¹⁴ At the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, ¹⁵ “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. ¹⁶ So I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

¹⁷ Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” ¹⁸ Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy, and it left him. From that moment the boy was well.

¹⁹ Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?”

²⁰ “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

Matthew 17:14-20

Dear God, first, I want to say that it is always a good time to worship you. It is good for me. It is good for my soul. The Old Testament readings for the Catholic church today are Deuteronomy 6:4-13 (Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength…) and Psalm 18:2-4, 47, and 51 (I love you, O LORD, my strength, O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer…). So I want to acknowledge you, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit. My joy comes in the morning. You haven’t called me to wield power over my neighbor and take this land for you. You have called me to love you and love my neighbor. As someone said recently, you have called mem to pray, serve, persuade, and suffer. Those are the four tools Jesus used, and they are the tools you gave me to do your work. Pray, serve, persuade, and suffer. My my entire life be a prayer of worship to you.

With that said, the New Testament reading today struck me because I am about to be part of a board strategy session that will take a large part of the day. We are going to have to make a lot of decisions. We need to be wise and shrewd. We need to be faithful and compassionate. At the same time, we need to be careful to follow your Holy Spirit and not our own egos or ambitions. We need to be about bringing your kingdom and will into the earth through our lives and through our work.

There is a mystery verse 21 that is not in all manuscripts, but I think is important. As Jesus is talking about their lack of faith, he adds a button to the end: “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” That is really going to need to be a part of this too. I’m going to need to pray and fast. Frankly, I wonder if there aren’t a few things in my live through which I need to fast. You know I pray to you about them, but I’ve fasted very infrequently. It might be time for that too.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I bring you my life. I bring you my soul. I live for you alone. Every breath that I take. Every moment I’m awake. Lord, have your way with me.

I pray all of this submitted to your authority over me,

Amen