13 August 2025 – Wednesday

Not only does Moses miss out on the promised land, but God insists he survey the very land he will not enter. Talk about pushing the point home. After all the trials, the years of leadership and obedience, Moses dies alone. Or so it seems.

But as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us, “With God, no person is lonely even if they are alone.” That line stops me. It challenges the deeply ingrained assumption that solitude equals loneliness. Perhaps the solitary life—especially in faith—is not a void, but a sacred space.

Everything I’ve experienced suggests faith is forged in the interior. The world outside can inspire or distract, but the deep work of knowing what we mean when we say “God” happens within. That’s where the journey takes us.

With such a foundation, we can begin to build outward. To imagine new pathways. To trust the unknown. It’s not easy, as Moses knew—but it may be the heart of the call.

First Reading: Deuteronomy 34: 1-12

14 August 2025 – Thursday

Joshua becomes the new leader, guiding his people out of the desert and into the promised land by the same route they entered it—through a temporarily stopped waterway. It’s a striking image. The dry wilderness is bracketed by two moments of parting water, as though transition itself requires passing through the deep.

If I let my imagination take over, I see a desert crossed by water at both ends—channels connecting barren survival to promised growth. To move forward, I must pass through water. The repetition can’t be ignored. It urges me to look closer.

Water, in many traditions, symbolises the unconscious. We might see its shimmering surface, but what lies beneath is hidden. While water sustains us, it also holds the power to overwhelm. Going deeper into ourselves—through art, through dreams, as Joseph and Daniel did—is part of the journey of faith.

But like the Israelites, we can’t go it alone. We need a guide, a hand to hold, when crossing the hidden depths toward something new.

First Reading: Joshua 3: 7-10a, 11, 13-17

15 August 2025 – Friday

There is a moment in a woman’s life like no other—when she knows she is pregnant. Not because a test confirmed it, but because something in her heart and soul says so with quiet certainty. The universe shifts. Nothing will ever be the same again.

But if I take this moment and loosen its literalness, I begin to see another kind of creation story. This shift matters. I am well past childbearing years, yet my heart still leaps when I hear the Magnificat. That leap, that joy, is no less real for being symbolic.

Now, I understand pregnancy not only as physical but as spiritual. It is the nurturing of something new and vital within—the development of vision, of faith, of compassion. That inner life, like any child, needs time, space, and loving attention.

This is my call: to care for what is being born in me. To celebrate it. To give thanks. And to carry this work of creation with me, faithfully, until the end.

Gospel: Luke 1: 39-56

16 August 2025 – Saturday

The art of rhetoric—the ability with speech to inform, persuade and motivate—is a beauty to behold when done well. It can reach into the deepest part of our being, connecting with our desire to be more than we could ever imagine.

Moses had it. Joshua lived it when he challenged his people to choose that day whom they would serve. He called them to let go of the gods from the past and to walk confidently into the future with the God who had accompanied them through every trouble.

Yet in that gathered assembly, there would have been people who disagreed. Some were still processing what—or who—God was for them. Others may have been leaning toward choosing an individual rather than a collective pathway.

Among them were likely the older ones. People who had spent a lifetime exploring the God-impulse and coming to terms with how it now manifested itself within.

Joshua 24: 14-29

17 August 2025 – Sunday

If the story of Jeremiah is anything to go by, it’s sensible to skip past job adverts for the role of prophet. His suffering was immense, often arriving after he spoke the words of the Lord that were unpalatable to his listeners. So much for the art of rhetoric.

Today, Jeremiah sinks in the mud after being thrown into a cistern. What a mess. But what if mud had a symbolic quality worth reflecting on? In ancient Egypt, mud was more than dirt. It was a symbol of origin and fertility, “connected with the creation and existence of the human being.”

Being thrown into the depths is a common human experience, though we try hard to avoid it. We would rather stay high, above the danger, discomfort and uncertainty. Yet it’s in the depths—in the mud of our lives—that reality can be faced.

And in that facing comes possibility. For out of the mud, new life emerges.

Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10

18 August 2025 – Monday

Every parent knows the frustration of helping their children get out of trouble, only to find they repeat the same behaviour almost instantly. Even when you bring in someone to help—someone you think your charming kid will listen to—the same thing happens again.

Sometimes you lose your temper and yell. Take heart, you’re not alone. In today’s reading, God presents as a frustrated patriarch, at wit’s end with this ungrateful bunch of Israelites who persist in acting like spoiled kids.

Instead of taking responsibility for living in the way of wisdom, they fall into a repetitive cycle: seeking pleasure, getting captured, being liberated, and then walking right back into captivity again. It’s maddening to watch—and heartbreaking to experience.

But perhaps it’s not all one way. Maybe both spoiled kids and God need to see each other differently. Maybe both need to change so they can be up close and personal, not in conflict, but dancing to the same tune.

Judges 2: 11-19

19 August – Tuesday

The designated reading starts at verse 9, but I would be betraying my biblical studies education if I didn’t peek at what came before. God is portrayed as a restorer and forgiver. Yet there’s also a lingering unease in the plea, “put away your indignation toward us.”

That catches my attention. What is this moody character we are encouraged to gloss over so we can get to the “good bits,” the part where “glory may dwell in our land”? Once, I would have accepted that and moved on.

Now, I want to explore it. I want to sit with the presentation of an emotionally labile God—prone to fits of anger, yet open to changing perspective for those who fear him. This is not the tidy image we often prefer.

And then there’s “our land.” Is it a geographical place out there somewhere, or is it speaking of my own inner terrain? Perhaps both. Either way, it seems worth pondering.

Psalm 85: 9, 11-14