United Church of Christ Daily Devotional 6th August 2025 Wednesday Message
A Good Word.
By Donna Schaper
For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. – Romans 7:19 (KJV)
My literary self-improvements are the good that I would do – and most of my other personal improvements are less so. Like trying to be an influencer or majoring in diet and exercise and other death prevention modalities. I wonder how consumerist my lust for literature is.
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Miss Daisy had a driver. I have a reader. His name is Bill Green, a retired UCC minister and reader and writer extraordinaire.
I may never get back to reading a whole book myself. Multiple sites join magazines and newspapers: The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Magazine, The New Yorker (yes, there is a theme), Smithsonian magazine, The Christian Century, Bon Appetit, Simple (!), Dwell, a bunch of gardening magazines, etc. I am a caricature. Then there is NPR. Finally, the competition for devotional sites is so thick that I need a morning rather than a minute to devote to devoting.
I’d love to know where you flash your credit card in pursuit of the good you would do.
Bill’s latest reading assignment for me is the “spatiality of thought,” a phrase from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. It’s a dense idea—how we inhabit not just rooms, but ideas. Meanwhile, I think of a protest sign I’ve seen more than once: “So many issues, so little cardboard.”
How much reading is enough? When does enough become too much? What are the poetics of space and grace, good and evil?
Prayer
Thank you, Bill Green and Abundant God for tempting me. Amen.
About the AuthorDonna Schaper is an interim Pastor at the United Church of Gainesville, Florida, and author, most recently of Remove the Pews—first from your theology, then from your building.
