Standout Verses - John 19:5, 14
Behold the man … behold your King.
He would be nailed to a cross, this man – this king. For me.
Why would I behold? It’s less fluffy than the sanitised winterfest manger. It doesn’t seem as glorious as the transfiguration mount. The emotional resonance here is discomforting.
Yet it is here we are told to behold this man – this king; my God.
In this, Pilate speaks with wisdom and no one listened. Today I listen.
Here I behold this man – this king; my God.
O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red
life that shall endless be.
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
toothpaste and shaving foam ... or water?
Standout Verses - 2 Samuel 14:14
Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.
We all know the illustration of trying to get toothpaste back in a tube, or shaving foam back into the can, because they are so over-done. In the traditional form of the story the analogy is most often to what we say; we can’t take our words back. The paste and foam sit there looking out of place on the children’s worker’s prop as evidence of potential sin, encouraging us to be more guarded in future. If the worker were to use a glass of water in the analogy what would happen. Well, with a spoon and a cloth much of the water could be gathered up again but most likely there would be some dirt brought back into the glass and there would be some water and there would be some left on the ground. If much care was taken then we could get very close to the appearance of a perfect job - near clear water and the glass as good as full. But this would only be an illusion.
We are people of dust and stains …
When our lives become problematic and are spilt out on the ground we find a way to pick ourselves up and patch ourselves together, and often we don’t involve God in that process. Millions of non-Christians and Christians alike live pieced together lives without God, displaying for all the world the illusion of togetherness. But if we scratch the surface, if we investigate further, we find that their lives contain the dirt of daily living, inadvertently gathered up as they hold themselves together: contaminated with the unhealed pain, uncontrolled desire and purposeless striving. We would see that they have not managed to pick up all that dropped and around them are scattered the discarded drops of life they could not reclaim. The struggles of life have left them damaged. Often though, to the outside observer, it looks as if the glass has been successfully and purely refilled.
The illustration shows us that this gathering up of life is not something that we can adequately do on our own: the truth we find here is that our lives cannot be “gathered up” by ourselves. They can only be pieced together and held together by God. He will not sweep away what we spill, nor will he contaminate what he brings together. He will devise a way.
Lord, we can only be made whole by a miracle. It is beyond the earthly and humanly possible, but I praise you that it is not beyond your divine will.
Piece me together.
Keep me together.
May I never again be separated from you.
Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.
We all know the illustration of trying to get toothpaste back in a tube, or shaving foam back into the can, because they are so over-done. In the traditional form of the story the analogy is most often to what we say; we can’t take our words back. The paste and foam sit there looking out of place on the children’s worker’s prop as evidence of potential sin, encouraging us to be more guarded in future. If the worker were to use a glass of water in the analogy what would happen. Well, with a spoon and a cloth much of the water could be gathered up again but most likely there would be some dirt brought back into the glass and there would be some water and there would be some left on the ground. If much care was taken then we could get very close to the appearance of a perfect job - near clear water and the glass as good as full. But this would only be an illusion.
We are people of dust and stains …
When our lives become problematic and are spilt out on the ground we find a way to pick ourselves up and patch ourselves together, and often we don’t involve God in that process. Millions of non-Christians and Christians alike live pieced together lives without God, displaying for all the world the illusion of togetherness. But if we scratch the surface, if we investigate further, we find that their lives contain the dirt of daily living, inadvertently gathered up as they hold themselves together: contaminated with the unhealed pain, uncontrolled desire and purposeless striving. We would see that they have not managed to pick up all that dropped and around them are scattered the discarded drops of life they could not reclaim. The struggles of life have left them damaged. Often though, to the outside observer, it looks as if the glass has been successfully and purely refilled.
The illustration shows us that this gathering up of life is not something that we can adequately do on our own: the truth we find here is that our lives cannot be “gathered up” by ourselves. They can only be pieced together and held together by God. He will not sweep away what we spill, nor will he contaminate what he brings together. He will devise a way.
Lord, we can only be made whole by a miracle. It is beyond the earthly and humanly possible, but I praise you that it is not beyond your divine will.
Piece me together.
Keep me together.
May I never again be separated from you.
Monday, 1 December 2008
how much is enough?
Standout Verses: Psalm 119:66, 73
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
You made me; you created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.
These verses almost seem out of place on first reading. In the middle of this psalm where Ezra spends verse after verse after many a verse declaring how much God’s law means to him, how much he delights in it, they jar. For the writer would otherwise seem to have it all sorted. He must be following God’s law. He loves it, honours it, meditates on it. He has hidden it in his heart and been overwhelmed with desire by it; hoped, rejoiced and wondered in it. It revives him, renews him and sustains him. Surely he must know them all, follow them all and keep them all. But no, for more is needed.
When you pause briefly it begins to make sense, and the truth begins to shine through. We only need to bring ourselves into the equation and we see the possibility of sin. We easily recognise that we like Paul (Rom 7:14) are “all too human” but our response is often to model ourselves after the writer of this psalm. “If I meditate on God’s law day and night, if I learn more, understand more, surely that will be enough,” we tell ourselves. We only get half the picture. Scriptural understanding alone is insufficient to bring about a change in our actions. That change follows a change of heart and of passions which comes from relationship. Scriptural understanding without a Jesus-relationship is meaningless head-noise. Scripture reading that focuses other than on building that relationship is just literary entertainment. The scriptures: the law, the prophets, poetry, gospels and letters point to God and exist to lead us to Him. All other uses are mere moralising sociological history and demean the Word of God.
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
You made me; you created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.
Lord God, this is my prayer too. Teach me good judgment and knowledge and give me the sense to follow your commands; and do it through building my relationship with Your Son.
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
You made me; you created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.
These verses almost seem out of place on first reading. In the middle of this psalm where Ezra spends verse after verse after many a verse declaring how much God’s law means to him, how much he delights in it, they jar. For the writer would otherwise seem to have it all sorted. He must be following God’s law. He loves it, honours it, meditates on it. He has hidden it in his heart and been overwhelmed with desire by it; hoped, rejoiced and wondered in it. It revives him, renews him and sustains him. Surely he must know them all, follow them all and keep them all. But no, for more is needed.
When you pause briefly it begins to make sense, and the truth begins to shine through. We only need to bring ourselves into the equation and we see the possibility of sin. We easily recognise that we like Paul (Rom 7:14) are “all too human” but our response is often to model ourselves after the writer of this psalm. “If I meditate on God’s law day and night, if I learn more, understand more, surely that will be enough,” we tell ourselves. We only get half the picture. Scriptural understanding alone is insufficient to bring about a change in our actions. That change follows a change of heart and of passions which comes from relationship. Scriptural understanding without a Jesus-relationship is meaningless head-noise. Scripture reading that focuses other than on building that relationship is just literary entertainment. The scriptures: the law, the prophets, poetry, gospels and letters point to God and exist to lead us to Him. All other uses are mere moralising sociological history and demean the Word of God.
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
You made me; you created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.
Lord God, this is my prayer too. Teach me good judgment and knowledge and give me the sense to follow your commands; and do it through building my relationship with Your Son.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
A delicate balance
Standout Verse - Proverbs 16:1
We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer.
How often do we hear it said, “It’s all in God’s hands,” or “I’m simply trusting / leaving it to God”? And how often is that an excuse to not plan and to avoid work? An excuse to avoid working out a vision preferring to believe that directions will simply fall from the sky into our laps? It avoids us getting it wrong and gives us someone else to blame when solutions do not suddenly appear. This laziness is bad enough, but then we occasionally use verses such as this one to justify our actions. We ask, “If God will give us the answer, why make plans?” We claim a false scriptural mandate to ease our consciences. But when we do this we manipulate meaning so that we can discover what we always hoped to find.
You see, there is nothing in this verse that tells us that God will give us a plan. There is nothing here to say that if we put ourselves onto a holy-autopilot things will just happen as they were always meant to. There is no “Commit a task fully to the Lord and no effort will be required from you”. What there is is an expression of a delicate balance. We are to work and we are to listen.
We are to make plans. More than one. It is not for us to construct a scheme and then inform God that this is how He is to act; nor are we to shoehorn him into our plot. We are to make plans, using our imagination to create a spread of different ways forward and then look to God to discern which (in any so far) fits His will. We plan and then God answers.
So where is this delicate balance? It is in a partnership between our efforts and God’s control.
Lord, give me more creativity that I may better see the paths that lie ahead; give me also more stillness that I may better hear which path you call me from. Then together, may we plant my feet on the right way.
We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer.
How often do we hear it said, “It’s all in God’s hands,” or “I’m simply trusting / leaving it to God”? And how often is that an excuse to not plan and to avoid work? An excuse to avoid working out a vision preferring to believe that directions will simply fall from the sky into our laps? It avoids us getting it wrong and gives us someone else to blame when solutions do not suddenly appear. This laziness is bad enough, but then we occasionally use verses such as this one to justify our actions. We ask, “If God will give us the answer, why make plans?” We claim a false scriptural mandate to ease our consciences. But when we do this we manipulate meaning so that we can discover what we always hoped to find.
You see, there is nothing in this verse that tells us that God will give us a plan. There is nothing here to say that if we put ourselves onto a holy-autopilot things will just happen as they were always meant to. There is no “Commit a task fully to the Lord and no effort will be required from you”. What there is is an expression of a delicate balance. We are to work and we are to listen.
We are to make plans. More than one. It is not for us to construct a scheme and then inform God that this is how He is to act; nor are we to shoehorn him into our plot. We are to make plans, using our imagination to create a spread of different ways forward and then look to God to discern which (in any so far) fits His will. We plan and then God answers.
So where is this delicate balance? It is in a partnership between our efforts and God’s control.
Lord, give me more creativity that I may better see the paths that lie ahead; give me also more stillness that I may better hear which path you call me from. Then together, may we plant my feet on the right way.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Super Christians, Schmuper Christians
With apologies to the original author:
Why do we not have the courage to sing “Bound by pain and sorrow I bow before his throne”? Why in our hymnary are we always “Unbound”? Sure, we leave with freedom, but do we always come that way? I don’t.
Lord, teach us honesty in worship.
Alone and disillusioned from pretending I was free,Why must we all be super-Christians ... why can't we admit to struggling? The message of the gospel is not so feeble that it withers in the face of reality!
Powerless to change my life, to leave this misery.
But then I think about him, of his love, how can it be
That he would die and rise again and choose to live in me.
To be filled with his own presence and peace I do not know:
Bound by pain and sorrow I bow before his throne.
I find what I am seeking and I know that I am free
for I can do all things he asks by his power at work in me.
Christ in me, the hope of Glory:
Christ in me, the mystery:
Christ in me, God’s greatest story.
Brought to life at Calvary,
He’s my joy eternally
(Through his grace this I can see).
All because of Christ in me.
Why do we not have the courage to sing “Bound by pain and sorrow I bow before his throne”? Why in our hymnary are we always “Unbound”? Sure, we leave with freedom, but do we always come that way? I don’t.
Lord, teach us honesty in worship.
I must see what it cost Him
Standout Verses – John 13:1,4,5,8a
[Jesus] had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.
“No,” Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”
And I protest too. But at least Peter had the excuse of not having read the passage many times before and having heard sermons on it and read theological treatise explaining it. For him this was new and unfamiliar: it would be uncomfortable and I understand that reaction. For me it is uncomfortable to read this and imagine Jesus wrapping a towel around his waist and walk up to my feet, but for different reasons. I feel that I would sully him; tarnish his deity by him having to come into contact with me, for I know where those feet have been today … the paths I trod in my actions and my words and my thoughts. These feet are dirty and Jesus should only bend down to cleaner feet than these, for he deserves the best and that is not what I can offer today; not what I can offer most days. Sometimes I can only offer my worst … it is the best that I can do and it is the reality of me. If he comes near my feet then the water would be stinkin’ and the towel would be boggin’. Jesus would be covered in filth, in my filth, and that is uncomfortable to me.
Notes from the NLT Life Application Study Bible (Jn 13:1):
Still he loves us.
Still he loves me.
Of course … Of course. The only feet worth cleaning are the dirty ones.
Standout Verse – John 13:8b
Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.”
The cost of forgiveness is not one sided, for I must pay a cost too. I must see what it cost Him.
Psalm 119:4-8
Lord,
[Jesus] had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.
“No,” Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”
And I protest too. But at least Peter had the excuse of not having read the passage many times before and having heard sermons on it and read theological treatise explaining it. For him this was new and unfamiliar: it would be uncomfortable and I understand that reaction. For me it is uncomfortable to read this and imagine Jesus wrapping a towel around his waist and walk up to my feet, but for different reasons. I feel that I would sully him; tarnish his deity by him having to come into contact with me, for I know where those feet have been today … the paths I trod in my actions and my words and my thoughts. These feet are dirty and Jesus should only bend down to cleaner feet than these, for he deserves the best and that is not what I can offer today; not what I can offer most days. Sometimes I can only offer my worst … it is the best that I can do and it is the reality of me. If he comes near my feet then the water would be stinkin’ and the towel would be boggin’. Jesus would be covered in filth, in my filth, and that is uncomfortable to me.
Notes from the NLT Life Application Study Bible (Jn 13:1):
Jesus knew he would be betrayed by one of his disciples, denied by another, and deserted by all of them for a time. Still he “loved them to the very end.” God knows us completely … He knows the sins we have committed and the ones we will yet commit. Still he loves us. How do you respond to that kind of love?I respond with disbelief and choked back tears and they switch about. Love like this … forgiveness like this ... is beyond my grasp. Grace is more than I can comprehend.
Still he loves us.
Still he loves me.
Of course … Of course. The only feet worth cleaning are the dirty ones.
Standout Verse – John 13:8b
Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.”
The cost of forgiveness is not one sided, for I must pay a cost too. I must see what it cost Him.
Psalm 119:4-8
Lord,
You have charged meAmen.
to keep your commandments carefully.
Oh, that my actions would consistently
reflect your decrees!
Then I will not be ashamed
when I compare my life with your commands.
As I learn your righteous regulations,
I will thank you by living as I should!
I will obey your decrees.
Please don’t give up on me!
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Bible Reading and Blogging
Why did I stop?
Romans 7:14b,15
The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
Romans 7:14b,15
The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
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