Lutheran Devotions

The Lutheran Chuch of Honolulu is pleased to provide the resources to say Morning and Evening Devotions for each day without need of a prayer book, lectionary (list of readings), or Bible. These links will take your directly to pages for Morning and Evening Devotions:

Introduction

Daily prayer is an ancient practice with many names and a variety of forms, ranging from complex monastic offices to the simpler Anglican offices and a wide variety of individual practices.

In the Lutheran tradition, Appendix 1 to the Small Catechism begins with a section entitled “How a Father Should Teach His Household to Conduct Morning and Evening Devotions,” which prescribes a simple formula for personal devotions: an opening blessing, the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, an optional closing prayer, and “perhaps...a song inspired by the Ten Commandments or your own thoughts.”

In 1535, Luther published “A Simple Way to Pray: For a Good Friend” (PDF), advice to his barber on how to pray. This pamphlet elaborates on the devotions of the Small Catechism by adding to the options following the closeing prayer and providing guidance for praying the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed. Luther’s “Garland of Four Strands” comes from the section on praying the Ten Commandments. “I divide each commandment into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands. That is, I think of each commandment as, first, instruction, which is really what it is intended to be, and consider what the Lord God demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth, a prayer.”

Sources

The text for Luther’s Morning Devotions and the Ten Commandments come from The Small Catechism, translated in 1994 for Project Wittenberg by Robert E. Smith and placed in the public domain by him.

Because the contents of Evangelical Lutheran Worship are under copyright, we use texts for the Lord’s Prayer and optional materials (such as the collect of the day and the psalm) from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, of The Episcopal Church, which is not under copyright. For the collects, pages numbers for the prayer of the day from the ELW are provided for your convenience.

We follow the calendar and lectionary (list of readings) in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Copyright © 2006 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). The ELW’s Daily Lectionary comes from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings (Copyright © 2005 Consultation on Common Texts), a three-year list of readings where each week’s reading relate to the readings of that Sunday.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, (Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America). Used by permission. All rights reserved. (In compliance with the Gratis Use Policy for the NRSV, only the readings for the current week are stored on the server. We apologize if this may occasionally mean that readings are not available on Thursday when a new week of readings usually begins.)

Preferences

Our Preferences page allows you to set your local time zone to ensure that this site presents the offices for the correct day in your time zone.

You can also choose among a range of optional materials (Ten Commandments, collect of the day, environmental prayer, personal petitions, psalm, land lectionary lessons) to be included in your Morning or Evening Devotions.

Finally, you may choose to have the server automatically present Morning Devotions when you access the page before noon local time or Evening Devotions after noon.

You have not yet set your preferences, or the cookie with your preferences has expired. Follow this link to set your preferences.

About the PHP Engine

Pages for Morning and Evening Devotions are produced from files written in the PHP programmimg language by Bill Potter, LCH webmaster. Read more about the PHP Engine.

Invitation

The Lutheran Devotions pages are a ministry of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu.

If you have a website and would like to link to this or other pages, you can find additional information on our “Linking to Lutheran Devotions” page.

The congregation of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu welcomes you to join us for worship each Sunday and on major holidays. Detailed information is available on the LCH website: www.LCHwelcome.org.