January 17

Genesis 34:1-35:29

Flip!  It’s as if Jacob and his sons were playing poker and Simeon and Levi look at their cards, look up at their father, and say “we’ll see you deception, and raise you mass murder”.  Reuben is hardly a paragon of virtue either, waiting till his dad was out of town and then nipping in to sleep with his concubine.  These people seem like they should be locked up, not looked up to.  And that, I suspect, is the point.  The bible shows life as it can be; not sanitised or triumphalist, but real. It shows that God is unshakably committed to his people (he STILL does not reject Jacob’s family), that his people are desperately needing his help (this whole story is a catalogue of the human predicament) and that, even during grotesque and ridiculous meanderings (ref circumcision, concubines and childbirth), God is slowly unfolding his intentions for the universe.

Matthew 12:46-13:17

To think back over Israel's history how many incredible, faith-filled, earnest and talented people there must have been who would have longed to have seen Jesus, to have known his grace, to have been filled with the Spirit, to have heard his teaching and his prayers for them, and yet they did not, as he had not yet come.  It makes you feel quite small and pretty overwhelmed to have been born at such a privileged time and place where we can know the mystery of God revealed to humans, to have been beckoned into the family of the divine and to be co-heirs with Christ.  Jesus says “blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear” and that is so absolutely, marvelously true.  We are steeped in privilege because, if we want to, we can choose to draw into the presence of Jesus.  Knowing that as we do so we are marinading ourselves in grace, hope, love and truth, in the power and the riches of his kingdom.

Psalm 10:1-11

Not the most cheerful of reads, but essentially asking a question that troubles so many - why is life so unfair? - and doing it right in the guts of the bible.  It’s a shame that in this reading plan we don’t get the answer that is in the second half of the psalm but I guess there must be some logic behind that somewhere??  The truth is that these questions are to be affirmed and should be raised - life does indeed seem completely out of sorts.  Because, in going to the Lord with these questions, in demanding an answer from the Most High, we begin to see that he is at work and he is bringing about justice.  It is just that, in the same way as in the Genesis narrative, he does so in a slower, more over-arching way than is at first visible in the intricacies of living.  Life may well suck right now but, in time, the LORD will encourage the afflicted, defend the fatherless and cause the terror of the nations to perish from his land.