Psalm 59:10-17; Numbers 1:17-54; Mark 9:30-37

Hear the word of the Lord, because the Lord has a charge to bring
against you who live in the land: "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land." Hosea 4:1 (NIV)

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to
heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Luke 18:13

Holy One, sometimes we are sinners because it is simply the easiest way  to live, doing what those around us do. Empower us to see and to live  another way, the way we see in Jesus. Amen.

"I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. iv. 19).

It is a blessed moment when we are born again and a new heart is created in us after the image of God. It is a more blessed moment when in this new heart Christ Himself is born and the Christmas time is reproduced in us as we, in some real sense, become incarnations of the living Christ.

"The sweetness of the lips" (Prov. xvi. 21).

Spiritual conditions are inseparably connected with our physical life. The flow of the divine life-currents may be interrupted by a little clot of blood; the vital current may leak out through a very trifling wound.