From Matthew to John

Posted by DJL on Nov 22, 2014 in News | 2 comments

Today’s Daily Bread devotional, on the (in)famous parable of the sheep and the goats, brings us to the end of our devotional tour through the Gospel According to Matthew. It’s not quite the end of Matthew, of course, as there are still three more chapters. But we began while we began this journey together almost exactly a year ago with our probe into Matthew’s infancy narrative in Advent, when we got to Lent we jumped ahead to the Passion narrative (chs. 26-27) and then read through the resurrection account (ch. 28) during the Easter season, returning to where we had left off. Which means that with today’s devotional we have now read and studied together all of Matthew’s Gospel…just not in order!

And just in time, too! A week from tomorrow we begin a new Advent season as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. For this season, I am going to work with the Prologue of the Gospel According to John, John 1:1-18, one of my favorite passage of Scripture. And when we conclude Advent I will pick up and start into John as the Gospel for our Daily Bread Devotions for this year. As John is perhaps my favorite Gospel – I know preacher’s aren’t supposed to play favorites, but it’s hard not to – I’m really looking forward to our time with John together.

This week, I may take a few days off from writing the devotions in order to prepare to engage John and, truth be told, catch up on some work and spend some time with my family over the holidays. I’ll still post the Dear Preaching Partner letter of Monday and perhaps one or two other things as they occur to me, but I expect it to be a slightly more relaxed week on …in the Meantime. As always, thanks so much for your reading and company. ~David

Post image: “The Four Evangelists,” by Pieter Soutman (c.1620), detail.