Saturday 4 June

2 Samuel 5:6-6:23

It’s like the Lord has made a mojito.  It’s like he has cocktailed up a highball of rules and freedom.  The rules are the sugar and the sparkling water; the base flavours to ground the drink and keep it safe and solid.  The Lord says carry the Ark on poles of acacia wood.  You need to have the rules to protect people’s health and to maintain a bit of consistency.  But he also wants to give us a bit of excitement - who really wants to just drink sweet fizzy water? -  so chucks in some freedom like he’s adding white rum, lime juice and mint.  He likes to keep us guessing as to what he will require of us each time - will it be the sound of marching in the balsam trees again or will it be a full frontal attack?  This combination doffs the cap both to the intense holiness of God - a holiness that requires precautions to be taken around it - and to the intense desire of God to have relationship with us - a desire that constantly switches things up so we fall back on our knees and cry out to him again.  We would do well to have the ‘both-and’ of this, to be both rigid in our observance of the things the Lord requires of us - obeying his book, meeting with his people, giving him money, being filled with the Spirit etc etc - and free to change our approach and our direction based on what we feel he is saying to us in the moment.  Only in the ‘both-and’ do we both honour the unapproachability of God and enjoy the intimacy of approaching him.

Acts 1:23-2:21

The Spirit will be experienced in a momentously powerful way.  The Spirit will unveil the living God to all sorts of people of all sorts of ages and stations.  The Spirit will display  the immense wonders of God and this world-changing abundant outpouring will lead to the salvation of many.  That was what Joel said anyway.  And, when the people in Jerusalem heard the declaration of the wonders of God in every language they were indeed amazed and perplexed.  Peter experienced it and made the link almost straight away to this great, cosmically-significant event that Joel had predicted.  There was something about Pentecost that showed that things had changed.  And I don’t see anywhere in the bible saying Pentecost was a one-time only event.  I don’t see anywhere saying that the Spirit would shake everything up at first and then settle down to a plodding, barely-noticeable pace.  I don’t think Joel said that God would do wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below and then, after a while, he would ratchet it down a bit to ‘nice experiences that would make people happy’ and ‘spiritual cuddles that cause us to have a little cry’.  I think Pentecost is meant to set the tone for our expectations.  I don’t mean the violent wind and the tongues of fire, although that would be very very cool, but I do mean the overwhelming sense of gob-smacking wonder at the majesty and awesomeness of God.  I do mean us leaving church, or wherever, struggling to process the intensity and scope of what we have seen God do among us.  I don’t know about you but I’m desperate for a fresh experience of Pentecost.  Not for the fun of it but so that people will start asking “what does this mean?” and will plough their way into salvation.  O God would you do it again.  O Spirit would you come and astound us.

Psalm 69:29-36

“Praise God’s name in song... this will please the Lord more than an ox”.  I just don’t know if I can accept that.  I mean has he actually heard Neil sing...?? (Neil - this is a complete joke, I think you have a lovely voice - its as sweet as a nightingale’s)