Amish County Pennsylvania

While we wait for the blessed hope (verse 13a).

Read Titus 2:11-15

Today’s reading comes from deep within the core understandings of the Amish people of Pennsylvania. One has to admire the literalist mentality that aims to restrict behaviour and maintain a straight and right plan of living. Monastic living is another alternative to this thinking which today’s text may also remind us of.

At the heart of today’s teaching is the desire to be a good example to young people, as young people in their natural naivety are prone to gullible and risky behaviours, especially if their peers and elders are engaging in it. Lack of experience requires guidance.

The final exhortation is one in which we have no control. As a matter of fact, I’d sense that if I was to be as good as is directed throughout the text, then people would have every reason to despise me. In the end, we are waiting, with all people, for the final trumpet call… or perhaps a bugle, flugelhorn or cornet. Whatever, the hope is in what is to come and today is where we prepare ourselves and others to enter that new world.

What attracts you about the restricted life of the ancient or modern monastics or Amish?

Lord, give us hearts that are hungry for truth and goodness, so that we can be good examples to the young lives that rely on us for the road-map to the right way, good living and a hope in Jesus as their saviour. Amen

Devotion by writers from Lifeway from “Time Out to Tune in” (Australian Church Resources, 2018)

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