Tuesday 14 June

2 Samuel 22:1-23:7

Loon alert.  Somebody seems to have gone a little bit loco in their old age - claiming to be blameless before God?  Pull the other one old boy, I’m afraid the sordid old Bathsheba thing is well out of the bag.  Someone must have tweeted about it or something and no super-injunction is going to maintain your ‘blameless’ image now.  Is that it?  Has David really lost his marbles or suffered from a bit of selective amnesia?  Well, I don’t think so.  And I believe this might be a gargantuan comfort for anyone who suffers from particularly strong pangs of guilt.  You see, when Nathan told David “the Lord has taken away your sin” (12:13) David actually believed him.  David actually believed that his adultery and murder had been taken away by God.  He believed this in spite of the fact that Bathsheba’s baby died and the kingdom was disintegrating and Absalom bonked his concubines.  David lived in the tension of believing God saw him as clean while also seeing God working out his wrath for his sin through a series of earthly consequences.  So the gargantuan comfort comes from this  - if God says he has washed us as white as snow then we are as white as snow.  If we repent God completely and utterly forgives us of our sins and we are entirely blameless in his sight.  Even when we find ourselves wading through the slurry that we have made for ourselves that should never cause us to doubt our blamelessness.  We live in between the times when we are pure but waiting to be made pure, when we are free from sin and waiting to be free from sin.  We need to hold fast to the oxymoronic status of our faith.

Acts 9:1-31

God is doing this thing.  He is doing this thing through people - that is for sure - but the thing is always his and his strong arm will achieve it.  This power-slam on Saul is a pretty neat trick.  God is going and getting his man.  Saul hasn’t submitted a CV or filled out an online enquiry form but God has already chosen him as his instrument to carry Jesus’ name before the Gentiles.  And we know how this plays out.  Paul becomes a rabid maniac for Jesus.  When God chooses someone as his instrument for something he generally knows what he is doing.  All of us are God’s chosen instruments, Ephesians 2:10 tells us that, along with a lot of other verses.  We were all called into this thing by him even if we chose it for ourselves.  He has overseen us this far and he has prepared things for us to do for him.  Will we respond as voraciously as Paul?  I, for one, want to try.  

Psalm 73:15-28

“Is is good to be near God.”  Aye.  I hear you brother.