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Questions Week 10, Day 4

by David Joynt on July 05, 2017


 

DEUTERONOMY 8:1-20

  

“O Beautiful for Spacious Skies” is my favorite patriotic hymn. I love the description of our magnificent landscape with its amazing mountains and plains. I am moved by the second verses’ references to the previous generations who moved into the wilderness to begin a new venture in community. But I also love the sense of imperfection and the awareness of the spiritual challenges we face. “God mend thine every flaw!” Don’t let freedom be an end in itself or treat it as an unlimited good—”Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.” Avoid materialism—”May God thy gold refine—till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.”

 

Prayers for America should combine appreciation with a sense of our nation as an ongoing project in which our virtues battle with our vices, since we know that the Kingdom has not fully come.

 

 

What worries you about America?

 

 

What makes you glad?

 

 

As Israel prepared to enter the land, notice the spiritual warnings God gave.

 

 

 

FAMILY TIME—

Pray a prayer for our country that is thankful and realistic.

 

Tags: america

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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