Sunday 3 July

2 Kings 6:24-8:15

I was about to bet that Elisha had long wild hair and an enormous beard but then I remembered he was a slaphea..., I remembered the incident with the boys and the bear.   He must have been one scary bloke though.  I bet when he stared at you with a fixed gaze it didn’t take long before you felt ashamed.  And then that whole weeping thing.  No wonder Hazael went off and smothered his king - he must have been so freaked out.  His whole understanding of authority and meaning and morality must have been spinning around in his head like a swarm of angry bees.  That doesn’t for a minute mean that I think Elisha, or the Lord for that matter, was happy with his murderous act.  I’m simply saying that pure revelation from God subverts the way we do life.  Pure revelation from God smashes up the neat boundaries and clear demarkations that we love to use to make life seem understandable and controllable.  It’s a bit like when my parents dog would trample all over my train set, sending carriages flying and scattering the track.  I dismiss someone as a leper but the next minute they are leading me to a feast.  I accept my fate as an eater of bird poo (what the NIV has sanitised to ‘cab of seed pods’ is probably better translated as bird droppings) but suddenly I’m selling barley as if it grew on trees (oh... well you know what I mean).  I come bearing gifts to plead for my master’s life but leave bewildered and plotting to bring my master’s death.  It’s not neat.  It’s not easy.  It certainly keeps us on our toes.  But that is how it should be.  His ways are above our ways, his thoughts above our thoughts.  We mustn’t lose sight of that.  We mustn’t stray from the understanding that God is above all, is on his own side, will do his own thing however, whenever and through whomsoever that he chooses.  He is quite content to baffle us.  For when we are baffled we find the sweetest place for us to live - in earnest seeking of his mercy and his love and his truth.

Acts 22:22-23:11

No matter how cheeky he was in declaring it, Paul did genuinely have a hope in the resurrection of the dead.  Do we?  Is that at the core of our being?  Does that leave fingerprints all over our day?  This is not looking forward to leaving this earth so we can go to heaven.  I don’t think Paul ever did that.  Resurrection from the dead is a far more robust concept than that.  It has far more teeth than that.  Resurrection from the dead is not so much what happens after we die - it is more what happens after the whole power of death has been smashed.  Resurrection from the dead is not a nice crutch to make us feel better about deceased relatives.  Resurrection from the dead is rather the belief that there will be a day in history when all things that are corrupt and broken and evil will be swallowed up and destroyed or redeemed into a glorious and brilliant new heaven and new earth.  The belief in resurrection from the dead is ultimately the conviction that good will triumph, that love will win, that God will be proved to be right.  Do we join Paul in his belief in resurrection from the dead?  Do we believe that God will win and evil will perish?  Through history Christians who have believed that have celebrated the good in life and have looked forward to its glorious redemption.  Through history Christians who have hoped in the resurrection of the dead have given themselves to the things of God, knowing that nothing done for him will be ever be wasted.  God will come to have his way in the world.  And he will give to his people all joy, all peace and a share in his glory.    Now that is a major thing to believe in.  If you believed that surely you could never live a normal life again?

Proverbs 16:8-17

The kings favour is like a rain cloud in the spring.  I’m sorry, I’m a little confused.  Is that meant to be a good thing??