Daily Reading for October 8

When Jesus says, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” I listen. Even during my doubting days in college I listened, and carefully, because Jesus not only knew more about God than I did—that was obvious—he also knew more about the world. He could talk convincingly to me about a father in heaven because he took seriously the earth’s homeless orphans. He could talk to me convincingly about living at peace in the hands of love because he knew that the world lived constantly at war in the grip of hatred. He could talk to me of light, and joy, and exultation, because I knew that he himself knew darkness, sorrow, and death.

From Credo by William Sloane Coffin (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).