Sunday, April 6, 2025
Scripture Readings
Devotional Thought
The reading plan rests today, and so do we — but Scripture does not leave us without a word. Today is the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, the day the risen Christ met His people. And there is no portion more fitting for an empty column than the one the church has sung on resurrection mornings for two thousand years: “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). The psalmist did not write these words from a mountaintop of ease. He wrote them as one who had been “chastened sore” but not given over to death (v. 18), who had cried out in distress and found the LORD answering and setting him in a large place (v. 5). The stone the builders rejected had become the head cornerstone — a line Jesus Himself applied to His own rejection and rising (Matthew 21:42). What the builders discarded, God made the load-bearing stone. That is the grammar of resurrection, and it is the grammar of the Christian life.
So on this spring Sunday, with the world greening and the air warming, the church gathers to say what the psalm says: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD” (v. 17). Notice that the psalmist’s hope is not merely private survival. He lives to *declare*. The mercy he received is not his to hoard; it is a message. Every believer who has come up out of some sickness, some failure, some long winter of the soul knows the same impulse — tell it. Tell what the Lord has done.
And notice where the psalm places this joy: “in the gates of the LORD” (v. 19-20), among the congregation, in the house of the LORD. Resurrection joy is not a solitary feeling. It is a gathered, sung, spoken gladness, offered “in the presence of all his people” (v. 15). The empty reading plan today is not an accident; it is a summons. The best use of an unassigned page is to take up the day itself as the text — to gather, to sing, to testify, and to be glad in the One who turned a rejected stone into the cornerstone.
Perhaps your week has felt like a quarry: heavy stones, sharp edges, builders shaking their heads. Bring it here. The psalm does not ask you to pretend the hardship away; it asks you to bring it into the gates with thanksgiving (v. 19). The LORD who answered the psalmist is the LORD who raised Jesus. He has not stopped making days. He has made this one.
Reflection
- What “rejected stone” in your life — a disappointment, a failure, a season you thought was wasted — might God be laying as a cornerstone, and how would you live differently if you believed that?
- The psalmist says he lives to “declare the works of the LORD.” To whom, specifically, could you declare them this week?
Prayer
O LORD, this is the day which Thou hast made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Thou hast chastened us, but Thou hast not given us over unto death. Open to us the gates of righteousness, that we may enter and praise Thee. We thank Thee that the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner, and that Jesus Christ is risen indeed. Let our mouths speak of Thy works among Thy people, and let our gladness be not a feeling only but a testimony. Bind up what is broken in us, set our feet in a large place, and make this Lord’s Day a foretaste of the endless day, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.