Friday, February 11<\/b><\/p>\n
Mathew 12.9-14: This story continues the theme of the Lord\u2019s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text, and generally throughout the gospels, Jesus ignores this distinction. In the present instance His enemies are completely frustrated, because Jesus does not do anything with which they can accuse Him. He does not touch the afflicted man; He does not speak one word that could be interpreted as an act of healing. He simply tells the man to extend his impaired hand, and immediately the hand is healed! In their frustration the Lord\u2019s enemies take the action to which most of the narrative has been building up to this point \u2014 they resolve that Jesus must die. That is to say, they resolve to do what Herod had failed to do in the second chapter of Matthew.<\/p>\n
Romans 4.1-12: In the present chapter the apostle illustrates and demonstrates that the principle of justification through faith lies at the heart of the Old Testament. He goes to this Gospel principle as illustrated in the lives of Abraham and David.<\/p>\n
In the case of David, who had violated at least two articles of the Decalogue, justification came from the forgiveness of his sins. David had not observed the Law, but God had forgiven his lawless deeds and not imputed his sins unto him (verses 7-8).<\/p>\n
In this non-imputation of sin, the verb employed is logizesthai<\/i>, which Paul uses with respect to both David and Abraham. Such imputation is not some sort of legal fiction. This verb, in its normal and literal meaning, comes from the practice of accounting, bookkeeping, and the maintenance of ledgers. In the Greek Bible it is used metaphorically in the sense of a recorded account of man\u2019s moral conduct, as though God and the angels were “keeping tabs” on him (Deuteronomy 24:13; Psalms 106 [105]:31; Daniel 7:10; Revelation 20:12). This figurative use of the verb in a theological sense seems to be an extension of its figurative use in a legal and forensic sense, such as in court records and similar official archives (cf. Esther 6:1-3).<\/p>\n
Thus, when David writes that a forgiven man\u2019s sins are not \u201cimputed\u201d to him, the meaning is that those sins are no longer kept on the ledger, so to speak. They have been erased or “whited over.” Our sins are removed from the divine calculation, as it were. Our sins are “covered” (verse 7), not in the sense that they still remain in the soul, but in the sense that God has put them out of His mind. They are over and done with. He remembers them no more. The blood of the Lamb has washed them away, and a man never again needs to remember things that God has forgotten.<\/p>\n
In addition to David, Paul writes of Abraham, “our forefather according to the flesh,” which means “our biological ancestor” (verse 1; Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8). Abraham lived in a period long before the Sinai Covenant and the Mosaic Law. Yet, he was justified in God\u2019s sight, not by his observance of the Law, but through his faith in God\u2019s word, a faith manifest in his obedience to God\u2019s call (verses 2-5).<\/p>\n
When the Sacred Text asserts that Abraham\u2019s faith was “accounted [elogisthe<\/i>] to him for righteousness” (verse 3), it means that God was never in Abraham\u2019s debt. God did not owe Abraham anything. The initiative of salvation in the story of Abraham was entirely God\u2019s. God sought out Abraham, not the other way around. Abraham\u2019s task was to believe, to trust, to obey. In faith he left his justification in God\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
Saturday, February 12<\/b><\/p>\n
Matthew 12.15-21: Matthew, alone among the Evangelists, cites these verses from Isaiah relative to the \u201cbeloved servant.\u201d This passage calls back to the scene of Jesus\u2019 baptism, where God identifies him as the \u201cbeloved son.\u201d Even as the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in that scene, and the Father\u2019s refers to him as \u201cSon,\u201d the vocabulary recalls the Servant from the Book of Isaiah, the image which will largely determine, in due course, our Lord\u2019s understanding of His redemptive role. The Father\u2019s Son, the true Isaac, is identified as God\u2019s Servant.<\/p>\n
More and more, as the events of His life unfold—especially the conspiracy of His foes—Jesus sounds the depths of that identification. In straight lines, both images point to the Cross.<\/p>\n
In the experience of His baptism, then, our Lord received an earnest intimation of what it finally symbolized. The Gospel narrative will return to this motif in the later scene where Jesus foretells the strife and divisions attendant on the proclamation of the Gospel: \u201cI have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!\u201d (Luke 12:50; cf. Mark 10:38).<\/p>\n
One especially observes the references to the calling of the Gentiles, references which look backwards to the Magi and forward to the Great Commission.<\/p>\n
Romans 4.13-25: Suddenly, and as though by parenthesis, Paul asserts that “the Law brings about wrath.” This means that the Mosaic Law, by adding to man\u2019s moral responsibilities, increases the opportunities for further transgressions, and these transgressions, in turn, evoke the divine wrath. That is to say, the Mosaic Law actually makes man\u2019s moral situation worse!<\/p>\n
Consequently, the Law cannot be the instrument of man\u2019s salvation. Paul barely introduces this idea here; he will elaborate it at some length in chapter seven.<\/p>\n
Paul here begins to treat the theme of death, a topic he had introduced in 1:32. From this point on, the arguments of the Epistle to the Romans will be directed at the theme of death, expressed in both the noun thanatos<\/i> (a word found in Romans twenty-two times) and the adjective nekros<\/i> (found in Romans sixteen times). Paul commences his long argument that man\u2019s justification has to do with Christ\u2019s victory over death. That is to say, man is justified by the power of Christ\u2019s resurrection, unleashed into this world by the Gospel.<\/p>\n
Abraham, exemplifying salvific faith, believed in the God who could make fruitful his own “dead” flesh and the “dead” womb of Sarah (verses 17-19; Genesis 17:15-21). Paul compares this to God\u2019s calling all of Creation out of nothingness. This call is the promise of the Resurrection, as he will make clear at the end of the chapter.<\/p>\n
This ascription of righteousness to faith pertains not only to Abraham but also to us his children (verses 23-24), if we live by that same faith. Concretely, this means faith in the God who raises the dead, symbolized in the “dead” bodies of Abraham and Sarah. The God who raises Jesus from the dead is the same God who called all things from nothingness into being.<\/p>\n
Sunday, February 13<\/b><\/p>\n
Romans 5.1-11: Since Paul goes to considerable to pain to speak of the life in Christ in three tenses in this text, perhaps we will be most faithful to his thought if we make those three tenses the outline of what we want to say about it.<\/p>\n
First, there is the past tense, which Paul uses to speak of our reconciliation and justification. Paul keeps using the aorist passive participle, \u201chaving been justified.\u201d It is an act of God in the past that constitutes a new relationship to God. Our justification, our reconciliation is something that has already happened: “having been justified through faith” (verse 1), “having now been justified by His blood” (verse 9).<\/p>\n
We observe how calm the Apostle Paul was with respect to his standing before God. He never forgot that God came seeking him<\/i>, not the other way around. He knew from experience what he writes in this text—namely, \u201cwhile we were still sinners, Christ died for us\u201d (v. 8). Starting on the road to Damascus that day, Paul did not think of himself as a sinner. He thought of other people as sinners, and he was going to put a stop to it. It had not occurred to him that he was the sinner, until the Voice from heaven called him up short. From that point on, Paul knew what he writes in today\u2019s text: \u201cBut God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us\u201d (v. 6).<\/p>\n
Second, there is the future tense, without which we could do none of these things. The future tense concerns what Paul calls \u201csalvation.\u201d Paul clearly thinks of salvation as still something yet to come. In the Epistle to the Romans, the “salvation” effected by God\u2019s power in the Gospel most often refers to a future reality rather than an accomplished fact.<\/p>\n
Paul returns to this idea over and over again in the Book of Romans. For instance, in today\u2019s text he says, \u201cMuch more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul keeps returning to this theme in Romans. He says in 10:8, \u201cif you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.\u201d A few verses later he repeats this principle, \u201cwhoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (10:13). And finally, Paul says in 13:11, \u201cnow it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.\u201d That is to say, our salvation is something in the future, and we are moving toward it.<\/p>\n
Third, there is the present tense to speak of our life in Christ right now. This is the dominant verbal tense of this chapter, in which, Paul says, \u201cwe have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations\u201d (vv. 1-3). All of those verbs are in the present tense: we have peace, we have access, we stand, we rejoice, we glory. This is the present Christian life, in which \u201cthe love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us\u201d (v. 5). It is a life of peace with God, access to God, standing before God, rejoicing in hope, and glorying in tribulations.<\/p>\n
Monday, February 14<\/b><\/p>\n
Matthew 12: 31-37: Strictly speaking there is no \u201cunforgivable\u201d sin. Jesus does not say that this sin can\u2019t<\/i> be forgive; he says it won\u2019t<\/i> be forgiven. God\u2019s mercy stands ready to forgive any sin of which repent. The whole point of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is that it is, by definition, the sin of which men do not repent<\/i>. It is total and inveterate blindness of heart, in which men can no longer discern the difference between light and darkness. Such appears to be the sin of which the Lord\u2019s enemies are guilty in these texts where we find them plotting His death.<\/p>\n
For a pastoral perspective it may be said that those Christians who fear they may have committed such a sin should be take courage from the thought that their very fear is strong evidence that they have not done so. Those who are approaching the unforgiven sin are those who no longer even think about repentance and feel no need for it.<\/p>\n
Romans 5.12-21: Having earlier treated of Abraham and David in regard to justification, Paul now turns to a consideration of Adam, whose sin introduced death into the world. Our mortality is the Fall that we sinners inherit from Adam. If, apart from Christ, sins reigns, “sin reigns in death” (verse 21). By reason of Adam\u2019s Fall, man without Christ is under the reign of death and corruption, because “the reign of death operates only in the corruption of the flesh” (Tertullian, On the Resurrection<\/i> 47).<\/p>\n
In the death and resurrection of Christ, on the other hand, are unleashed the energies of life and incorruption. This is the foundation of Paul\u2019s antithetical comparison of Christ and Adam.<\/p>\n
Paul goes to Genesis 3 to explain what he calls “the reign of death” (verses 14,17). In the Bible death is not natural, nor is it merely biological, and certainly it is not neutral. Apart from Christ, death represents man\u2019s final separation from God (verse 21; 6:21,23; 8:2,6,38). The corruption of death is sin incarnate and rendered visible. When this “last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:56) has finally been vanquished, then may we most correctly speak of “salvation.” This is why the vocabulary of salvation normally appears in Romans in the future tense.<\/p>\n
Because of men\u2019s inheritance of Adam\u2019s Fall, “all sinned.” (Paul is not considering infants here, but this consideration makes no difference to the principle. What has been handed on in Adam\u2019s Fall is not, in the first instance, a sense of personal guilt, but the reign of death. “Sin reigns in death” [verse 21]. Infants, alas, are also the heirs of death, and therefore of Adam\u2019s Fall.)<\/p>\n
Tuesday, February 15<\/b><\/p>\n
Matthew 12.38-42: Both examples given here, the Ninevites and the queen from southern Arabia, are Gentiles, those of whom Matthew has just been speaking in 12:18-21. The figures of Jonah and Solomon should also be understood here as representing the prophetic and sapiential traditions of Holy Scripture.<\/p>\n
Jesus is the \u201cgreater than Jonah,\u201d whose earlier ministry foreshadowed the Lord\u2019s death and Resurrection and also the conversion of the Gentiles. The Lord\u2019s appeal to Jonah in this text speaks also of Jonah as a type or symbol of the Resurrection. The men of Nineveh, who repented and believed, are contrasted with the unrepentant Jewish leaders who refuse to believe in the Resurrection (cf. 28:13-15). Matthew will return to the sign of Jonah in 16:2. Jesus is also the \u201cgreater than Solomon,\u201d who was founder of Israel\u2019s wisdom literature and the builder of the Temple.<\/p>\n
The Queen of the South, that Gentile woman who came seeking Solomon\u2019s wisdom, likewise foreshadowed the calling of the Gentiles. She was related to Solomon as the Ninevites were related to Jonah—as Gentiles who met the God of Israel through His manifestation in the personal lives of particular Israelites.<\/p>\n
It is a point of consolation to observe that in neither case—whether Solomon or Jonah—were these Israelites free from personal faults!<\/p>\n
Romans 6.1-14: The sole person who has overcome the reign of death is Jesus Christ, who could not be held by the clutches of death. As soon as death grabbed hold of Him, it knew that it had met more than its match. The sin that reigned “in death” was thus vanquished, death of Christ atoning for the sins of the whole world. Thus, the death that He died, “He died to sin” (verse 10; 2 Corinthians 5:21). His death, embraced in obedience to the Father’s will, reversed the disobedience of Adam and redeemed, for God, all of Adam’s children. By His death, the sacrificial Lamb of God took away the sins of the whole world.<\/p>\n
By his rising again, likewise, Jesus Christ conquered and brought to an end the reign of death. “Death no longer has dominion over Him” (verse 9). Thus the death (including the shedding of His blood and all the sufferings attendant on that death) and the resurrection (including the ascension into heaven, the entrance into the Holy Place, and the sitting at the right hand of the Father) of Jesus Christ form the single activity of our redemption. No part of that mystery is separable from the other, such is its integrity, its wholeness, its catholicity (kath’ holon<\/i>=\u201daccording to the whole\u201d).<\/p>\n
Wednesday, February 16<\/b><\/p>\n
Psalms 116 (Greek & Latin 114 and 115): This psalm breaks into two parts (separate psalms in the Septuagint and Vulgate), the first beginning, \u201cI loved,\u201d and the second beginning, \u201cI believed.\u201d The voice in both these psalms is that of Christ our Lord; it is He who says, \u201cI have loved\u201d and \u201cI have believed.\u201d Loving and believing, that is, are not simply religious requirements laid on the Christian conscience; they are, first of all, characteristics modeled in Christ the Lord. All love and all belief begin in Jesus. Any loving and any believing that we others may accomplish is an inner participation in his loving and his believing, for his loving and his believing form the font of our salvation.<\/p>\n
When Jesus says, \u201cI have loved,\u201d the rest of the psalm shows that its special setting is the mystery of His suffering and death endured for the sake of our salvation in loving obedience. Firstly, Jesus did all these things because of His love for the Father: \u201cBut that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do\u201d (John 14:31). Secondly, Jesus did all of these things because He loved us. Thus, St. Paul refers to our Lord simply as \u201cHim who loved us\u201d (Rom. 8:37). And because He loved us, Jesus gave Himself up to death on the Cross: \u201cThe life which I now live in the flesh,\u201d wrote St. Paul, \u201cI live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me\u201d (Gal. 2:20).<\/p>\n
The Savior goes on to speak of the supplication that he offered in the context of His sufferings, beseeching God that, if possible, the cup might be taken away: \u201cThe sorrows of death encompassed me; the hazards of Hades found me out. Affliction have I found and sorrow, and I called on the name of the Lord: \u2018O Lord, deliver my soul.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This and so many other psalms testify that the Lord\u2019s Passion was a sustained act of worship. This interpretation of His death was perfectly obvious to the early Christians, who said of Christ that \u201cHe offered up Himself\u201d (Heb. 7:27), and who spoke of \u201cthe offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all\u201d (10:10), and who described His self-oblation as \u201can offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma\u201d (Eph. 5:2).<\/p>\n
This is the language of the temple and of the sacrificial worship, and we are probably so accustomed to hearing it that we have lost all sense of how terribly strange and improbable it must have sounded when the Christians first began to speak this way of the unjust death inflicted on a just man. This event outsiders would have considered as, at best, a great tragedy, but for the Christian mind the death of Jesus was not a mere miscarriage of human justice; it was the supreme act of worship that endowed all mankind with God\u2019s justice. It was the single deed of such condign and consummate devotion as to render possible humanity\u2019s access to God for all time and into eternity.<\/p>\n
Thursday, February 17<\/b><\/p>\n
Matthew 13.1-9: Matthew 13:1-9: As we now come to the third and central of the five great discourses in Matthew, Jesus once again sits down as teacher (Compare 5:1). Taking up a standard mystic number in Holy Scripture, this discourse will be composed of seven parables: the sown seed, the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and the fishing net. Four of these, as we will have occasion to note, are found only in Matthew. Even in wording this first parable is nearly identical with Mark 4:1-9.<\/p>\n
In this chapter, a sharp distinction is made between those that understand<\/i> the parable\u2014the \u2018insiders\u201d–and those that don\u2019t\u2014the \u201coutsiders\u201d (verse 11). Thus, when the chapter opens, Jesus is speaking to large crowds (verse 2), but afterwards He speaks only to an inner circle and privately (verse 36). This move indicates a change in the focus of the Lord\u2019s ministry and preaching. This change is not surprising, in light of the bitter controversies that have been mounting in Matthew\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n
Jesus begins this sermon by sitting down (verse 1)\u2014the posture of the teacher\u2014just as when He began the Sermon on the Mount (5:1; cf. 24:3). A close reading of this text discloses a striking parallel with Revelation 7:9-12, where a great multitude stands before God seated on the throne beside the sea (4:6).<\/p>\n
This first parable, in which most of the sown seed is lost, summarizes Jesus\u2019 own experience, as narrated in the previous chapter. So little of the Gospel, it seems, has fallen on fertile ground. As directed to the Church, this parable urges a sense of modesty about \u201csuccess\u201d in fruitful preaching. A great deal of the sown Word will simply be wasted.<\/p>\n
This first parable also provides the foundation for the other six; it is the fountain out of which they flow. Thus, the second parable (wheat and tares in verses 24-30), is concerned with the wasted seed that falls by the wayside and is eaten by birds. The \u201cenemy\u201d that sowed the tares in verse 24 is identical with the \u201cwicked one\u201d in verse 19. Similarly, the third parable (mustard seed in verses 31-32) and the fourth (leaven in verse 33) deal with the seed that is sown on stony ground. Parables five (hidden treasure in verse 44) and six (pearl in verses 45-46) are concerned with the seed sown among thorns, while the seventh parable (dragnet in verses 47-50) parallels the seed sown on fertile ground and bringing forth much fruit.<\/p>\n
The seed sown by the wayside (verse 4) is the Word preached to the unworthy heart, an interpretation introduced by the quotation from Isaiah in verse 15: \u201cLest they should understand<\/i> with their hearts<\/i>.\u201d The key is an understanding heart (verse 23). The failure in this case has to do with the first imperative of the Shema<\/i>: \u201cThou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
The seed fallen on rocky ground (verses 5-6) is the Word preached to a shallow soul, which is unprepared for the trials that the reception of the Word will bring. The failure in this case pertains to the second imperative of the Shema<\/i>: to love God with the whole soul.<\/p>\n
The seed sown among thorns (verse 7) is the Word preached to the worldly, who are concerned with wealth and the strength that comes with wealth. In this case the failure is related to the Shema<\/i>\u2019s command to love God with all one\u2019s strength.<\/p>\n
The seed fallen on good ground (verse 8) is the Word preached to someone with an understanding heart. Such a man is described in Psalm 1: the man who \u201cbrings forth his fruit in its season.\u201d This is the man who fulfills all the imperatives of the Shema<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Friday, February 18<\/b><\/p>\n
Romans 7.13-25: Although the “I” in these verses represents the human experience generally considered, it would be wrong to assume that Paul is not speaking from personal experience. Very wrong. Paul knew<\/i> on his own pulses what it was to offend God. He had offended God grievously. He had experienced the dilemma described in these verses. He was well aware what it meant to be a great sinner, even while meticulously observing the smallest parts of the Mosaic Law (Philippians 3:6; Galatians 1:13-14).<\/p>\n
Indeed, it was Paul\u2019s own strict adherence to the Law that had led him to the most serious sin of his life, the only personal sin on which he ever comments \u2014 the persecution of Christians. In Paul\u2019s conversion he was made aware, in a way that he would never forget, that his endeavor to achieve righteousness by the observance of the Law had led him into his worst sin: \u201cSaul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was in that experience of his conversion that he discerned “another law in my members, working against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (verse 23).<\/p>\n
That is to say, it was his very zeal for the Law of God that had occasioned his worst sin against heaven. He had not been doing what he had intended to do (verse 15). Sin had taken over his life. He had been acting as a slave of sin. Thus, in his conversion Paul learned the experience common to all the children of Adam\u2014the radical inability to find justification before God without the reconciling grace of Christ.<\/p>\n
No, this dilemma was not the fault of the Law. It was, rather, the manifestation of the power of sin in man\u2019s very flesh, this flesh burdened with death. Sin is not in the Law; sin is in man\u2019s very flesh, working through death (verses 13-15). Inherited sin is internal to man, which is why grace must become internal to man.<\/p>\n
With his mind, then, man contemplates the Law, but it remains external to him. There is another “law” internal to man, the law of sin and death, the law that man really obeys (verse 19).<\/p>\n
The dilemma that Paul describes here is well know to anyone who has “tried to be good,” and moralists have often commented on it (Epictetus 1.26.4; Horace, Letters<\/i> 1.8.11; Ovid, Metamorphosis<\/i> 7.20-21; Dante, Purgatorio<\/i> 21.105).<\/p>\n
A man forced to do what he really doesn\u2019t want to do is properly called a slave (verses 16,23; 6:13,19), and a man without Christ is certainly a slave to sin. This is the reign of death. It abides in man\u2019s very flesh, which Paul calls “this body of death” (verse 24; 6:6; Philippians 3:21). As we have had occasion to remark more than once, “sins reigns in death.” Death is the legacy left us by Adam. It reigns in our very bodies. It was to free us from death that Christ rose from the dead.<\/p>\n
Verses 17 and 20 have occasionally been interpreted as excusing man from the responsibility for his sins. If this were the case, of course, man would not need a Savior. The whole of the Bible, however, and Paul especially, contends that the children of Adam are destined for eternal damnation except for the mercy of God poured out in the reconciling blood of Christ. Sin is never excused. Sin is paid for.<\/p>\n
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Friday, February 11 Mathew 12.9-14: This story continues the theme of the Lord\u2019s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text, and generally throughout the gospels, Jesus ignores this distinction. In the present instance His … Continue reading February 11 – February 18, 2022<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1824,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions\/1824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.touchstonemag.com\/daily_reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}