Friday, October 23, 2026

This devotion pairs with this weekend’s Lutheran Hour sermon, which can be found at lhm.org.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-24)

A tiny splinter of wood had been lodged deep under the patient’s right-hand thumbnail. For three days he had been trying to handle it on his own, until finally the throbbing pain and festering infection had driven him to a doctor. The doctor explained that it would take three shots of local anesthetic to deaden the nerves in the infected appendage. “That will be the worst part,” he said. “From there, you’ll only feel pressure, as I use my pliers to dig under the nail and extract the splinter, and then, relief.”

Relief—you know the feeling. Help arrived. A tight spot became a broad plain. Puzzle pieces fell into place. The pressure released. And you breathed a sigh of relief. In various ways, we are all looking for relief. But not everyone looks for it in the same way. Two common ways people seek relief are through right knowledge and/or right action. We tell ourselves that if we know the right things and take the right actions, then we’ll find relief. But this relief is fleeting because the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. And the more you do, the more you see how much you’ve left undone.

A late-medieval monk named Martin Luther was once faced with the frustration of this fleeting relief. Luther had devoted himself 24-7 to doing and knowing what was right. But it only made him feel worse. Finally, through reading the Bible (the part of the Bible we read today from Romans), Luther found true relief—not in right knowledge, not in right action—but in a right relationship—through faith, through childlike trust in Jesus, in what God had accomplished and promised through His Son.

This relief came to Luther (and comes to us) in two ways: all at once and little by little. First, it comes all at once, in God’s Good News, as expressed in that phrase from Romans, “by His grace as a gift.” God’s grace, God’s favor, is the relief that comes all at once. God’s favor is God’s love for us. God’s favor is what moved Jesus to die and rise for us. God’s favor is what sends His Holy Spirit to us now and in the future, when Jesus returns to raise us from the dead and restore everything. God’s favor is the relief waiting to find us even while we’re still trying to handle things on our own. And it comes all at once.

At the same time, God’s relief is also God’s healing, which comes little by little, because the splinter still has to come out. The doctor must take the patient by the hand and go all the way. Paul reflects on the pressure of this process in the rest of Romans, especially chapter 7. Our old nature still infects us with the delusion that we can handle things on our own with more knowledge and more action. But the stuff we know and the things we do were never meant to offer relief. Knowledge and action are God’s gifts He shares with us so that we can represent Him to the world. But first we must begin to heal—healing that begins by resting in God’s favor. Then we can start to use our knowledge and action, little by little, to represent God to a world under pressure and aching for relief.

WE PRAY: Thank You, Father, for the relief that is Your grace in Jesus Christ. Amen.

This Daily Devotion was written by Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Speaker of The Lutheran Hour.

Reflection Questions:

1. Can you give an example of when you felt an overwhelming sense of relief?
2. How is simple, childlike trust in Jesus different than right religious knowledge?
3. How will you use your knowledge and action to represent God today?

Today's Readings:

Jeremiah 15-17
Colossians 2

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