own habits already set. Paul calls one side "weak in faith" and the other "strong," and neither gets a compliment. The weak still ate only vegetables, still marked certain days as holy. The strong ate anything, treated every day alike, and chapter 14 opens by telling them not to look down on the ones they disagree with. Two groups at the same table, two consciences, each sure the other had it wrong.Paul doesn't referee that argument. He keeps pointing both sides back to Christ, who died for the believer sitting across the table. Early in chapter 15, he quotes four Old Testament passages picturing Gentiles praising God alongside Israel, one voice. That's what he's been building toward since chapter 1. Our verse for today, verse 13 of chapter 15, serves as the letter’s benediction, right before Paul shifts into travel plans and personal greetings. Everything he's argued for fourteen chapters lands here, in a prayer.The word translated "abound" in verse 13 is perisseuō (per-is-SYOO-oh), and it means to overflow or exceed a standard measure. It describes having more than enough, a surplus, or a superabundance in quantity and quality. By my count, Paul used the word over 20 times in his other letters, but the most notable use in the Bible is in John's Gospel, after Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. "Gather up the fragments left over," Jesus tells the disciples (John 6:12). The same word, perisseuō, describes what remained: Twelve full baskets (v. 13). Not a crowd barely fed. A crowd fed until they were full, with room to spare.Paul’s prayer is not that the argument would end. He prays, "May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace, so that you perisseuō in hope.” More hope than it takes. More than you asked for. More than you can imagine.The whole letter's theology rests on one request: that what fills this newly rejoined, still-adjusting family would be more than the moment required. Not enough to get by. Left over. Twelve baskets of it.Prayer Father, you are the God of hope. Fill us with joy and peace in the middle of what isn't resolved, and let your Spirit make that hope abound — more than the moment requires. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Cliff McCartneyGrace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 121: 1-2 (New International Version)I lift up my eyes to the hills—Where does my help come from?My help comes from the Lord,The Maker of heaven and earth. What happens when a person looks up to the hills and puts her faith in the Lord? The answer is illustrated in the life of Emma Gatewood, more famously known as Grandma Gatewood of Gallipolis, Ohio, who was the first woman to walk the Appalachian Trail in its entirety in 1955 at the age of 67. In the years following, she walked the trail two more times.Emma Gatewood’s life up to her walk was filled with adversity. Born into a family of fifteen children, she suffered an alcoholic and abusive father. She was only able to attend school through the eighth grade. At the age of 19, she married Perry Gatewood, a well-educated man who nevertheless turned into a violent alcoholic husband. She raised 11 children, worked in the fields and suffered physical abuse. Finally in 1939 she left Perry and filed for divorce, at a time when divorce was unheard of. Her case was so compelling she received alimony and custody of the three children still at home.Self-educated and a voracious reader, Emma Gatewood ran across an article on the Appalachian Trail in an old National Geographic Magazine. In 1955 she told her children she was “going for a walk.” 146 days later, she had traveled from Georgia to Maine and ended at the peak of Mount Baxter, where she signed the register and said, “I did it; I said I would do it and I’ve done it.” Because she was a unique traveler, local newspapers along the way carried stories about her. But that was not the end. She became a noted speaker and increased the popularity of hiking and building trails. In spite of the problems she encountered on the first trek. Grandma Gatewood set out a second time and discovered that her experiences had inspired others to hike and improve the trail. She hiked the Oregon Trail at the age of 76, and in 1967, she hiked the Appalachian Trail a third time. By the end of her life, she had walked over 14,000 miles and inspired many along the way.Emma Gatewood looked up to the hills and found her help in God’s natural world. She became a role model to both women and men for turning adversity into adventure. Hers is an unusual story but not unique. As with Emma, we can trust in God and in the beauty of the hills around us to summon deep resources inside our souls.Let us pray: Dear Lord, help us to remember that you are always around us, in the hills, in the valleys, and on the plains of our lives. We know that our help comes from you, the Maker of heaven and earth. Amen.This devotion was written by Laura Derr and read by Amy Large.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Welcome to the Saturday episode of the Grace for All podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Saturday is a special time when we take a few moments to review the scriptures that we have cited in the episodes this week.If you missed any of those episodes, you might want to consider listening to them today. And even if you heard them all, there may be one that you might want to listen to again. We hope that each of these scriptures and podcasts will bring you a full measure of joy, peace, and love.Now, let's listen to the scriptures that have been on our hearts this week.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Lamentations 3:21-23 (NRSV)But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.We sing the wonderful hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” with such warmth that it’s easy to imagine it coming from a quiet, sunny morning. It didn’t. Those words grew out of destruction and rubble.Almost the whole book of Lamentations is raw grief. In 586 BC, the Babylonians took Jerusalem, and it wasn’t just a wall or a building that came down. It was everything: home, freedom, worship, and identity. The people were dragged into exile among strangers, and underneath it all they suspected that their own unfaithfulness had helped land them there.So it’s a sad and somber book. Which is what makes verse 21 so surprising. Right in the middle of the loss and grief, the writer stops and says, “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.”Remarkably, the writer says this even though nothing around him had changed. The walls weren’t rebuilt. The exile didn’t end.What changed was what he remembered. He remembered that God had been there with Israel when the nation faced tough times before. God hadn’t walked away this time either. Even in disaster, God’s love hadn’t run out.And here’s the part I find most encouraging: God’s mercies are new every morning. They’re not a lifetime supply handed out once, but fresh daily, sized exactly for whatever is facing you today. Like manna in the wilderness, you get today’s portion, today. And that’s all any of us need. Just enough to get us through today.Maybe you’re looking at something in your own life that feels destroyed — a relationship, a plan, a version of your life you’d counted on. The wreckage can be devastating. It can convince you there’s nothing left and you’re all alone.Hope doesn’t start when the rubble clears. It starts when you remember who God has been to you before. Let that memory hold you up right where you are.Even in the ashes, His love hasn’t quit, and His mercy is already up this morning, waiting for you.PrayerLord, when loss or regret threatens to consume us, remind us that Your covenant love is greater than our deepest ruins. Give us the grace to receive today’s mercy for today’s situation. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Chuck WarnockGrace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Made in His Image Psalm 139:13-14"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."More than 25 years ago, my dear friend’s son was born with a serious heart defect requiring multiple open-heart surgeries. I will never forget visiting them when he was just a toddler. At bedtime, I watched her dress him in his pajamas and tuck him in for the night. As she settled him in his bed, she took her finger and lovingly traced the long scar on his chest as she said these words, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.”I picture that tender moment every time I hear this verse. Knowing that we are made in God’s image, I think, is not so much about us trying to identify with God as it is about the realization that God identifies with us. We have the assurance that God knows our hearts—literally and figuratively. God knows our strengths and weaknesses, our greatest hopes and deepest fears. God knows all of our thoughts and our feelings. God knows where we are broken and where we are whole. God knit us together, and God knows all of it.Beloved, God knows your scars more intimately than you do, and they are precious to Him.Today, can you picture God tracing those scars, visible and invisible, with God’s own hand and saying to you, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made?”Pray along with me:Creator God, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When I feel overcome by the awareness of my flaws, remind me that you see beauty where I see scars. Help me believe that you lovingly knit me together and that your works are wonderful. May I bring glory to your name. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Greta Smith. Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Genesis 28:12And he dreamed: a stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching the sky, and God’s angels were going up and down on it.Some years ago, Catherine Nance described in a sermon the concept of thin spaces. According to Google, Thin spaces (often called thin places) are unique locations or moments where the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual realm feels exceptionally close. I instantly knew that what Catherine was describing was more than just conjecture but was, in fact, real.Scripture is full of instances where people experience the very real presence of God. For Jacob, it was a vision of angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven. For Moses, it was the burning bush. For Peter, James, and John it was the mount of transfiguration where the countenance of Jesus was transformed and they fell on their faces in awe of the moment. And for Saul, it was a blinding light that knocked him off his horse. Moments when the spiritual is so close to the physical that it is exceptionally real enough to reach out and touch.While not nearly so dramatic as these encounters, thin spaces have been for me something that I have experienced from time to time but could not adequately describe before. Most often, it comes in the form of music that is so overwhelming that I can no longer sing but simply mouth the words.“Hear him ye deaf, his praise ye dumb, your loosened tongues employ. Ye blind behold your Savior come and leap ye lame for joy.” Charles Wesley obviously knew the overwhelming joy of being in the presence of Jesus.Blessed assurance, Jesus is mineOh, what a foretaste of glory divineHeir of salvation, purchase of GodBorn of his Spirit, washed in His bloodThis is my story, this is my songPraising my Savior all the day longThis is my story, this is my songPraising my Savior all the day longOr...Angels we have heard on highSweetly singing o'er the plainsAnd the mountains in replyEchoing their joyous strains.Gloria In Excelsis Deo.In this moment, I am in the thin spaces along with those shepherds.Sometimes it has been in the liturgy of the sacraments of baptism and communion when it becomes almost impossible to recite those sacred words aloud. I have had moments in delivering home communion where it becomes difficult to get through the words without breaking down.And sometimes it is simply reciting the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”There is a common phrase, “If you know, you know.” I am persuaded that these experiences are more than simply an emotional response to well written and familiar phrases. There is, I believe, an unmistakable reality of being so close to the spiritual realm, that the physical simply cannot bear it.So, what is it for you? When watching a sunrise or sunset, does a sob suddenly well up in your throat that you weren’t expecting? Are you overwhelmed by purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plains? Or is it simply a touch or a laugh from someone dear to you?I know that what I believe is real. But in these thin places I can actually reach out and touch what I believe.Prayer: Heavenly Father, I thank you for the times where the spiritual and physical collide in such a way that there is no doubt. Thank you for revealing Yourself to us in ways and moments that affirm for us that You are ever present and oh, so real. AmenThis devotion was written and read by Charlie Barton.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 30:5 (CEB)His anger lasts for only a second,but his favor lasts a lifetime.Weeping may stay all night,but by morning, joy!Twice now I have taken part in the funeral of one of my children.Barry, our oldest son, passed away more than eight years ago. Hannah, our oldest daughter, passed away only nine months ago.Each of those losses shocked me to my core. I found myself asking, How will I ever get through this?It turns out that is a common question when we face grief. We ask it after the death of someone we love, but also after the loss of a job, a devastating diagnosis, a miscarriage, or any loss that divides life into before and after. The question is so common that grief researcher Lucy Hone used it as the title of a book about living with and through grief.Psalm 30 gives us the image of a long, dark night: “Weeping may stay all night.”When you are in the middle of that night, it can feel as though morning will never come. Grief has a way of convincing us that this is simply what life will feel like from now on.But the psalm doesn't deny the weeping. It doesn't tell us to cheer up or get over it. It simply reminds us that the night is not the whole story.“By morning, joy!”Morning doesn't erase what happened during the night. I would give anything to have my children back. That ache does not disappear because the sun comes up.And yet, somehow, the sun does come up.We laugh again without betraying the people we have lost. We notice beauty again. We discover moments of gratitude, connection, even joy. The scar remains, but life grows around it.These two truths can live together: we can carry grief and still experience joy.So when you find yourself in one of those dark nights, when it seems impossible to imagine morning, hold on to this promise: The night is real. But the night is not forever. The sun will come up again.And joy comes in the morning.Let’s pray.Father, when we find ourselves in the dark nights of grief and loss, stay close to us. When we cannot imagine that morning will ever come, help us trust that darkness will not have the last word. Hold us through the weeping, and help us recognize joy when it begins to return. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Donn King.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Isaiah 55:1-3 (NLT)“Is anyone thirsty?Come and drink—even if you have no money!Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free!2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?Why pay for food that does you no good?Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.You will enjoy the finest food.3 “Come to me with your ears wide open.Listen, and you will find life.I will make an everlasting covenant with you.I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.Where do you find comfort?Some find comfort in other people—a safe place where they know they will be loved no matter what. Children find comfort in their blankie or the soothing sensation of a pacifier. Others find comfort in food—there are some things that only a cupcake can fix!We are all looking for comfort in our lives in some form or another. Sometimes we don’t recognize it because it has become a habit, or simply because we live so comfortably. If we were to take away our phones, our social media followers, our money and possessions—or even our homes or our health—we would quickly see how much of our lives is built around comfort and how, in a split second, we can find ourselves deeply uncomfortable.The book of Isaiah is no stranger to this theme of seeking comfort. In this part of Isaiah, God’s people have experienced exile, suffering under Babylonian captivity and pleading with God for relief. In chapter 53, we learn about a Suffering Servant and how his suffering would become the means through which God’s people would receive redemption and salvation. And this promise would not be limited to Israel alone—it would extend to all nations.Then we arrive at Isaiah 55, where God speaks to people who are weary, thirsty, and longing for something more:“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink— even if you have no money!Come, take your choice of wine or milk— it’s all free!”Notice that God does not say, “Get yourself together first.” God does not tell them to earn their way back or prove that they are worthy. God simply says, “Come.”Come if you are thirsty.Come if you are empty.Come if you cannot afford what you need.Come and receive what only God can give.This is where the comfort of God is different from the comforts we usually reach for. A cupcake can make a hard afternoon feel a little better. Our phones can distract us. Money and possessions can provide a sense of security. Even the people who love us most can sit beside us in our pain. But none of these things can satisfy the deepest hunger of the human heart.God’s comfort does not always mean that our circumstances immediately become comfortable. Sometimes God’s comfort comes as the assurance that we are not abandoned in the uncomfortable places.The people of Israel still had a journey ahead of them. They would have to leave what had become familiar, return home, and rebuild what had been broken. Yet God promised that they would not make that journey alone:“You shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.”Maybe you are in an uncomfortable place today. Something has changed. Something has been taken from you. Perhaps the things you once depended upon no longer provide the security they once did.Hear God’s invitation to you: Come.Come thirsty. Come weary. Come uncertain. Come without pretending that everything is fine.The truest comfort is not found in a life where nothing difficult ever happens. It is found in knowing that wherever life takes us, God is already there. The God who sustained Israel in exile, brought redemption through the Suffering Servant, and invited the thirsty to come and drink is still offering living water today.So, where do you find comfort?May we learn to find it not only in the temporary things that make life easier, but in the everlasting love of the One who promises to meet us, sustain us, and lead us home in peace.Let us pray.Gracious God, when we are thirsty, empty, or afraid, remind us that your invitation still stands. Help us release the comforts that cannot truly satisfy us and trust in your presence. Meet us in every uncomfortable place, sustain us for the journey, and lead us forward with joy and peace. Amen.This episode of Grace for All was written and read by Reverend Teanna Black, an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 46:1-2 (NRSV)God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.Psalm 46 was likely written for a nation under siege—some scholars connect it to the night Jerusalem woke up to find an invading army gone, the threat dissolved overnight with no explanation the city had engineered for itself. The Hebrew word for refuge here is machaseh (mah-khah-SEH), a shelter, a place you flee to when there's nowhere else to go. For people behind those walls, machaseh wasn't a metaphor. It was the stone and mortar keeping them alive while the siege dragged on, day after day, with no guarantee of how it would end. It's a song written by people who knew what it was to be sheltered in the middle of danger, not just delivered from it afterward.A specific time in my life comes to mind when I read Psalm 46. It's not the first story I'd tell about my faith, but it's the one that surfaces without fail whenever I get to these verses.I spent much of the last few years before I retired overseeing a portfolio of capital projects at the university where I worked. The largest one I ever managed was an athletic and recreation center—a $28 million build. When we signed the contract to host a large summer camp of athletes in the facility, we had months of schedule cushion. But construction eats cushion. Delays, weather, small scope changes — each thing is reasonable on its own, until one day the cushion is gone, and you're up against a date you can't move.One thing stood between us and opening: the handicap spaces in the parking lot still needed striping before we could get our certificate of occupancy. The lot itself was already paved. We just needed dry pavement long enough to paint the lines. And it would not stop raining.By the Thursday before the campers arrived, we still didn't have the certificate, and there was no plan B—no other facility that could hold a camp that size. If the certificate didn't come through, we were canceling a contract in front of people counting on us.There's no other way to say it. This was trouble—the real kind, out of my hands, with a clock I couldn't stop.After a sleepless night, I got out of bed well before sunrise that Thursday, completely undone. I told God, plainly, that I was lost. My men's Bible study met that morning, and I told them everything—the lot, the rain, the deadline. They prayed with me, and I remember it being a real prayer. The rain was still coming down sideways when we finished, with more of the same forecast for the next day. I left not knowing anything had changed, but somehow at peace with the situation, wherever it might lead.The storm broke that morning. By mid-morning Thursday, the rain had cleared, and the pavement was dry enough for the crews to paint the lines. The county signed off, and we had our certificate of occupancy Friday afternoon. The athletes arrived Monday, and the camp ran without a hitch.When we got that certificate Friday, I walked into the empty arena by myself and sat in the circle at center court. I lowered my head and thanked God for his provision. I didn’t earn it, and I couldn’t have solved the problem. It's been seven years, and I still can't tell this story without something catching in my chest.I don't know why the rain broke when it did, and I'm not going to pretend I do. It's a miraculous story, and I'm humbled every time I tell it. And although I associate the whole thing with Psalm 46, it isn’t really what the Psalm is about. It isn't a psalm about rain clearing or a miraculous rescue. It's a psalm about refuge. And for me, the association isn’t Friday afternoon; it is Thursday morning.Friday was the rescue—the moment the actual trouble lifted, the thing I'd been praying for. But Thursday morning was the refuge. A group of men I love and respect all owned my trouble with me, agreed, and prayed with me. Not for resolution. Not for success. For peace. For wisdom. For God’s will. They were a refuge for me. A shelter in the storm. A machaseh.You may be carrying a Thursday of your own right now—something with no plan B, no clear Friday in sight. I can't promise you the rain will break on your timeline. But I can tell you where the refuge is. It's not waiting at the end of the story, for whenever the ending finally arrives. It's already here. The Psalm says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Machaseh doesn't wait for resolution. It asks you to put your trust in the eternal refuge before you have one.Lord, when the ground is shaking and we can't see a way through, be our refuge before we see the outcome, not only after. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Cliff McCartney.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

You are listening to Grace for All, a daily devotional podcast produced by the people of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee.This is Scripture Saturday, a time when we pause and reflect on the scriptures we have read throughout the week. If you missed any of our devotionals on these passages, you can find them on our website at 1stChurch.org or wherever you get your podcasts.Now, we invite you to listen and receive Grace. Welcome and thank you for joining us.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Lamentations 3:22–23 (NIV)Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.Lamentations is exactly what the name promises — five chapters of grief over a city in ruins, a people in exile, a covenant that seemed, by every outward sign, to have failed. The writer describes himself as a man who has forgotten what happiness is, whose strength and hope have perished.And then, right in the middle of that wreckage, comes this turn: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed.This isn't comfort offered from a safe distance, after the crisis has passed. It's comfort spoken from inside the rubble, by someone who has every reason to despair and chooses instead to remember. The mercies aren't new because the trouble has ended. They're new every morning. God's faithfulness isn't about whether our circumstances have improved. It's measured by whether God is still God, morning after morning, regardless of what the night before contained.Many of us have sung the old hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," which comes directly from this passage. There’s no escape from trouble. But there is promise of a faithfulness that outlasts the trouble — summer and winter, springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses, all bearing witness to a mercy that renews itself daily rather than running out.We tend to want comfort that changes our situation. What Lamentations 3 offers is comfort that changes what we can stand on while the situation remains what it is.And that comfort is "new every morning." We measure faithfulness by consistency of outcome — did the plan work, did the prayer get answered, did the trouble go away. Scripture measures it differently: faithfulness is God showing up again, today, possibly in a way different from yesterday.That's covenant language. It's the same God who bound himself to Israel in the wilderness binding himself to us now — not because we've earned it, but because that's who he has committed to be.If you're in a season where the comfort you want hasn't come, this passage doesn't ask you to pretend otherwise. It asks you to notice that you woke up this morning still held, still experiencing the mercy that has been been renewed once again today. Your discomfort may be the same, but God offers new mercies morning by morning.Prayer:Lord, when our circumstances offer us no comfort, let us find it in you — not because our trouble has ended, but because your mercy is new again this morning, as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow. Great is your faithfulness. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Joshua 1:9Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.Knowing what we value and being able to act and speak accordingly is something many of us strive for. However, consistently demonstrating beliefs that we say we hold every moment of every day is a challenge for all.Sometimes, I get to the end of a day, and I am discouraged by how much is left undone, by the words I did not share. Other days I have said words or I have done something that I realize might have hurt someone. My world can get very cluttered with what ifs.My battlefield is figurative not reality, but I seek courage and strength everyday. As I search, I find that courage comes from the heart. This is true both in the sense that the courageous choose actions and words that demonstrate their heart and in the etymology of the word derived from cor which means heart.The Lord is with us, in our heart, in our world, in the air that we breath. Courage is the ability to let what is in our heart lead us to do God’s will in a broken world. Strength is the ability to do what God leads us to even when it is challenging. And humility makes room for the strength to know that we will only accomplish what God allows for us. When we fall short of what we think we should accomplish, we should not be discouraged because our Lord is with us, always. The path to peace in our heart is in following God’s will whether it is what we think should happen or not. When the “what ifs” begin to clutter my view, I pray that God will show me the way forward and give me strength to understand.Please pray with me today:Lord, help me find the strength that you share with me in my heart. Allow your love to guide me on the path of your direction. May your wisdom fill my heart and give me strength as I make each choice each day. I know you are with me always. Please help me to focus on Your will not mine, Amen.This devotion was written by Jill Pope and read by Susan Daves.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 121:1-2“I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”These words make up the first two stanzas of a Song of Ascents. The Songs of Ascents are a collection of 15 Psalms traditionally sung by Hebrew pilgrims as they journeyed to Jerusalem for worship during annual festivals. These psalms express themes of trust, hope, and spiritual ascent, reflecting the pilgrims’ journey from distress to divine joy and highlight the communal aspect of worship. Praise the Lord!I’ve lived near mountains much of my life. In Birmingham, AL a peak called Red Mountain, part of the Appalachians, oldest mountains in North America, was visible out my front door. In Colorado, the Great Rockies towered grandly over the city of Denver and could be seen everywhere I looked. And now in Tennessee, the majestic Smokies, part of the Blue Ridge, America’s most visited mountains is the vista out my windows! But the mountain I remember most fondly was an imaginary peak. I was around 12 years old when I saw it. I was in fifth grade, and my beloved grandfather had recently died of sudden cardiac arrest. I remember the feeling of devastation and crying uncontrollably as I walked home from school and up the little hill to our home. I stopped to wipe my eyes and when I looked up at the blue sky in front of me it appeared! The sky was filled with huge cumulus clouds that had taken the shape of a snow-covered mountain peak! It filled the whole sky and I was stunned to feel God’s presence with me! My Pawpaw always read the Bible to me and took me to church. At the moment of the “mountain” sighting, I could hear his voice in my head. But I knew the voice was from God and was assuring me that my Pawpaw was home with God and that my help would now come from God too! Here in Tennessee, we can see God’s mountains just about all the time. We would do well to be reminded of this verse every time we see them. And if no mountains are near you, just close your eyes and see God’s holy mountain, remembering His promise and blessing whenever you need it, no matter where you are. “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains – from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”Won’t you please pray with me…Dear Lord, Maker of all things, please draw me close and let me feel your LOVE, your guidance, and your help, in all things, all the days of my life. Whenever I see mountains and hills, real or imaginary, let me remember you and reach for your help. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen!This devotion was written and read by Bernice Howard.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalms 121:1-2I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.Many of our Grace for All listeners have likely visited Lake Junaluska in North Carolina. It is where the Holston Annual Conference meets each year to conduct the business of the church and hear about all the good things that have occurred and will occur in the coming years. It is a beautiful place, with the lake and hills, the huge lighted cross on the hill above the building where delegates meet, a prayer maze, a chapel that induces calmness and awe, a place where everyone can reflect, refresh, and rededicate themselves to serve God.I was privileged to serve as a delegate a few years ago when one morning terrible news came from home. A father and son had died in a murder-suicide. It was a family well-known and loved by many of our district delegates. A family of faithful Christians who had served in many capacities to help spread the Good News and establish new churches and schools as missionaries to another continent.Mental illness had become the demon that led to this tragedy, and we were shocked and grief-stricken that morning. The following days of profound sadness and grief were almost unbearable to those closest to the family. The child’s mother was literally prostrate with grief, but her wonderful family, her congregation, and many friends held her up until she could once again stand.The morning that the news reached Lake Junaluska, I was praying as I walked to the meeting center, crying out “how could this happen to your beloved servants?” when I looked up and the beauty of the warm, sunny morning in a beautiful place of God’s creation overcame me. This verse “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” came to mind. I realized that as awful as this felt and as tragic as it was, God would be with us to help us endure and heal.That day is not the end of the story. The mother dedicated her life to making the memory of her son a force of good in the community. Church and community activities were organized in her son’s memory. People chose to be the hands of feet of Jesus where there was need and continue to shine the special light that was this little boy.A new family formed out of the hopelessness and despair of that tragedy. His mother remarried several years later, and a strong Christian family with beautiful children and loving parents grew. The Lord continues to help all of us who loved this child and his family and show us many ways to love and serve in his memory.Awful tragedies occur every day in our world, but God’s promise never falters. He will never leave us, and He will always be there to help us when human strength fails, and we cannot understand why such tragedies happen.Let us pray:Dear God, our earthly lives may be filled with loss and sorrow, but your promise is constant. You are there to help us, whatever our circumstances. You will never leave us. For this assurance, we give thanks. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Pat Scruggs.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Proverbs 15:18 A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, while one who is patient calms a quarrel.When I read this verse, I immediately think about my grandmother, who was a master at using Southern phrases to get a point across. “ Stirring the pot” was one of her favorites and it took me a while as a child to figure out exactly what she meant when she said it. When you Google this phrase, it says in a social context it refers to intentionally creating or escalating conflict, drama, or tension, often to achieve a specific goal or out of malicious intent. The psychology behind it involves various motivations, including a desire for control, a need to displace anger or resentment, or manipulative tactics for self-promotion or gaining an advantage. It can also stem from boredom, insecurity, or a lack of empathy. I’ve known some pot-stirrers in my time. And I bet you have too. In fact, I may have actually “stirred the pot” on occasion myself. But I felt I was justified when I did it to bring attention to a perceived injustice. In my opinion, most folks who stir up conflict find pleasure in other people's misfortune and sadness. There’s definitely something missing in their lives, and they’re resentful and jealous of anything good happening to someone else. Others like to sit back and enjoy the chaos they’ve created. Patience really can diffuse a lot of escalating situations. In the Bible, it is presented as a virtue stemming from God’s character and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It’s not about waiting passively, but trusting in God’s timing and plan. God’s patience with us encourages us to extend Grace and be patient with others. While it can be difficult to be patient in times of trial or discord, we are reminded through Christ that patience is a virtue and a fruit of the Spirit. The next time I’m in a stressful conflict, I’m going to remember this verse and hopefully bring the dispute to a manageable discussion. This devotion was written by Virginia Hardwick Kerr and read by Sally Stovall. Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Matthew 22:34-4034 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and greatest commandment.39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”When I was working, we always had to submit a new budget for the upcoming year. For a long time, we just looked at our expenses for the current year and increased that amount for the coming year.Then we started using zero-based budgeting.We had to review every budget item against what we had been tasked to do. We had to justify every expense against our primary mission.I think that is what Jesus was doing. He was saying that every one of the commandments in the law should be reviewed against the commandments to first love God with all that we have and then our neighbor as we love our self. The only commandments that were needed in the law were those that fit the purpose of these two. We all need from time to time to review our lives against these two commandments.How do we spend our time, money, and our other resources? Do these show our love for God and others? Perhaps we need to zero-base our lives. Get rid of the things that don’t show our love for God and others. What would our lives look like then?Prayer: Dear God, as I go through this day, in everything that I say, do and think help me to show my love for you and my neighbors. So that this day my life might bring a smile to your face rather than tears to your eyes.This devotion was written by Alvin Jenkins and read by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

You are listening to Grace for All, a daily devotional podcast produced by the people of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee.This is Scripture Saturday, a time when we pause and reflect on the scriptures we have read throughout the week. If you missed any of our devotionals on these passages, you can find them on our website at 1stChurch.org or wherever you get your podcasts.Now, we invite you to listen and receive Grace. Welcome and thank you for joining us.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Job 19:25For I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.This may seem an odd verse popping up in the book of Job, which is probably best known for detailing Job’s disagreements, suffering, and, ultimately, his steadfast faith in the midst of his misfortunes.In the previous verses in Chapter 19, Job lists his woes: darkness covering his path, the loss of his honor and hope, feeling anger directed at him, estrangement from family and friends, and begging for pity, which falls on deaf ears, his pleas ignored. What a sad situation! Job has every cause to be miserable and finds no one to help him in his time of need and sorrow.I have participated in many Bible studies over the years, but never have I studied Job. Truthfully, what comes to mind upon hearing his name is the idiom “the patience of Job,” which is used to describe someone who can endure extreme suffering, hardship, or severe frustration without complaining or losing faith.If you are over the age of 12, it is likely that you have suffered some injustice or hardship in your life. Maybe even before age 12, when you perhaps could not understand what was happening. I know I have, probably in every decade of my life. When I worked in a county in Middle Tennessee, I worked under a Director of Schools who was demanding, less than communicative, and sharp-tongued when he did speak. I just felt I could never meet his standards, and it was very frustrating. Many days I left my office thinking that it would be best for me to leave that job and find other employment. I didn’t, because of the people I worked with. They all experienced the same thing, and we supported one another. Poor Job didn’t even have a friend to support him!However, Job endures his suffering with the assurance that he will meet his Redeemer. All his suffering will not have been in vain. Most scholars believe that this book was written between the fifth and seventh centuries B. C. (no Jesus born in Bethlehem yet) so he was referring to God as his redeemer, but he stood on his faith in the worst of his suffering.In an introduction to Wisdom and Hymnic Literature in the Old Testament, one of the writers lays out key concepts found in this part of the Bible: the fallen world does not operate by justice, but we can trust that God is wise and just, even when the world is not. Through that lens it is easier to understand how Job endured all his trials with faith.May you never suffer as Job suffered, but when earthly situations do cause you pain and suffering, remember that it is only temporary. Your reward lies with your faith in salvation and eternity with God.Let us pray:God, we thank you for your wisdom and your constant love. You desire what is best for us, not what we may think we want and need. Let us always give thanks for your justice, even when we may not experience it in this lifetime, Help us maintain hope and patience and to love and support those around us when they are experiencing difficulties. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Pat Scruggs.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Matthew 13:3-9A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.I have always thought of the “someone” in each of Jesus’ explanations of this parable (as in someone who hears the word but…) as other people. One person hears the word with this result and another hears it with a different result. But when I recently heard this passage read, I began to hear about myself in each explanation and it was eye-opening. The focus of the parable shifted from someone to sometimes. Let’s start at the end and work backwards.I like to think that my heart and mind are fertile, well-tilled soil where God’s word is sown, takes root, and thrives. I am constantly hearing new truths in old passages that I can embrace and make my own. I hear and act on God’s call to go and do. And I like to believe that such truths and actions bear good fruit for the kingdom.But then there are situations where I hear a new truth or a word from God for my life and it takes root. But the thorns of my everyday life (schedules, priorities, realities) grow up around that new plant and eventually choke it out. I miss out on the gifts for me and for others because I don’t make the effort to help that word or calling to thrive and it eventually is overcome and fades away.And then there are times when a word for my life rings true and I quickly embrace it; but, just as quickly, it becomes an inconvenient truth for me and my everyday and I never give it the chance to take root and become a reality. I know there have been opportunities to serve that I have considered and could have been fruitful but then they run up against MY will and MY vision for my life and they turn into an opportunity lost. Seeds on rocky places.And how many times has God cried out “Samuel!! Samuel!!” Or, in my case, “Charlie!! Charlie!!” And my ears have just been closed to hearing his call. I know I will always be given new chances to hear what God is speaking for my life and my calling but right now I’m just not willing to listen. These are the seeds that fall along the path and never have a chance.I have experienced each of these scenarios in my everyday spiritual walk. So it no longer is a matter of someone but for me becomes sometimes.It takes will and work and perseverance to keep ourselves always ready to receive a new word or calling from God. But when we do, the harvest can be a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was sown.Prayer:Dear Father, the parables of Jesus are not just interesting stories meant for another audience and another time. As Jesus said, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Help me to read each one and ask, “What are you trying to say to me now?” Thank you for your relentless love and patience. Help us to always be ready to say, “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.” Amen.This devotion was written and read by Charlie Barton.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 94:19 (NIV)When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.Psalm 94:19 (NLT)When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.Reading both translations makes this verse seem a bit clearer.In our world, anxiety is a constant voice, a big topic. At times, I find myself dealing with anxiety (traffic in downtown Atlanta comes to mind). It’s not that I don’t have faith, but some days doubt creeps in. Perhaps, the chaotic crowd of anxious thoughts swirling in my head may hinder any progress I might make. I step in, trying to take control and follow my own path, almost instinctively. The reality is that the “what ifs” are a dangerous way to live. Now, let’s be honest, some anxiety is normal. After all we are human. How do we control anxiety and doubt? Anxiety always comes with at least a tad of fear. With God’s help we can step back and recover our balance. Letting go of our worry and doubts may take practice. We have to let go of our desire to control and then relax. We must never forget God is strong, always present and ultimately in control. When I feel anxious or full of doubt, I seek God’s genuine comfort – that deep, soothing reassurance. Leaning on Him allows my heartbeat to slow, removes me from the chaos and allows my mind to quiet.I’m sure there are many paths that bring us to this place. For me, I turn to my “pocket verse” found in Psalms 46:10. “Be still and know that I am God.” It’s short and easy to remember and it is also powerful. A strong reminder that God is present. He steps in to quiet the chaos, fear and worries. No matter how chaotic our lives become; no matter how anxious we may be, God remains a secure fortress and welcoming refuge. Anxiety is set aside when we focus on Him. Once the chaos is stilled, I can focus not on the “what ifs”, but rather the renewed hope and joy of knowing I don’t need to solve all the problems. His comfort, His strength, His presence – all fill my mind and renew my hope and joy. It is comforting in stressful times or times filled with anxiety to step back and focus on God, our source of comfort and joy. Peace and comfort are found in letting go and claiming God’s presence and love.Let us pray….God of comfort and joy, we ask that you be with us as we find ourselves filled with anxiety. We ask that you help us to step back and remember that you are in control and if we focus on you, our hearts will be quieted and our racing minds will be stilled. We thank you, Lord for your ever-present comfort. Help us to always be filled with joy and hope. It is in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Lisa Blackwood.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Micah 5:2-5“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son, and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be our peace.There is a question that serious readers of Scripture eventually have to face: why do two great religious traditions — Jewish and Christian — read the same ancient texts and arrive at different conclusions? Is one of them simply wrong? Or is something else going on?The prophet Micah gives us one of the most remarkable passages in all of the Old Testament. Writing some seven centuries before the birth of Jesus, he points to Bethlehem — the smallest and most overlooked of Judah’s towns — as the birthplace of a coming ruler whose origins stretch back to ancient times, perhaps to eternity itself. Ancient Jewish interpreters, including the great medieval scholar Rashi, read this as a clear messianic prophecy. The Aramaic Targum of Jonathan, written before the time of Christ, translated the passage explicitly: out of Bethlehem shall the Messiah come forth. The Jewish tradition has always known that this passage points toward something — someone — of cosmic significance.Where Jewish and Christian readings part ways is not over whether the passage is messianic, but over whether that Messiah has already come. Jewish tradition reads Micah’s words as a promise still leaning forward, still awaiting its fulfillment. Christian tradition reads them as a promise fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, the one in whom the ancient origins of God took on human flesh. Both traditions are reading the same words with great seriousness and great reverence. They simply stand in different relationships to the promise.This ought to give us pause — not because it suggests that truth is merely relative, but because it suggests that truth is larger than any single tradition’s grasp of it. And here the story of Babel may offer us unexpected wisdom.Genesis 11:5-8 (NIV)But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. We tend to read the Tower of Babel as a story of pure judgment — God scattering a humanity that had overreached. But look more carefully at what God says: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” The problem at Babel was not human cooperation or even human ambition. It was the dangerous uniformity of a single voice that had made itself the measure of all things, a humanity so certain of its own sufficiency that it had no need to look upward.What God introduced at Babel — the multiplicity of languages, cultures, and voices — was not simply punishment. It was a corrective, and perhaps something more than that. The diversity of human interpretation, including the diversity of faithful religious interpretation, keeps any single tradition from mistaking its own partial vision for the whole of God’s truth. When Jewish scholars and Christian scholars read Micah 5:2 side by side, each sees something real. Each is turned toward the same horizon. And the conversation between them, pursued in honesty and humility, may bring both traditions closer to the God whom the prophet was straining to describe.The ruler Micah promised comes from the smallest place. His greatness reaches to the ends of the earth. And his name, the ancient rabbis told us, was spoken before the world began.Our Father, give us the humility to know that your truth is larger than our understanding of it, and the wisdom to learn from those who read your word from a different place than we do. May all our voices, however different, be turned toward you. Amen.This devotional was written by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Proverbs 11:17Those who are kind reward themselves, but the cruel do themselves harm. There is a popular quote, and I hope you’ll forgive me if the way I report it is not exactly how you have heard it. And I hope you’ll forgive me, too, if you know it to be from a particular source. You see, it’s actually attributed to many people — a quick Google search revealed attribution to everyone from Buddha to Saint Augustine to Christian author Joanna Weaver to Irish actor Malachy McCourt. In any case, the quote goes something like this: “Holding on to hatred is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” That seems to be closely akin to the message the author of Proverbs is trying to convey. When we are kind to others, we are in turn helping ourselves. And when we are hurtful toward others, we are actually hurting ourselves, or drinking the poison, as it may be. But to be clear, I really don’t think the point the author of Proverbs is making is to be kind to others in order to be kind to one’s self. Helping ourselves should be a by-product, not a goal. One of my favorite podcasts (after Grace for All, of course!) is Hidden Brain. This is an exploration of the world through the lens of the social sciences. Host Shankar Vedantam invites incredibly intelligent people to his show to discuss, well, being human in this complex world. I highly recommend that you check out this podcast.In April 2023, Shankar hosted psychologist Amit Kumar on an episode discussing why we are reluctant to be kind to one another. While the whole episode is worth your time, a few of the takeaways include that people often worry about getting the details of their particular kindness just right, but recipients seem to care much more about the effort than the act.Further, small acts of kindness that might be inconsequential to the giver can be monumental to the recipient. When we share a kind word or make a small expression of warmth, we often are actually helping others more than we realize. And this chasm between how the giver and the recipient perceive the act creates what Kumar refers to as the Prosociality Paradox.In this paradox, even though the act of kindness is good for both us and others, we are reluctant to behave in this way since givers of kindness worry about the details and minimize the effect. But it even goes further: this phenomenon also causes us to be reluctant to ask others for kindness that they could provide, even though studies show that we are more than happy to help others when we are able to do so, and we want to feel helpful. As followers of Christ who are trying to demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit, we must be ever more intentional about sharing that kindness, no matter how great or small it may be. We must not worry so much about getting every detail right, as much as getting our intentions right. In short, we must overcome any obstacles from our efforts to make the world kinder. The podcast goes on to describe the pay-it-forward effect, which documents examples of how one act of kindness spurs another. Friends, let us make this society kinder and kinder still, and may nothing, least of all ourselves, get in our way. Let us pray. Holy Spirit of God, you are the source of kindness. Let us channel that in our lives to all who need it, no matter how great or small the need. Help us to not worry so much about how to do so, but help us feel strengthened in you to not be reluctant to do so. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.This devotion was written and read by Dwight Dockery.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Job 19:25 (CEB)I know that my redeemer is alive, and afterward, he’ll rise upon the dust. Job’s friends think they have God figured out.Job has lost almost everything, and they think they know why. Surely, he must have done something terrible. God rewards good people and punishes bad people, they reason, so if Job is suffering, Job must be guilty.Job knows they’re wrong. But he doesn’t understand what God is doing either. In fact, much of the book consists of Job demanding an explanation. At least he knows he hasn't figured it all out.Then, in the middle of all that confusion, Job says something remarkable: I know that my redeemer is alive.Scholars debate exactly what Job means by “redeemer” here. But perhaps the most important thing is what Job doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “I understand.” He says, “I know.”I once had a little Chihuahua who hated going to the veterinarian. From her perspective, I can only imagine how bewildering it seemed. The person she trusted most would carry her into a strange place and allow a woman in a white coat to poke her with needles.She couldn’t possibly understand why I allowed that.But afterward, she still wanted me. She still climbed into my lap. She still licked my hand. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew whom she trusted.Sometimes we want faith to give us explanations. Job reminds us that faith can survive without them.There are things about suffering, loss, and even God that lie beyond our ability to understand. The book of Job ultimately refuses to give us (or Job) a tidy explanation for all of them.But it gives us something else.We may not understand God. We may argue with God or even cry out to him in anger and confusion.And still, with Job, we can say: I know that my redeemer lives.Let's pray.Lord, when I cannot understand what is happening, help me remember who you are. Give me faith that can ask hard questions, endure uncertainty, and still reach for you. In Jesus' name, through whom we can know you, Amen.This devotional was written and read by Donn King.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Welcome to the Saturday episode of the Grace for All podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Saturday is a special time when we take a few moments to review the scriptures that we have cited in the episodes this week. If you missed any of those episodes, you might want to consider listening to them today. And even if you heard them all, there may be one that you might want to listen to again. We hope that each of these scriptures and podcasts will bring you a full measure of joy, peace, and love. Now, let's listen to the scriptures that have been on our hearts this week. Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Job 19:15 (NIV)“My guests and my female servants count me a foreigner; they look on me as on a stranger.”Psalm 69:8 (NIV)“I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother’s children.”Not too long ago I was reading a book by a Benedictine nun. As I read, she kept talking about “the other”. I pictured the other as someone terrible. It took a while, but finally I figured out that she was talking about me. The other was anyone who was not part of her Benedictine community. It made me stop and think about how it felt to be the other. After all, when I think about the other, it isn’t me; it is someone else. It is someone who is not like me. Then I thought about other times when I had felt like the other. When I was in the Boy Scouts, I worked for several years as a staff member at a summer camp. The camp was for white scouts. Toward the end of that time, after the white-only scout season was over, the camp was opened to black scouts. With a few other staff members, for two years, I stayed at the camp during that time to help black scouts do the same thing that I had been doing. I felt like the other. On another occasion, I had the opportunity to visit a service at a synagogue. Not a single person spoke to me. In fact, as I sat there, I could hear all those around me talking about the Gentiles, i.e., the other, me. I have also had the opportunity to visit several all-black churches. I was always welcomed. These experiences made me think about how I feel about and treat others. They don’t have to talk, look, and dress like me, nor do I have to be like them. After all, God invites us all to the table. Wouldn’t the world be dull if they were all like me? There should be no other. We are all one in Christ.Prayer:Dear God, help us as we go through this day and encounter others, to remember that they may see us as the other. Help us to see them and treat them not as the other, but as loved members of your family. Amen.This devotional was written by Alvin Jenkins and read by Cliff McCartneyGrace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Romans 8:28We know that all things work together for good for all those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.Everyone has times in life when it seems things are not working together for good. We live in a time when we want the “good” right now, so when things are not going well, we may question God. “Why me, Lord?” is the question many of us ask when a job is lost, a family is torn apart by divorce, a loved one or oneself faces a medical crisis, any of the times when things seem far from “good.” God may seem very far away and not very attentive to human needs at that point.However, Paul is not writing about the now or just me. When he addresses both Jews and Gentiles in the Book of Romans, he repeatedly reminds them (and us) that salvation through Christ is for ALL, no matter their previous beliefs or lack of belief.As might be expected, conflict often arose among the early house churches in Rome. Some Gentile believers had developed a sense of superiority over Jews, possibly due to the expulsion of Jews from Rome by the emperor Claudius in 49 A. C., while many Jews questioned if God had rejected them. Was God really fair and just? Paul’s letter emphasizes God’s purposes for Jews, all of humanity, and His entire creation. The ultimate purpose of the entire book of Romans is to invite us to share in, and pass on, the Good News - conquering sin and death through salvation. Paul does not mean Christians should just wait patiently for death and salvation. We are meant to live our lives according to His purpose, to act on behalf of God by loving others, following the example of Jesus by caring for “the least of these,” and by sharing the message of hope.While we all face times in this life when “all things are NOT working for immediate good,” we have the promise of the ultimate good to come: Eternal life in God’s presence.Let us pray: God, we thank you for the ultimate gift of your Son and his death and resurrection. This gift assures us of salvation and eternal life with you. Only then may we understand how things did work together for good, even when we could not see it or understand it. Through faith alone may we be saved. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Pat Scruggs.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Proverbs 3:5-7 (The Message Version)Trust God from the bottom of your heart;don’t try to figure out everything on your own.Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; God’s the one who will keep you on track.Don’t assume that you know it all.Run to God!When life feels easy and seems to present us with just what we need when we need it we are experiencing the energy called flow. We float along the path of least resistance. We are aware of all the blessings of life and we are joyful. We have all had these times and we wish that they might last forever. We have few concerns, our faith is solid and it feels like all creation is conspiring to help us along through life. It is as if we are floating down a lazy river on a sunny afternoon without a care in the world.In my experience, life does not alway flow. Obstacles and losses naturally cross our paths. We struggle to know what to do. At these times it feels as if we have moved out of the slow waters and entered rapids. If you go on a raft trip where there are rapids the guide will give you many directions about how to maneuver the raft through these tricky waters. They will usually end their instruction by telling you what to do if you should end up in the water. You are told to point your feet down river, and with your face up go with the flow of the current until you come to a quiet place in the river where you can then swim to the bank and wait for help.These instructions are helpful for us even if we never get near white water. When we have entered a stretch of white water in our life where we feel stuck or stymied, events and loss make us feel like every one and everything in life is against us and we know that we are no longer in the raft but have been tossed into the water it is a good idea to remember to go with the flow.The writer of Proverbs tells us how. First of all we are reminded to put our trust in God. That is easier said than done so in Proverbs we are given further advice on how to trust and go with the flow.We are told to not try and figure out everything on our own. This, for me, is probably one of the hardest things to hear. My comfort zone is to be in control, to think things through and come up with a plan. To admit I am not in control and I don’t have all the tools needed to get through this rough time is hard. It is becoming vulnerable as I place my trust in God.This word of advice is followed with: listen for guidance. It has been my experience that when I move forward assuming I know what to do things rarely turn out well. But when I stop and listen and even more importantly ask for help I am always amazed at how many more possibilities are presented for what to do. Usually some of them are much better than anything I would have come up with on my own. Learning to trust the wisdom of others is part of what it means to trust God.To be told to step back, ask for help and trust is hard but it is how we go with the flow of life. . It has been my experience that when I don’t let go and try figure it all out myself I am struggling against the current of life. We are reminded that there is a better way.If you are dumped into the rapids of life, lie back and float a while. Try to not worry about what has happened or might happen. Live in the moment. Rely on others for help and wisdom. Relinquish control and just go along with what today brings you. Do this for a while and with God help and the care of others things will get better. Trusting in God you will be carried to calm waters.Will you join with me in prayer?Creator God when we feel like we are drowning in the rapids of life remind us to relax, to put our trust in you, to go with the flow knowing you are supporting us. And when we have passed through these rough waters and have again come to a calm and pleasant place remind us to continue to thank you, trust you and listen to your guidance. AMEN.This devotion was written and read by Bill Green.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Luke 24:5-6In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:When we read the gospel stories, we have both the benefit and the burden of knowing how the story of Jesus ends. “And on the third day he rose again.” We read verses like these where the women seem surprised by what they are being told, and we think, how could they not know? Jesus said over and over to whomever would listen that the temple will be destroyed and he will raise it in three days. We might conclude that they lacked faith. We might conclude that they forgot. We might think we wouldn’t make a mistake like that.Like the denials of Peter, we are sure we would never behave this way. We might be quite certain. As we read the Gospel as both the story of Jesus and the scripture inspired by God, we often perceive it as an ancient text, as history, of what happened—past tense. We have heard the beginning, middle, and end of Scripture and think we know the story. We feel we understand.But why do we feel this way when Christ has risen and is not found on paper? Like the women at the tomb, are we looking in the wrong place? No matter how many times we have read the Bible or heard the gospel stories in sermons, can we really claim to understand if we are not looking out at the world?You can’t see the horizon if you are staring down at your feet. You can’t understand something that hasn’t happened yet no matter how many times someone tells you about it. You won’t understand something you haven’t experienced. You can’t meet a need you don’t know exists. You can’t see the beloved child of God in the eyes of the other if you don’t meet them in the streets.You can’t answer a question before it is asked, no matter how hard you try. So my question to you is: are you looking down at what you already know, or are you looking to the horizon to see what you can discover?Please pray with me: Lord, direct my eyes to your beloved children living next to me. Allow me to understand the resurrection of Jesus as my call to look for him in each person I encounter. Allow me to understand your creation and how I can share it with others. Thank you for all that you have given us, and let us show our gratitude for it by blessing all we encounter with your love. Amen.This devotion was written by Jill Pope and read by Sally Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Isaiah 25:8“He will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.”Sometimes I think we make God too small. We try to fit God into the small box of our tiny human brain, our limited imagination, our earthly three-dimensional world, governed by our five senses. Due to this limited perspective, we probably don’t see things the way God does. How can we begin to imagine God swallowing up death forever; much less wiping all tears and sadness from the eye of every human who has ever lived! Every human!And more - removing the disgrace from all his people! (Sometimes we might think in the narrow vein that limits God’s people to only Christians.) But all people are God’s people. He created us all. He decides who His people are and Paul wrote in Acts 17:28 – “In Him we live and move and have our being. As some of our poets have said, ‘we are his offspring.’”Perhaps here is where we need to just trust God and understand He has the master plan. Jesus came to show us how to trust God – all the way to torture on a cross. And while dying there he was actively forgiving the sinners beside him, and those crucifying him. He showed us how to love even our worst enemies.It is our job to LOVE others and not hate; to judge not, that we not be judged. By that measure – I sincerely hope that I am praying for God’s will. His words in today’s scripture are clear – they tell us ALL humanity (all God’s children) will ultimately have the tears wiped from their faces, death will be swallowed up forever, and disgrace (the opposite of Grace) will exist no more!God is LOVE! LOVE wins! The Lord has spoken.Will you pray with me now…Dear Loving God, fill us with your LOVE and teach us how to trust you in all things. Help us to stop throwing stones at people we judge unworthy. Fill us with the desire to LOVE others and to trust your good plan. Show us the way we should go…Amen!This devotion was written and read by Bernice Howard.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Who's that in the mirror?Second Corinthians, chapter 3, verses 17 and 18 say, "The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord's Spirit is, there is freedom. All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."There's a famous painting by Norman Rockwell called Triple Self-Portrait. It shows the artist with his back turned to the viewer, looking at himself in a large mirror, and painting a shades-of-gray self-portrait. The Rockwell in the mirror wears glasses, but we cannot see his eyes; the lenses are flat white. The Rockwell he is painting wears no glasses, looking straight at the viewer with no obstruction. Obviously, when Rockwell looked in the mirror, he saw Rockwell—that is, he saw himself. But he transformed what he saw as he painted.When you or I look in a mirror, we expect to see ourselves. But when we look into the mirror that is the glory of the Lord, which seems to be a phrase that means Jesus Christ, we see not ourselves as we are, but as we can be.John Wesley talked about three kinds of grace: prevenient grace that draws us to God, justifying grace by which we are forgiven and made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ, and sanctifying grace—the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that transforms us into the likeness of Christ. Paul here tells the Corinthians about that ongoing work of sanctifying grace.There's another key idea in this scripture: transformation is an ongoing project. The Common English Bible accurately translates the original verb with the phrase "we are being transformed," not "we were transformed," or "we are transformed," or "we will be transformed." It started in the past, is happening now, and continues on into the future. Hold up the mirror of Jesus Christ, and look into it to see what you are becoming as you follow the Lord's Spirit, in which there is freedom.Let's pray.Father, a lot of us don't enjoy looking in the mirror. We don't like what we see. Thank you for giving us the image into which you are transforming us. Open us to that transformation by your Spirit. Help us lay hold of the freedom you give to us. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Don King.In 1740, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, preached a sermon in Bristol, England, in which he proclaimed: "The grace or love of God, whence cometh our salvation, is free in all and free for all.“We are humbled to proclaim that message through this Grace for All podcast. Thank you for listening to today's message of grace.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:16 (NIV)Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher)."I’ve photographed the sunrise dozens of times from all over the world. One rule never changes: don't shoot before civil twilight — that window when the sun is still below the horizon, but there's enough light to make out shapes and colors. It's not darkness anymore, but it isn't day yet. It's a world that hasn't decided what it's going to look like yet.That’s the light Mary walks into. She should have waited, but she didn’t. Her grief wouldn’t let her, because her grief doesn't respect the calendar or the clock.She had cried through the worst of it on Friday, watching from a distance as they took him down from the cross. You'd think that she wouldn’t have any tears left. At some point, she put a lid on her grief, and by Sunday morning, she had pushed that lid shut with both hands — he's dead, I watched it, I know where they laid him.And maybe some of her grief is for her. She walked behind Jesus for three years, listening as he said the world was about to turn over — and then didn’t. It just ended, on a Friday afternoon. All those things she heard went into the ground with him. Her grief is not only for Jesus, but also for a hope she'd let herself believe.So she comes to the tomb with her mind made up. When she gets there, though, the facts in her mind don’t match the reality she sees. The stone is moved. The grave clothes are there, but the body isn't. She is stunned. The one solid thing she had left — knowing where his body was — has died like her hope did. She runs and tells Peter and John the only conclusion she can come to: someone's taken him. Not he is risen. Someone's taken him. Grave robbery, not resurrection.Then she's alone again, weeping, and there's a man standing near her.She thinks he's the gardener.It's tempting to read that as a mistake — bad light, wet eyes, an honest case of not-looking-carefully. It is not a failure of her eyes. It's that she isn't looking for a living man She puts the man she sees into the nearest category that fits — gardener, stranger, anyone but Jesus.Then the man says one word.Mary.Her name, said the one way only he says it, and the lid she's spent three days pressing shut comes flying off without her doing a thing.She recognizes Jesus, and before she can even think, she calls out to him using the word most descriptive of her relationship with him — Rabbouni. Not just “teacher,” but “my teacher,” the word you use for the one person you trust completely, spoken by someone she thought she would never hear again, the same way he had spoken to her the first time he met her.He didn't wait for her grief to clear, didn't wait for her eyes to adjust to the light, didn't require her to work out the theology of an empty tomb first. He found her exactly where she was — grieving, mistaken, looking at him and seeing a stranger — and called her by name anyway. Her eyes never did the work. Her ears did.I know something about eyes that don't do the work. I've stood behind a camera at that same gray hour and missed the shot because I was looking for the picture I'd already decided was there. The light doesn't care what you came to find. Neither, it turns out, does grace. It just says your name, and waits for you to turn around.Father, we come to you carrying made-up minds, certain we already know how the story ends. Meet us there. Speak our name before we've turned around, before we've earned the right to hear it, before we even know it's you standing near. Teach us to recognize you not because we finally looked hard enough, but because you called first. Amen.This devotional was written by Cliff McCartney.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

You are listening to Grace for All, a daily devotional podcast produced by the people of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. This is Scripture Saturday, a time when we pause and reflect on the scriptures we have read throughout the week. If you missed any of our devotionals on these passages, you can find them on our website at 1stChurch.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, we invite you to listen and receive Grace. Welcome and thank you for joining us. Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Exodus 7: 1-5 (NIV)Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country.But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites.And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”In this passage, we hear God speaking to Moses, telling him what is about to happen with the Pharaoh of Egypt who is oppressing the children of Israel. In the words of Rabbi Andrew Mandel of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, God seems to be a Hollywood director and casting agent, and He is giving the role of God to Moses.Moses, we know from reading through Exodus, has protested to God that he does not want this role. He has a stutter, and he argues with God that this prevents him from being an effective leader. But God counters with the offer to Moses of Aaron, the brother who can, when necessary, speak on behalf of Moses. It is an offer that Moses cannot refuse.I think this ancient story asks us today, “What role is God offering to us?” Does God simply want us to go about our business, keeping ourselves to ourselves, as they say? Or does God have something in mind – today – for us to do?Our world is broken, divided, and in pain. So are the people around us. So are we on many occasions. We are prone to ask, “Where is God in all of this?” and then wait for God to show up. In this passage, God is asking Moses to play the role of God. Could he be asking us to do the same thing? Could he be asking us to say the kind word, to offer a loving smile, to give assistance to someone in need, or to present the gift of our time and attention to a person or situation that is right in front of us?It is not difficult to find those needs and people where we can be a loving and grace-filled God. We can play that role, as Moses did, if we respond to God’s casting call.What role is God casting you for today?Our prayer:Dear Lord, help us to hear your voice that calls us to be your voice, your hands, and your feet in the service of those around us. May we respond to that voice with joy and thanksgiving. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:27 (NIV)Then he (Jesus) said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”Following this, Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God.” This was a high point of faith.Jesus then says Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed.Thomas was not with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared. They told Thomas, “We have seen the lord.” Thomas replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.When Jesus decides to go to Bethany in Judea, it was Thomas who said Let us also go that we may die with him. he was aware of the danger facing Jesus in Jerusalem. These words show his loyalty and solidarity with Jesus.Several times in the last days, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going away. It was Thomas who expressed what the other disciples were probably thinking. lord, we do not know where you are going. Jesus declared that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and only through Jesus can one go to the Father.I believe Jesus was in no way attempting to shame Thomas, but giving him what he needed for faith, as he did many times in the gospels.Over many years, I have had occasions when I felt I needed to see something to believe what someone had told me. Seeing is believing some folks say.Jesus had told the disciples that he was going away but would return. That probably was hard for them to grasp.I have at times pondered what group I would have been with during what we now call holy week. Would I have been a believer? There were followers, but were they believers before the resurrection? Where would I have been after the resurrection? Possibly trying to avoid people like Saul, who was persecuting Christians.I am just grateful that I now believe in the resurrection and am a believer in Jesus. My faith is strong, and I feel more secure than ever that Jesus is my Savior.Let us prayDear lord, help us all to become stronger in our belief in you and to confidently look for those opportunities to share our faith in Jesus. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Emmit Rawls.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Matthew 28:6-7He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. This is my message for you.”In this passage, an Angel of the Lord is speaking to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Three days have passed since Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, and his followers are devastated and grieving. They have gone into hiding, fearing they will be punished by the Roman leaders because of their association with Jesus.It is the two Marys, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who have the courage to visit the tomb and to whom the Angel of the Lord speaks the words: “He is not here, for he has been raised as he said he would.”It is this supernatural event, Jesus rising from the dead, which has continued to impact humankind all over the world since that day over 2,000 years ago.Three words: “He has risen.”Throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus had performed miracles and taught lessons that were awe-inspiring, raising Lazarus from the dead, revealing the beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount, and repeating the greatest commandment – love God with all your heart and love others as you love yourself. Many people knew who he was and knew of his works, and they might have recognized him as a Holy man, but this event showed without a doubt that he was God’s son. No human being could raise a man from the dead and enable him to walk and talk and teach his final lessons to his disciples.Since that day, Christians have endeavored to share the message, teach God’s word, and fulfill the great commission – go and make disciples of all nations. Sometimes, both in history and in current events, those efforts have caused harm. When the words of the Bible are twisted, and the message is distorted by our limited human understanding, the result is suffering and death, war and oppression. That was never Jesus’ message nor his intent.As Christians, we should ask ourselves some hard questions.How has believing that Jesus is the Son of God affected my life decisions?Have I fully embraced the gifts of salvation and the Holy Spirit and allowed my life to be an example to others?Do I pray for guidance every day and seek the counsel of other mature Christians?Do I strive to live as Jesus did?You may have heard that following Jesus is a radical choice. His ways are not the ways of modern society, which tells us we have to be strong and protect our own interests, we have to accumulate wealth to be respected and admired by others, we have to sometimes look past the sick, the hungry, and the needy, in order to accomplish our personal goals.These are difficult things to think about and difficult decisions to make. We can only follow Jesus and his commandments if we truly believe the Angel’s message: “He is not here. He has risen.” That belief changes everything.Let us prayHeavenly Father, we thank you for sending us your Son, for his sacrifice on the cross, and for the gift of salvation. What a momentous event that was when the Marys realized that Jesus was not in the tomb but was risen and lived still as the Son of God. Give us the strength to boldly proclaim the message just as two ordinary women did upon leaving the tomb all those years ago. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Pat ScruggsGrace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:11-18 (RSV)“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing nearby, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rab-bo′ni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”Imagine you are a woman in the time of Christ, around 4 BC to 34 AD. You have experienced serious mental illness in a time when this health problem is viewed as possession by demons. Your chances of recovery are zero. Then one day a traveling prophet named Jesus comes by and casts out your inner demons, whatever they are.You are overcome with gratitude and become a follower of this Jesus. Apparently, even though you are a woman, you have material wealth, and you are able to help bankroll the prophet’s ministry.For the rest of his life, you are a devoted follower and supporter. In that tragic moment when Jesus has been condemned to death by the religious leaders of the day, when Jesus is hanging on the cross, you are there, standing with Jesus’ mother and other women. All the male disciples have fled and gone into hiding. But you would not be anywhere else in Jesus’ darkest hour.On the morning after the Sabbath, in deep grief, you walk to Jesus’ tomb to prepare his body with spices, and you find the stone in front of the tomb rolled back. You run to tell the male disciples, and Peter and another disciple run to the tomb. When they find it empty, they leave.By now, you are beside yourself. Through a veil of tears, you see a person you think is a gardener and ask him where they have taken Jesus so that you can find him and prepare his body. And then Jesus speaks and says, “Mary.”Jesus speaks your name. You are filled with unspeakable joy and rhapsodic recognition, but Jesus cautions you not to touch him for he has not yet ascended to the Father. You are the first human being in the presence of the risen Lord.In that moment everything changes. In that moment, tears turn into laughter, despair turns into joy, death turns into resurrection and life. God’s love overcomes hate and embraces humble humanity. No matter how dark the world seems, God is alive. Like Mary, we can hear his voice today, if only we listen.Let us pray:We thank you, dear God, for your voice in dark times. We thank you for resurrection and the eternal power of love over hate. Amen.This devotion was written by Laura Derr and read by Judy Wilson.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.I love Holy Week and Easter. It provides us a remarkable time to reflect on the unimaginable gift we have been given, the gift we didn’t earn and could never repay, the gift of Christ dying for our sins. It is a time to reflect upon the power and the glory and the majesty of our God, and it is a time to recognize his triumph over death in Christ Jesus.With all of that going through our minds, we sometimes miss part of the story. Caught up in the miracle of resurrection — and with good reason — we fail to recognize an aspect of Christ’s humanity. No, in this case, I don’t mean his suffering and death — again, an important part of the story and one to focus on.But what I’m referring to is contained in today’s verse, when the newly resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples. He has been raised from the dead to new life. But the way he reveals himself is to show his hands and side. He shows them...his wounds.This healer, who restored sight to the blind, healed the leper, gave mobility to the one who couldn’t walk, and even raised the dead, is still wounded. In fact, just after this passage is the famous interaction with Thomas, in which he says he won’t believe it really is Jesus unless Thomas touches the wounds himself. And let me be clear: I think that Jesus has the power to heal himself, but he chooses not to, similarly to how he chooses not to end his suffering on the cross.To me, the message here, my friends, is that Jesus heals, Jesus saves, and Jesus sends us not just in spite of these wounds, but in fact, he recognizes and empathizes with us because he understands what it is to be wounded. We worship a wounded healer. And we are all wounded. Our scars give us understanding. The pain of our wounds allows us to share in the pain of others. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be a god among men, but to be one of us. He came to know what it is to be truly human. May we take that lesson with us, acknowledging that just as our Lord was wounded, so are we, and so are all whom we meet. May our sharing of that knowledge allow us to meet others with even greater love.Let us pray.God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, fully human and fully divine, who teaches us to share the burdens of others. Through the knowledge of our humanity, our scars, may we be able to help others through this life just as you help us. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Dwight Dockery.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:16 (CEB) Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).Sometimes people read this story and wonder how Mary could possibly have mistaken Jesus for the gardener. How could she not recognize someone she knew so well?I had an experience last week that helped me understand.I was conducting the funeral for one of our longtime church members. During the service, I invited people to stand and share a memory or two. A woman stood up in the back of the sanctuary, and I said, “Go ahead, ma’am.”Only after she started speaking did I realize it was someone I knew well—someone I simply hadn’t seen in quite a while. After the service I apologized. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”She smiled and said, “I knew you didn’t.”I laughed and replied, “If I’d recognized you, I wouldn’t have called you ‘ma’am.’"Recognition isn’t always as simple as we think. Sometimes we don’t recognize someone because we aren’t expecting to see them.Mary certainly wasn’t expecting to see Jesus that morning. Three days earlier she had watched him die a horrible death on a cross. Even after hearing his voice, she still didn’t realize who he was.Then everything changed with one word.“Mary.”Whenever I read this passage aloud, especially around Easter, I always pause there for just a moment. I imagine the tenderness in Jesus’ voice as he spoke her name. It wasn’t simply that he knew her name. It was the way he spoke it, I’m sure—with love, with compassion, with complete understanding. In that moment, Mary knew exactly who was standing before her.I’m convinced Jesus knows each of us that way. He knows our names. He knows our stories. He knows our joys, our failures, our fears, and our hopes. And he still calls us with love.It’s one thing to know about Jesus. It’s another thing entirely to realize that he knows you.Sometimes all it takes is hearing your name spoken by the One who has known you all along.Let’s pray.Father, thank you so much, not only that Jesus knows us to the depth of our being, but that we can know Jesus, not just know about Jesus. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.This devotional was written and read by Donn King.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Thank you for joining us for today's Grace for All podcast.On Saturdays, we pause for a few moments to look back on our week and to review the scriptures that we have used in our podcast.We encourage you, after listening to this episode, to go back and listen to the episodes you missed, or to review the ones that were particularly meaningful for you.We trust that the thoughts that we have shared with you this week have provided a full portion of the joy, peace, and love of Jesus Christ.Now, listen to this week's scriptures.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Romans 14:8“If we live for the Lord and if we die, we die by the Lord.” We are all on the clock from birth. We are also challenged to face our fate without flinching. But not right now, we say.How would you live knowing death was imminent? Seek a miracle cure? Do a bucket list? Or just hunker down and dedicate time with family and friends? Our Christian faith would be tested as we seek God for the answer to “why me?”There are role models to admire who offer unparalleled courage, not giving in to pity or sorrow. The late theologian and pastor, Timothy Keller, wrote his book “On Death” as he was dying from pancreatic cancer at age 72. He writes: “I have no fear of death as much as dying in pain (most of us don’t get to die in our sleep). There is no downside for me leaving this life, not in the slightest. Death is a reminder of the temporary nature of life and the importance of faith in God. I believe in resurrection, a restoration of hope, and a better life. It is what Jesus’ example taught us.”The Bible is a lens on our human dilemma, with more than 100 passages showing that death is not the end but a transition to eternal life with God.John 11:25-26 “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life everlasting and anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die’.”Romans 14:8 “If we live for the Lord and if we die, we die by the Lord.”Other human expressions in the arts, poetry, music, and literature offer wisdom on the meaning of life and death. The popular folk song from the 1960’s, “Turn, Turn, Turn-for everything there is a season,” has been described as “music as the highest possible grace note.”“…to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven”The lyrics are adapted almost entirely from Ecclesiastes Chapter 3. It presents the cyclical nature of life, emphasizing that God is ultimately in control of every season! Each season should be embraced with both joy and sorrow, which is to be expected.The Book of Ecclesiastes stands as a profound exploration of the human experience in the pursuit of meaning in a world of uncertainty. It invites us to contemplate a deeper examination of what really matters in the human experience. We are urged to think beyond material success and societal norms to have a close personal relationship with God.Closing PrayerGracious and loving God, we yearn for your timeless wisdom and pray for the courage profoundly shown by Jesus. Help us to remain steadfast in our life’s purpose and mission so that we never die with our songs still inside us. And may we always freely bestow kindness and strive to serve your will, following the way of your son Jesus and the life everlasting. Amen. This devotional was written by Tim Carpenter and read by Cliff McCartney.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Jonah 1:17Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.Matthew 12:39-40 (NIV)He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”Most of us first encountered Jonah in a Sunday school classroom, probably before we were old enough to read. There was a man. There was a whale. The man ended up inside the whale for three days, and then the whale spit him out. It was a wonderful story, full of drama and a little bit of humor, and it stuck with us. What we may not have understood then — and what we may still be working out — is how much that story contains.The book of Jonah holds a central and honored place in Jewish tradition. Each year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the Jewish calendar — the entire book of Jonah is read aloud in the synagogue during the afternoon service. It is read on that day for a reason. Yom Kippur is devoted to repentance, to self-examination, to what Jewish tradition calls teshuvah — turning back toward God. And Jonah is the story of repentance on the grandest possible scale. The entire city of Nineveh, from the king on his throne to the animals in their stalls, repents in sackcloth and ashes. God relents. Mercy triumphs. But there is a sting in the tail of the story: Jonah himself is furious that God forgave Nineveh. He wanted judgment, and he got grace — and he couldn’t bear it. On the day when Jews are asking God for forgiveness, the assigned text is a story about God forgiving the enemy. The message is unmistakable: God’s mercy does not stop at our borders.Christian theology has always seen something else in Jonah as well — or rather, something more. Jesus himself pointed to it. When the Pharisees demanded a sign, he told them the only sign they would receive was the sign of Jonah: three days and three nights in the deep, and then emergence into the light. Jesus was reading his own death and resurrection through the story of the prophet. The fish’s belly becomes the tomb. The three days become the silence of Holy Saturday. And the emergence becomes Easter morning.But here is where the two traditions — Jewish and Christian — do not so much diverge as deepen one another. Both see in Jonah a man who went into the darkness and came out the other side. Both see a God who is present even in the deep. And both, if we look carefully, see the same thing waiting on the other side of that emergence: a mission. Jonah did not come out of the fish and go home to rest. God still wanted him to go to Nineveh, and he went. He preached. The city was transformed. The disciples did not encounter the risen Jesus and return quietly to their former lives. They were sent. To Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.This is the truth that both traditions are reaching toward, each in its own way. The darkness is not the end. The three days are not the conclusion of the story — they are the turning point. What God does in the deep, God does for a purpose. Resurrection is not a destination. It is a sending.Whatever tomb you may find yourself in today — whatever darkness feels like three days without end — the word of both the prophet and the gospel is the same. You are not abandoned there. You are being prepared. And when the light comes, it will come with a commission.Our Father, we thank you that the darkness does not have the final word — that even in the deep, you are present, and that you bring us out not to rest but to serve. Give us the courage to go where you send us. Amen.This devotion was written by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Welcome to Grace for All. My name is Bill Green, and I am your host for today.1 Corinthians 15:12-22 CEB So if the message that is preached says that Christ has been raised from the dead, then how can some of you say, “There’s no resurrection of the dead”? If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. If Christ hasn’t been raised, then our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. We are found to be false witnesses about God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, when he didn’t raise him if it’s the case that the dead aren’t raised. If the dead aren’t raised, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins, 18 and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. He’s the first crop of the harvest of those who have died. Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came through one too. In the same way that everyone dies in Adam, so also everyone will be given life in Christ.Trust in Christ’s resurrection is what makes much of life bearable, for we know that in the midst of hardship and loss, these are not the final words written for our lives. There is something better waiting for us. This understanding can be transformational. I recall doing the memorial service for a dear church member who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer after a number of years. Doris planned her service and made sure her husband, and children and grandchildren were on board with her less than conventional ideas. She wanted it to be a celebration, even more a party. She told us all, I accepted Jesus as my Savior more than 70 years ago. You need to know that I have been waiting all my life to meet my Savior. So my dying is your loss but my gain. All coming to the service were told to wear bright colors as if attending a party. Doris, with her husband, had lived many years in New Orleans. Over the years they had collected boxes of Mardi Gras beads at the parades. When you arrived, you were greeted by the ushers who placed these beads around the neck of each person. The music at the service was all upbeat, and the message that she had helped craft was about Eternal life in Christ. After the service, we gathered for the reception. A three-piece Dixieland jazz band was playing music. At one point, glasses of sparkling cider were passed out to all. Her grandson then said to all, “Let’s raise our glasses in praise and celebration of the new and eternal life Grandma has received.” Now her memorial service might not be to everyone’s way of thinking, but it does share an important truth, one that Paul the Apostle also shared in his letter to the Corinthians. Our belief in the gift of eternal life is the foundation of our faith, and everything else builds from this. Without it, as Paul would say, we are to be pitied. But with a firm belief in the resurrection, we can look death in the face and see it, not as an end but a door to what we have been promised, eternal life. We need to live each day with this thought and view. Realizing that God is with us every step of the way and that we have been promised a most wonderful gift, the gift of eternal life, allows us to face anything with hope, courage, and, as my friend Doris showed, even at times joy. Let us pray: Loving God, we are so blessed to have been promised the gift of eternal life. Let that promise fill us and encourage us this day and every day until we may claim it for ourselves and see you face to face. AMEN.This devotional was written and read by Bill Green.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).Every time I hear this verse, I feel love. I hear the exclamation point. Gratitude, expectation, excitement, adoration. Mary went looking for Jesus. But she went where he was. In her surprise and in her adoration, she is expressing her desire for what was. And after this moment where she says, “Rabboni!” Jesus tells her, "don’t hold on to me. Go to the others and tell them."With love in her cry, how does Jesus respond? Let go. Go! Share. She is searching, but she is searching for something that isn’t there. It is transformed. Reborn. Everywhere. Go. Tell. Look forward, not back.For all of the love and joy we have experienced, we should be grateful. We do not need to forget it. But does it do any good if we do not bring it to bear on our future and those we encounter daily? Don’t focus on the past. Don’t cling to that which will not last.Tomorrow is a new day where there are new challenges. To grow in our understanding and in the mission of sharing what God has given us, we must leave the tomb behind and go tell others. We must look for Jesus on the road. We must speak words of love into action that transforms. We must share what we have experienced in the past with those we meet today and in the future. Each day when we wake, let us wash away the sin of yesterday through the gift of Jesus and his resurrection. Let us be strengthened by the love shared with us. May we be reborn in our commitment to be more Christ-like. Let us not sit idly at the foot of the cross wondering what to do. Go. Do. Love.Rabboni! Give us the strength to share your love. Not once but always. Rabboni! Give us the insight to see you out there in the world. Not on the cross but in all of creation. Rabboni! Give us the humility to accept that our one and only call is to share You with the world, Amen. This devotional was written by Jill Pope and read by Susan Daves.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 30:3 (The Voice version)You lifted me up from the grave with a mighty hand, gave me another chance, and saved me from joining those in that dreadful pit.This verse reminded me of a slang expression from the 60’s and 70’s – “That’s the pits!” It was a fitting expression when bad news was delivered. The Psalmist describes being saved from that awful pit.The pit we need saving from might be the pit of despair over the diagnosis we or a loved one has received. The pit could be overwhelming debt, an uncontrollable situation, a terrible illness, or a family tragedy. It could be the nightly news filled with wars and rumors or wars. But whatever brings us to “the pits” – God can help us. I am reminded of the song “Graves into Gardens” ©2019 Maverick City Publishing Worldwide. The lyrics remind us of God’s power to lift us from all these pits…and I quote from that song… ‘Cause the God of the mountain, is the God of the valley. There’s not a place Your mercy And Grace won’t find me again. You turn morning to dancing. You give beauty for ashes. You turn shame into glory. You’re the only one who can. You’re the only one who can.So, let’s remember that whatever brings us to the pits – God can help us. If we take his hand, trust that He loves us and will sustain us, we can rise up from our despair. He is reaching for us in our pits of worry, fear, or sorrow. He will lift us out of the pit, if we will let Him.Please pray with me now…Dear loving and all-powerful God, we need your strength, your comfort, your hope and your grace. Please help us reach for you from our pits, to take your already offered hand and to climb out of our pits right into your loving arms. Help us to accept your Grace and to offer Grace to others. Help us to trust your great LOVE and to rest in your mercy, now and forevermore. In Jesus’ name we pray…AmenToday’s podcast was written and read by Bernice Howard.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

John 20:20 (NRSV)"He showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord."It's the evening of the first Easter Sunday, and the disciples have the doors locked. Why? They fear the authorities. Their teacher had been arrested at night and executed in public, and everybody in Jerusalem knew who his followers were.It shouldn't have been a surprise. Mary had come running that morning saying, "I have seen the Lord." Peter and John had found the tomb empty. And Jesus told them it would happen. They locked the door anyway.I'm not going to lay any guilt on them — I can't say I'd have done any different. Believing is harder than it looks from where we sit, knowing how the story ends.Then, from out of nowhere, Jesus is there. Standing among them. "Peace be with you," he says, and before anyone can get a word out, he shows them his hands and his side.Nobody asked him to. Nobody said, "Prove it." John doesn't give the disciples a single word in this whole scene. Jesus takes over the room.Why? Because he knew them and he knew what their first words would be. Peter is standing right in front of him. The last thing that passed between Peter and Jesus was three denials and a crowing rooster. If the disciples speak first, the scene becomes about their failure — the explanations, the apologies, the accounting of where everybody was on Friday. Jesus doesn't let that conversation start.You can't have a conversation with terrified people. Luke, telling this same evening, says they were startled and frightened, sure they were looking at a ghost — and that Jesus asked them, "Why do doubts arise in your hearts?" In your hearts. The question was never spoken out loud. Fear only has two questions: Am I safe? Is it true? Peace answers the first. The scars answer the second.Only then comes the joy. John's word is echarēsan (eh-KHAH-ray-sahn), and that word should ring a bell. Three nights earlier Jesus had promised these same men, "Your grief will turn to joy... and no one will take your joy from you" (John 16:20, 22). A different form of the same word. Now the promise lands right on top of them. Fear turns to joy in the space of one verse.We don't get scarred hands held out for our inspection — just the story, two thousand years later. But a week after this, Jesus tells Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (20:29). That blessing is for us. And it's not a consolation prize. The joy was never in the seeing; it was in the Lord they saw, and he's just as risen now as he was that evening. Peter, who stood in that room, later wrote to believers who didn't: "Although you have not seen him... you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy" (1 Peter 1:8). Same joy. Same Lord. Their joy arrived by proof; ours arrives by promise. Jesus calls that blessed.And the joy was never meant to stay put. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (20:21). The sending took them out the same door they'd locked, back into the same city that scared them. Sending doesn't usually mean leaving. For most of us it means the neighbor across the fence, the coworker carrying grief, the person behind us in the checkout line. The door doesn't change. The direction we're facing does.So take the joy and let it loose — not by adding one more thing to a full week, but by letting it work in what's already there: how we listen, how we show up, how we love the people God has put within reach. Joy has never been good at staying in the room. It wasn't designed to.Let us pray:Father, thank you that you speak peace before we start with our reasons. Give us the joy that rests on your promise, and send us through our own front doors with it — to the people already within reach. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Cliff McCartneyGrace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

You are listening to Grace for All, a daily devotional podcast produced by the people of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. This is Scripture Saturday, a time when we pause and reflect on the scriptures we have read throughout the week. If you missed any of our devotionals on these passages, you can find them on our website at 1stChurch.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, we invite you to listen and receive Grace. Welcome and thank you for joining us.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life. If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected]. First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Jeremiah 29:4-7, 11 (NIV)This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.""For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."Many of us feel like exiles today. Not from a geographical place, but from a way of life we once knew — a time when neighbors who disagreed could still talk to one another, when strong opinions could sit side by side in the same church pew without contempt, when the goal of public life seemed to be solving problems rather than defeating people. We look around at the world we inhabit now and we barely recognize it. Something has been lost, and we feel that loss deeply.The children of Israel knew that feeling. When the Babylonians came and took them from Jerusalem, they didn't just lose their homes. They lost their temple, their city, the whole framework of what it meant to be God's people in God's place. The world they had known was simply gone. And the false prophets of the day told them what we sometimes tell ourselves: don't worry, this won't last. Things will go back to the way they were.Jeremiah delivered a harder and more honest message. This is where you are, he told them. Stop waiting to go home. The path forward is not backward.And then God said something extraordinary through the prophet. He didn't tell the exiles to resist Babylon, or to withdraw from it, or to wait it out in righteous isolation. He told them to plant gardens. Build houses. Raise their children. And — most remarkably — to seek the shalom of the city where they found themselves. That Hebrew word means more than peace. It means the full flourishing, the wholeness, the welfare of the place. Pray for it, God said. Because your flourishing is bound up with its flourishing. You cannot thrive in a place you have given up on.That is a word for us today. Whatever we have lost, and however we came to lose it, we are called to the same vocation the exiles were given. Not to retreat. Not to rage. Not to wait for things to go back to the way they were. But to seek the shalom of the place where God has put us — our neighborhoods, our communities, our congregations, our nation. To pray for them. To invest in them. To refuse the temptation of contempt.The exile was not the end of God's purposes for Israel. It turned out to be a calling. And God's word to them is his word to us: I know the plans I have for you. Plans for hope. Plans for a future.We are not abandoned here. We are sent.PrayerOur Father, in a time when so much feels unfamiliar and so much has been lost, help us to hear your call to seek the peace and flourishing of the places and people around us. Remind us that you have not abandoned us to this moment — you have called us to it. Amen.This devotional was written and read by Jim Stovall.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Matthew 11:28-30Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.This scripture differs wildly from a description of the Christian life that I heard from a young man in my dorm in college. He related the story of Abraham sending his servant to a foreign land to fetch a wife for his son Isaac. They found Rebekah, the daughter of Laban, and convinced the two of them that she should return with him to marry Isaac.In his telling, they took off across the desert on camels, and soon Rebekah was complaining that it was hot, she was thirsty, she was tired, and she couldn’t go on. Whenever she complained, the servant would throw a bauble or jewel back to her to quiet her until they could complete their arduous journey. According to this young man, the Christian life was like a slog through the desert, where we need to be quieted from our complaining with an occasional blessing until we finally complete our journey.Wow! How different is this from Christ’s promise in our scripture today? I Googled this scripture (isn’t that where we find great theology?) and found the following: When Jesus says, "Take my yoke upon you," He is offering to be yoked alongside you. You are not pulling the heavy load by yourself; instead, the heaviest parts of your load are resting on His shoulders.Also, the meaning behind the words:Easy: The original Greek word here (chrestos) can also be translated as "well-fitting," "gracious," or "kind". Just as a carpenter would custom-fit a wooden yoke so it wouldn't chafe the ox, Jesus shapes His way to fit the needs of your soul.Light: The Greek word (elaphron) means "not burdensome". Living in alignment with His teachings—which prioritize love, grace, and rest—is inherently lighter than striving for perfection, self-sufficiency, or the approval of others.So what is it like to serve while being yoked with Christ?Ask Sara Gregory if it is burdensome to pound nails for Habitat. Hint: she ends every Facebook post about her work with “Blessings abound!”Ask Bernice Howard how unpleasant it is to serve at Welcome Table, and she will tell you we are the hands and feet of Jesus.Do you wonder if it’s a dreary slog to pack thousands of meals to ship overseas or fill flood buckets? Listen to the laughter and joy-filled conversation of those performing those tasks.Serving for and with Christ in these and other ways is far from the drudgery of the journey that the young man described. It is a joyful, light, and easy yoke to carry, especially when Jesus is our companion in service.Prayer: Heavenly Father, we thank you that as we serve you by serving others, we are yoked with Jesus. We thank you that his yoke is easy, his burden is light, and our work for him and with him is ever so joyful. Blessings abound! AmenThis devotional was written and read by Charlie Barton.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected] United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.