Genesis 45:1-47:12
Can you imagine; you wait for years and years to introduce your parents to your work colleagues and then, when you finally get the opportunity, your dad tells your boss that he is old and miserable, but not as old or miserable as your ancestors. It’s got to be a tricky conversation when you then explain that your family are in fact God’s chosen people who will bring blessing to all the nations of the world. But the fact is that Jacob has been going through an excruciatingly painful time and, while God has most definitely not given up on him, he must have felt fairly hard-pressed on every side. It makes you realise that blessing from God is a calling to significance and intimacy, not comfort and security.
Matthew 16:1-20
Something that was distinctive about Jesus was that he so often taught from what he saw in nature rather than just from what he read in the scriptures. He was so unreligious in that way, affirming God as genuine creator who can be encountered in all that he has made, although only truly known through engagement with himself.
I think it is really hard for us to understand how significant Peter’s words are “you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. We don’t really know how commonly the word Christ was used in First Century Palestine, or what exactly Peter understood by it. But what we do know is that this utterance was so explosive, so determinedly provocative that Jesus had to sternly warn all of his followers not to repeat it in anyone else’s company. Today we so often seem to trade in an image of Jesus that is so bland that people don’t even bat and eyelid at it. I’m determined to meditate again on the words and works of this Jesus such that I’m rocked back on my heels and blown away by his challenge to my life. I really want to be gripped and hurtled forward by a real understanding of his identity as the Son of the living God.
Psalm 14:1-7
It’s fairly uncompromising stuff - if you don’t think there is a God, then you are an idiot. While I may want to adopt a slightly more understanding approach, I’m challenged by the certainty of the psalmist. He is so confident in his world-view and of the bankruptcy of all others. But then I guess his confidence in his world-view comes from his overwhelming confidence in the power and sovereignty of God, and that is something that, through his raw and honest worship, he has experienced day in, day out, through the times that are easy and the times that are hard.
