Stillspeaking Daily Devotional

10/20/2026

A from Quinn G. Caldwell: "Grant me withering in season, o God. And grant that when the time comes, I'm still here and full of rising sap. Amen."

10/13/2026

Today's , "Taste and See," by Jennifer Ruth Lynn Garrison:

O taste and see that the Lord is good. – Psalm 34:8a (NRSV)

My friend and I meet at Panera. I read the menu out loud since she can’t make out the words printed high over the counter. We each order, and the clerk asks a question. “Huh?” I ask, elbowing my friend.

“They said, do you want chips or an apple?” my friend enunciates.

My friend is visually impaired. I am hard of hearing. We both are capable of navigating a lunch order alone and have done so many times, but it’s so much easier and more pleasant together. My gifts fill in around her gaps. My challenges are met with the easy competence of her capabilities. So, there we are in the strip mall, sharing communion.

Ok, those lunches over a cup of soup and half a salad aren’t exactly communion. Or are they? Because isn’t that what communion is for? A reminder that though we can easily do this life on our own, it’s just so much better when we do it together. A conscious moment of being in one another’s presence long enough to notice what gifts we each bring to the moment, and then the dance of giving and receiving, receiving and giving.

“On the night before Jesus was killed by those who feared him, he gathered with his friends and chosen family.” So begin the words of institution I learned long ago. Before the bread, before the cup, before the forgiveness—the gathering. Bumping elbows and knees, those first followers came together around the table. Doing the sacred dance of common life, and in so doing, filling each other’s gaps.

Prayer: Holy One, here we are, your people. Whatever gift we may bring, gather us around the table to taste and see that life in you is so very, very good. Amen.

10/12/2026

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10/09/2026

'Tis the season for ordering your devotional by the Daily Devotional writers! This year's theme is "Suddenly," available through The Pilgrim Press. Check it out!

Preorder today! Shipping begins in October. PDFs of Suddenly will be available for purchase beginning November 1st. Urgent times demand God's sudden in-breaking. Mark's Gospel presents the story of Jesus at the break-neck speed of "suddenly": Suddenly Jesus was driven into the wilderness. Suddenly t...

10/09/2026

Today's from Quinn G. Caldwell, "The Only Question":

Why should it be said among the peoples, “Where is their god?” – Joel 2:17b (NRSV)

“Where is God?” is kind of the only question there is. Or the only one that matters. The first question, and the last.

Pharaoh asked it in Egypt, the Israelites asked it in the desert, the Magi asked it from afar, Herod asked it from a throne, Mary Magdalene asked it next to a rolled-away stone. Where is their God? Is God with us or not? Where is the one foretold? Where have they taken my Lord? A hundred ways to ask the same question, the one that comes before all others.

Of course the neighbors ask, “Where is their god?” So does everybody else. Your atheist cousin asked it all aggressively last Thanksgiving. You asked it with a broken heart last week when you read the news.

Joel’s worried the neighbors will ask where our god is because God hasn’t proved Godself enough, hasn’t provided enough, helped us win battles or get rich or avoid disaster. But the truth is, no matter how much God provides or does, we will all keep asking it.

I’m sorry to say that there will never be an answer that convinces everyone, no matter how much you might long for it. If the age of miracles didn’t do it, nothing will. There’s no such thing as proof. And even if there was, the answer never stays the same. Not on this side of heaven, anyway.

Where is God? Ask it sneering; ask it desperate; ask it hopeful. Just know that the asking never ends, and the only possible answer is the one you want to hear.

Prayer: Where are you, God? Amen.

10/07/2026

A comfort & reminder, from today's by Phiwa Langeni: "Even as we do our best to nurture the ones in our circle of care, ultimately God attends to their growth."

09/24/2026

Today's by Quinn G. Caldwell, "Penetrable":

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. – James 4:14b (NRSV)

One day in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was messing around with a cathode ray tube in his lab at the University of Würzburg when he noticed something odd. Whenever the tube was turned on, a nearby screen would start to glow, even when all visible light was blocked. When he held his hand up against the screen, he saw the weirdest shadow: not just the shape of his hand, but an image of its insides, bones and all.

When he reported his discovery of X-rays, the world went nuts. Not because of all the medical uses to which they would be put. Not because their discovery eventually birthed quantum physics.

It was because we had thought we were solid, and it turns out we aren’t. We believed we were fortresses: that only what we welcomed got inside, unless overthrown by force. Suddenly, we learned we are supremely penetrable; the world passes through us all day long, like somebody walking through a mist.

Radio waves, microwaves, neutrinos: all just mosey along on their way through the universe—and you—and don’t even notice you’re there. Nor do they cause trouble for you.

Not everything can pass through you without damage, though: alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, Röntgen’s X-rays, neutrons. Not to mention envy, malice, covetousness, cruelty, derision. Such things do fundamental damage on their way through.

Legislation, lead, and concrete do a pretty good job of shielding us from the problematic particles and radiation.

What do you do to shield you from the rest?

: Come, Holy Spirit, come. Enter in and make me impermeable to the worst the world has to offer. Amen.

09/21/2026

Today's from Mary Luti, "Shame Is Us":

Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me.” – Matthew 16:24 abridged (NRSV)

Biblical phrases and images often lose their teeth when they enter everyday parlance. Take “good Samaritan,” for example. In scripture, it’s the loathsome enemy who, shockingly, saves your life. Today, it’s the kindly stranger who rescues your cat from a tree. Nothing against cat rescue, but it doesn’t pack quite the same punch.

Likewise, “Take up your cross.” These days it means accepting life’s vicissitudes, as in “we all have our crosses to bear.” But Jesus wasn’t talking generically about bearing up under personal challenges, making a virtue of suffering. He was talking specifically about being paraded, in Andrew McGowan’s words, “from prison to gallows, carrying the instrument of torture and death.”

It would’ve been a familiar spectacle; the Romans weren’t stingy with crosses. Slaves, insurrectionists, robbers, people of low status and no hope whipped through the streets in processions choreographed for dehumanization. They were warnings, object lessons, the violent moral of the empire’s heartless story. To take up your cross was to join that humiliating parade, as Jesus himself soon would. And later, many of his disciples, too. For his sake, they became all shame.

Now, Jesus was no sadist. He didn’t want the cross for himself, and he never commanded us to run after torture and disgrace. But he did call us to love. And because a life that looks like love affronts everything that passes for wisdom in this world, that parade may yet await us. As someone once observed, “If you don’t love, you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.” We may yet become a warning. Christ’s shame may yet be us.

Prayer: Jesus, disabuse me of the notion that I can follow you without incurring rejection and ridicule. If I’m not yet all shame, grant me a closer following.