“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!

“Blind guides! What sorrow awaits you! For you say that it means nothing to swear ‘by God’s Temple,’ but that it is binding to swear ‘by the gold in the Temple.’”
Matthew 23:15-16

Dear God, this is just one small section of the daily gospel reading for some denominations today, but it struck me as I read it this morning. It’s a reminder to not take lightly being your ambassador. If I represent you to others around me and I draw others to you, am I showing them the real you? Am I suggesting wrong things about you?

Even as I publicly journal some of my prayers to you, do I pray errant things that mislead some who read them? My original motivation in starting this was to hopefully encourage some people to do their own prayer journal. To sit down and think through what your scripture might be saying to them personally. Has the public part of this journal morphed, even in my own heart, into something I use to pontificate and try to teach what I think I’m learning from you? Have I harmed your children through misunderstood lessons you’ve tried to teach me?

Father, my encouragement for the world is that they be followers of you and not just believers in you. I think of the people around the world right now, especially in Afghanistan, who are killing in your name. It’s hard to imagine them being true followers of you, the God of Abraham. I see them much like I see those “Christians” who stormed the capital on January 6. They were believers, but I doubt they were followers. So help us to all follow you. Show me the role you have for me to play in your kingdom today so that it can come to earth and so your will can be done on earth. Come, oh Lord!

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen