Monday 4 July

2 Kings 8:16-9:37

More mayhem.  More holy subversion of the run of events.  I think we have covered this ground before - God loves his people too much to stand by aloof and disinterested as they wrap themselves up in toxic strands.  He just won’t let his people be poisoned to death.  So he sends in his antidote - Jehu son of Jehoshaphat who drives like a madman, Jehu the boy-racer, Jehu the murderer of men.  And Jehu sets about annihilating the chief poisoners - Joram king of Israel, Ahaziah king of Judah, Jezebel the evil queen and, in tomorrow’s even more bloody sequel, all Ahab’s family and all the priests of Baal.  It might be appropriate to see Jehu a bit like chemotherapy; a brutal and savage assault on the body that you would never dream of using in healthy times but which is the best way of bringing about recovery from serious cancer.  God is committed to bringing us to full health.  He’ll do whatever he can to set his people free from the things that bind them.  He takes serious action against the things that corrupt and poison his people.  He went to the cross, he disciplines, he convicts of sins, he asks us to rebuke and correct (and encourage) one another.  All expressions of his love.  All expressions of his understanding of what is best for us.  He will not leave us to be poisoned to death.  He takes action to bring us to health.

Acts 23:12-35

Maybe the moral of this story is that it is good to have a sneaky nephew.  There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot else going on here except perhaps one thing - that Paul is not passive in receiving his fate.  He has said to live is Christ and the die is gain but that doesn’t mean he passively sits back and waits for the grim reaper to approach.  He takes action to escape from the plot on his life.  So a second interesting point is that Paul doesn’t just pray (in fact it is not clear whether he prayed at all!) but he works to use his connections and his skill to get the result that he desired.  I like it that in the Vineyard we believe in the powerful and real presence of the Spirit on earth.  I like the fact that we believe God answers prayers, that he is sovereign and that he can be trusted.  But I also like the fact that we don’t get super-spiritual.  We don’t lose sight of the world we live in that God made and that he gifted to us to use for his glory.  We don’t transfer every single thing into the spiritual realm as if that were where God dwelt separate and away from the people and the things that we see before us.  Paul, the super-apostle had a problem so he thought about it, spoke to someone he knew and asked them to fix it.  Now that is real authentic spirituality.

Psalm 80:1-7

“Bread of tears”?  I must say that isn’t a metaphor that would jump instantly to my mind.  Still, I guess it gets a meaning across...