Lenten Devotional Video

Some United Church of Canada ministers have been preparing daily devotional videos for the season of Lent on the Cruxifusion website. Mine is up today! The video link will probably change to someone else's tomorrow or Monday.

My video is a short reflection on Genesis 9:8-17, one of the lectionary passages for the First Sunday in Lent, February 26. Here is the reading from the Common English Bible:

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fertile, multiply, and fill the earth. All of the animals on the earth will fear you and dread you — all the birds in the skies, everything crawling on the ground, and all of the sea’s fish. They are in your power. Everything that lives and moves will be your food. Just as I gave you the green grasses, I now give you everything. However, you must not eat meat with its life, its blood, in it.

I will surely demand your blood
for a human life,
from every living thing I will demand it.
From humans, from a man for his brother,
I will demand something
for a human life.
Whoever sheds human blood,
by a human his blood will be shed;
for in the divine image
God made human beings.
As for you, be fertile and multiply. Populate the earth and multiply in it.” God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “I am now setting up my covenant with you, with your descendants, and with every living being with you — with the birds, with the large animals, and with all the animals of the earth, leaving the ark with you. I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut off by floodwaters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth."

God said, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I am drawing up between me and you and every living thing with you, on behalf of every future generation. I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being among all the creatures. Floodwaters will never again destroy all creatures. The bow will be in the clouds, and upon seeing it I will remember the enduring covenant between God and every living being of all the earth’s creatures.” God said to Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I have set up between me and all creatures on earth.”