Wednesday 31 August

Micah 1:1-4:13

Micah seems a little schizophrenic.  One second he is boldly announcing judgement, the next he is howling like a jackal.  In this he embodies the tragic conflict at the heart of the bible.  And in the heart of God.  God is like a tree surgeon felling a much-loved, mighty oak.  Israel was his pride and joy but it is dying in its core and it needs to be cut down before it falls and does some damage.  Micah takes no pleasure in this judgement and, through him, we see that God is similarly distressed.  But the Lord will not shy away from acting - he will remove every hint of Israel’s incurable sickness even if it costs him his life.    Micah reminds us that God is both deeply passionate about his people - he will shave his head in mourning and weep and wail over the calamity of his people - and is deeply committed to justice and goodness - he will utterly ruin those who plan iniquity, who seize fields and who defraud a person of their home. We should dwell on that for a while.  We would do well to ponder on the character of our Lord.  But we’d also do well to identify this incurable sickness in Israel.  What was it that was rotting the oak?  Micah says it was Money.  The leaders prioritised money over mercy, they looked for profit over purity.  This run-of-the-mill activity was what was destroying the nation of Israel.  I start to think about the commercial side of Christianity today.  People who write worship songs for the royalties or books for their proceeds.  But it goes much wider than that.  Every good gift is from God, every skill we have has come from him.  So our management ability or our sharp mind or our ability to listen, or to teach or to care.  When we abuse these things to profit ourselves we are inflicting a sickness on our souls.  This is not a rant against earning a decent wage - honestly gained money is in no way lambasted here - but it is an expose of motive.  Do we love money or do we love God?  Are we working for his kingdom, or for a bigger house?  The Lord deeply deeply loves us; he calls us not to kill ourselves from within.

2 Corinthians 4:1-18

We do not lose heart.  That phrase starts and ends this brilliant passage.  It speaks right into the core of the church today.  I think we so easily lose heart.  I think so many of our brothers and sisters have lost heart.  But we need not lose heart, if we fix ourselves on these words of Paul. The core truth that underpins our heart is the truth about where we are and where it is we are headed.    We live in an Age ruled by the Devil.  He blinds the eyes of many many people and he is pressing us hard, he is perplexing us, he is persecuting us and he is striking us down.  We are subversives living under his rule, working for the good of all people, defying his agenda of death.  So he is after us.  He is trying to destroy us every day.  But this will not be the way forever.  This stuff is just temporary and a better Age is on its way.  In the coming Age the Devil will have been overthrown and Jesus will be ruling forever.  And we will be there with him (this is the really crucial bit!!).  We will be there with Jesus, standing alongside him as he brings beauty and joy and glory to all.  How can we be sure of this?  Because Jesus was pressed hard and perplexed and persecuted and struck down by the Devil but then he rose again.  And in his resurrection he showed us our future.  As we see in our life now the same sort of things that led Jesus to death we also can see in our hearts the same sort of things that raised Jesus to life.  The Spirit lives in us and we see his life.  We are jars of clay but our contents are gold.  We are knocked around but we are never destroyed and these momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So let’s not lose heart - we will be raised to enjoy that Age.  Let’s not go down the road of deception or distortion.  Rather lets fix our eyes on Him.  Let’s fix our eyes on that Age.  For that Age will be eternal and it will be filled with the presence of Him.

Psalm 104:31-35

May the glory of the Lord endure forever.  Aye, it will.  It surely will.

Tuesday 30 August

2 Chronicles 35:20-36:23

What a bunch of utter div-heads.  Even though this second version of Israel’s history (Chronicles 1 & 2) is much more discreet than the scandal and gossip-fueled version we have already read (Kings 1&2), one thing is still abundantly clear; the Israelites were useless.  Even their best three kings - David, Hezekiah and Josiah - were guilty of deceptive war-mongering (Josiah), horrid brash arrogance (Hezekiah) and adultery-induced assassination (David).  The other kings ranged from awfully pathetic to just plain pathetic.  So as we reach the closing points of the history of the Old Testament (there are really just the small books of Ezra and Nehemiah to go) we cannot help but reach a distressing verdict - we are “Not fit for purpose”.  People, even the most brilliant and most lucky ones, are not able to truly live well.  We all find ourselves trecking into exile - it’s as if we are rotten at the core.  And, before we start to suggest that things are different now, let us ask ourselves some painfully honest questions.  If the 1000 or so years of the Kingdom of Israel saw next to no human progression then what hope is there today?  Are there not uncanny parallels between the top 3 kings of Israel and 3 recent leaders of our nation and the USA?  Is it really likely that the centuries-long trend of human regression will suddenly be bucked and the future will be bright?  Many people promise that the human spirit will prevail but that’s not a promise its a curse - the human spirit is corrupt and if it prevails we’ll all be screwed.  So do we end this journey in failure?  Do we end this book with heads bowed low?  From one perspective -yes.  There is no hope of human progress.  But from another our hope remains.  This funny bloke Cyrus - an infidel and a tyrant - has shown up speaking about the Lord and planning to restore some worship to him.  There is hope for the world but its found in funny places and its source is God most High.  

2 Corinthians 3:7-18

You reflect the Lord’s glory.  Are you squirming?  Are you pushing that truth away as if its a mis-directed compliment?  You mustn’t.  We mustn’t.  We need to really dwell on these things.  We need to marinade ourselves in these truths.  This is the word of the Lord and it states as clear as day that anyone who turns to the Lord has a veil removed from their hearts.  And once this veil is removed the holy of holies is unleashed within.  We have the holy of holies let loose within us and it explodes out of every pore.  We reflect the glory of the most glorious being who has ever had any glory.  And day by day the glory in us grows.  Before you try to opt yourself out of this one, remember who Paul was writing to.  He was writing to the idiots in Corinth.  The ones who were bonking their mothers-in-law and being put to death by God for so abusing the Lord’s Supper.  Even these imbeciles were reflecting the glory of the Lord, even these numpties were being transformed into His likeness.  If Paul wants to tell us anything he wants to tell us our identity.  If the Spirit wants to convince us of anything he wants to convince us that we are different now we’re in Him.  We are deeply loved.  We are the recipients of glory.  We have an inheritance of greater glory yet to come.  It all hangs on this.  It all is built on this - an understanding that the awesome work of God has really and truly made a difference to who we are.  And so we should think on it, we should pray on it, we should meditate on it and we should fast on it.  We need to appreciate the depth of our glory.  We need to know who we really are.

Psalm 104:19-30

Even the animals look to God for food at the proper time.  I think I need to learn from the conies.

Monday 29 August

2 Chronicles 33:21-35:19

We always need Hilkiahs.  Not people who wear turbans, ephods and hang around in temples but rather people who give us the book.  And who once they have given it to us will enquire of the Lord about what is written in it.  I think the pure act of reading the bible can often cause many of us to tear our robes.  Not, like Josiah, in a fit of repentance, but rather in a fit of boredom or frustration.  All of my smart clothes have suffered a fate in that way (at least that’s what I tell my mum when she asks me about my Christmas present...).  In truth, purely reading the bible can feel a bit out of touch with the modern world.  It’s fine if you’re a fisherman or moonlighting as a demolisher of carved idols, but what has it got to say to my stresses with my relationships and my desires for my career or my wife’s issues with my money (joke)?   Isn’t the bible just a little bit irrelevant?  Well, not if we follow Hilkiah all the way to Huldah.  Huldah brings the text to life, she calls us to specific actions in our specific situations to bring conviction and hope into the reality of our world.  Huldah shows us the prophetic application of the bible - she shows us the step by step route to the celebration of faith.  And, in our day, Huldah is replaced by the Spirit.  The Spirit leads us into all truth.  The Spirit is on hand every time we open the bible, ready and waiting to show us how to live.  Every time we open the book we can ask the Spirit to show us the application. In every passage, perhaps every verse, he is ready to speak into our identity and call us to a more fulfilled way of life.  We are not just people who are given a book, we also have a prophet inside us helping us find life in it.

2 Corinthians 2:12-3:6

Humans have an incredible capacity to influence one another.  It’s a miraculous and dangerous part of God’s creation.  Whether we know it or not, we are affecting people around us every single day.  Some are affected just by looking at us - they see us smiling and are refreshed by it or they see us stressing and are bothered by it or they see us dancing and are appalled by it.  But others - and these are the significant ones -are affected by our direct interaction with them.  We live under the same roof as them or work in the same room as them or go to the same house group as them.  The degree of influence we have on them is enormous.  To a greater and lesser extent we cause them to adopt new practices, develop certain perspectives and display certain characteristics.  Every person does this.  Every person makes their own impact on the world.  Every single person writes a letter to the world through the people they influence.  So what letter are you writing?  And what letter would you like to write?  Before you answer just have a think about Paul.  Paul brings a twist to the concept.  He fully buys into the idea of influence - he’s sold on the idea of people being letters, but he has handed over his authorship.  He believes the letters he writes are actually authored by Christ.  And that is an awesome idea.  To think that the influence we impart could actually be Jesus’, that the characteristics we inspire could actually be the Spirit’s, that the actions we promote could actually be from the Father.  Paul really believed that we, as people, could be Jesus to people.  And this is how I think he did it.  Just asking a simple, constant question  “Lord, what would you have me do for this person”.  And then choosing to follow through on the answer.  If we could do that then our influence will be monstrous.   And the letter we write will bear all the hallmarks of Christ.

Psalm 104:1-18

What the heck is a conie.  I wish there was a crag around so I could go and have a look.

Sunday 28 August

2 Chronicles 31:2-33:20

“With him is only the arm of flesh but with us is the Lord our God”.  That’s a heck of a line.  That’s a line that inspires all those around you.  And inspiration is something that Hezekiah brought to nearly all the people around him.  Except for the most important person; his son Manasseh.  The tragedy of the life of Hezekiah is that while he was so brilliant he left virtually no legacy.  And I think this lack of legacy was caused by one thing - Hezekiah didn’t raise up a decent leader to follow him; he did not provide counsel for his son.  Within years of Hezekiah’s death Manasseh had gone completely off the rails.  Children were being sacrificed, sorcery was being practiced and the temple was being desecrated.  I find this challenging.  Maybe I’m reading too much into the text but I find in here a call to replicate myself and, more than that, to build a legacy for Jesus through pouring out all I have into those who will come after me.  My boys are the obvious place for me to start.  I want to do everything I possibly can to provide good counsel for them, to see them living for Jesus, to see them enjoying their God.  And then there are leaders, housegroup leaders or other leaders in the church or leaders in schools or in offices or wherever.  In truth, few of us will get anywhere near being as brilliant as Hezekiah.  But could we have more of a lasting impact than him?  I absolutely believe we could, every single one of us - I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me (Phil 4:13).

2 Corinthians 1:23-2:11

“We are not unaware of his schemes.”  Really?  The last couple of days I’ve had so many random thoughts pop into my head about people who have naffed me off or about situations never going to change or about how stupid the sacrifices are that I have made.  I suddenly spot attractive-looking women everywhere and notice more of the challenges of having a house and a mortgage and a wife.  And these thoughts all lead to one question - “is it really worth it?”  Maybe I could just sack it all and go off for a random bonk-a-thon.  Then I look at my kids and my wife and realise that would be really, really dumb but maybe instead I could just vent my frustration by spending an evening going through all the imbeciles I’ve ever met, taking particular time to focus on the ones I’ve met in church, and then come up with the best possible ways I could slag them off in front of a whole crowd of people.  And I also think about buying a lottery ticket because it becomes clear to me that what I actually really need is loads more money and - let’s be honest - I’m not got to get that working for a church.  A church salary is not going to buy me that villa in Spain.  But today, as I read this passage I realise that these thoughts are the schemes of the devil.  These thoughts are his assault on my life.  These thoughts are his attempt to dismay me and to destroy me and to sever me from the people who will help me stand firm.  So I need to recognise them for what they are and take action to overcome them.  Pray, actively engage with my wife, forgive the people who have hurt me, press into relationships with others.  The biggest scheme of the devil has got to be isolation.  The snake isolated Eve from Adam and them both from God and they hid in a cacophony of shame.  Peter says “resist the devil and he will flee from you”.  In Jesus, by the power of his Spirit, this is something we really can do.

Proverbs 21:5-16

“If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor...”

Saturday 27 August

2 Chronicles 29:1-31:1

Old Hezzie doesn’t really get the credit he’s due.  He was a flipping legend and yet we hardly hear a word about him.  There are three things he did that show he really knew his God.  First was his prayer for pardon in 30:18-20.  Hezekiah’s bias was towards welcoming people in; he looked for excuses to be inclusive.  That is so much the heart of our God.  He loves to show us mercy.  Second was how Hezekiah encouraged the Levites in 30:22.  It’s easy to pick fault.  I do it all the time.  But the heart of God is for us not against us; it is to encourage, not to condemn.  The really encouraging people are the ones who show us the Father.  And, third was his provision of the bulls, sheep and goats for the people in 30:24.  To donate a small farm-load like that cannot have been without its cost.  But Hezekiah was inspired by his generous God.  Generosity, encouragement and mercy - they are three attributes I’m going to pray for.  They are three personality traits I really want to develop.

2 Corinthians 1:12-22

This passage feels a little random.  I guess Paul must have worried that he appeared flighty or that his failure to visit Corinth would be seen as lack of care.  But, as so often happens with Paul, the relatively plodding sentence that he begins to explain this suddenly turns into a ripsnorting, bucking stallion of a phrase, foaming at the mouth with truth.  And the truth glories in our grace.  Whether we are slightly wayward church-goers (the Corinthians) or dynamic apostles filled with power (Paul) we have all been anointed by God.  We have all had his seal of ownership set on us.  We all have the guarantee of what is to come.  And that is what astounds me and invigorates me time and time again and this faith that I have.  It is grace through and through.  It is all about God’s work and not at all about our religion.  We all stand shoulder to shoulder, recipients of untold mercy, recipients of the Spirit, recipients of His promises.  It is him who makes us stand firm - it does not depend on our capability or flair.  It is Him who has achieved it all, who offers it all and who assures it all.  It is him who calls us and empowers us and will fully welcome us when our time in this life is done.  It is so, so far from tedious obligations, it is so, so far from arrogant manipulations.  It is just grace.  Just grace for us to receive and to enjoy and to share.  Our God is always faithful.  And his word to us is “Yes”.

Psalm 103:13-22

“From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him”.

Friday 26 August

2 Chronicles 26:1-28:27

Here are the original good Samaritans, a thousand years or so before Jesus made them famous.  The cultural norm in the aftermath of a battle was for the conquering side to grab any nice bit of skirt that they fancied, force the wandering, crying little children into a life-time of slavery and to nick every single piece of gold or silver they could find.  Either that or kill everything in sight.  But the Lord is not a follower of our cultural norms - his plumbline is holiness, his cultural norm is mercy.  What will we follow; our cultural norms or the Lord’s?  The soldiers had to give up their rights and give up their treasures and, beyond that, to take the time to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and give medical attention to the injured.  They then set them on donkeys and escorted them back to their homeland.  It is so much like the parable of Jesus that it really should make us shiver.  The desire of the Lord is for us to find our enemies, to find those under our control, to find those we can manipulate and then to shower them with mercy.  And this mercy should cost us.  For that is the mercy that Jesus showed us.  We were his enemies, we were steeped in sin, we were naked and hungry and weak.  And he chose not to destroy us but to forgive us, to call us up onto his donkey and to call us his friends.  And it cost him his life.  His cultural norm is mercy.  Will it be ours?

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

Sprinklers.  You know those things that go on the end of a hose and water the garden (or am I exposing my suburban life-style here?).  They get water coursing into them from the tap, through the hose and then they spray it out everywhere, refreshing the flowers and grass and helping them to grow.  Sometimes the foxes rip my sprinkler about a bit (I hate foxes).  They gnaw it and chew it, probably trying to tear it from the hose.  And Paul says you are a sprinkler.  I am a sprinkler too.  Everything we get from God is refreshing like water but we are not to hold it in, we are to spray it out everywhere.  We are God’s method for bringing life to his garden.  It’s the way He likes to do it.  He could set up an irrigation system but He prefers to use us instead.  And sometimes we get ripped about a bit.  Sometimes we get gnawed and chewed and almost prized away from the Lord.  It hurts and it distresses us - that’s the point of it - it is Satan trying to destroy us and kill us and steal us from the church.  He wants to switch us off.  But the hose will not be severed and the water keeps on flowing.  The question is what will we do?  Will we retreat and take a step back, giving in to the despair?  Will we think the pain is a sign of our failure, an indication that we are not loved - a sign that we are no use?  Or will we choose, like Paul, to resist the devil and to keep on keep on spraying.  If we do so we will witness an amazing miracle done through us.  Our suffering can be turned into others comfort, our distress can bring others peace.  It’s almost as if the kicks we receive as sprinklers move us around the garden and give us a chance to water more grass.

Psalm 103:1-12

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Thursday 25 August

2 Chronicles 24:1-25:28

“The Lord can give you much more than that.”  It doesn’t matter what ‘that’ is, the statement will stand.  A hundred talents of silver is a pretty hefty booty, but not compared to what the Lord can give.  Amaziah believed God about this and went on to gain victory and great quantities of plunder.  God showed Amaziah that Money is just an idol, it’s not the ultimate security, it’s OK to see it lost.  But the idol of Power did for Amaziah.  He wanted to maintain control and so he dallied with the gods of the people of Seir that he knew were weaker than he.  He didn’t like the idea of some snotty-nosed un-named prophet walking up to him and telling him what to do.  So he shut up the mouth of the Lord and trusted in his own power to save.  What a dufus.  He went mincing over to Israel and got his butt spanked all the way back to Jerusalem.  The Lord could have given him much more than that.  He could have given him more than broken down walls and lost gold and silver.  Amaziah’s own power was just an idol, it was just an illusion of strength.  And Money and Power continue to be idols for us today.  And Sex is the third one that often is named.   We think a higher salary or more control or more regular orgasms are really what we need.  But the Lord can give us much more than these things.  He is the one that we need.  The Lord is the God of the land and the sea, the mighty creator of everlasting to everlasting, he surely can take care of us, and give us more than we could ever imagine.

1 Corinthians 16:5-24

And so ends this brutal, beautiful letter.  Paul has railed against the Corinthians time and time again but he’s also exposed his soul to them and their name is scored on it in blood.  You can nearly smell the sweat he has spilt for them in prayer.  Surely they would have realised the depth of his love for them, the aching strength of his commitment, his longing to see them grow.  So as the letter finishes the hanging question seems to be this - what will you devote yourselves to?  What cause will you choose to die for?  Paul’s desire is clear.  He holds up the household of Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaicus as people who gave themselves to the saints, who have served and refreshed and laboured for the benefit of the church.  This is what he wants us to devote ourselves to - to each other, to building each other up, to cheering each other along, to seeing each other advance.  Such devotion takes courage, such devotion takes strength.  Such devotion needs love.  And most of all, such devotion needs the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  But it is a devotion that we can all make, if we choose to.  Will we shake ourselves out of our self-obsession?  Will we come to church keen to give, not to get?  Will we see housegroup as our family, as people to whom we belong?  Will we raise the moral bar and help others keep themselves pure?  Will we earnest pray for encouragement and strengthening for our friends?  And will we choose to forsake our rights and sacrifice our future for the sake of the gospel of Christ?  There is a church dying on its feet, there is a world dead in its sins.  Will we devote ourselves to Jesus’ heart for it, or will we just casually flick over the page?

Psalm 102:18-28

“You remain the same, and your years will never end”.

Wednesday 24 August

2 Chronicles 21:4-23:21

There was only ever one Queen of Israel, and she was utter rubbish.  But then again her husband Jehoram was even worse and her son, Ahaziah, was a puny excuse for a monarch so let’s not make this into a gender thing.  What I find depressing about this whole episode though is that the gang who sorted the whole stuff out - Jehosheba, Jehoiada and co. - seem to have matched their zeal for the temple with a hostility to people.  They smashed the altars to Baal in a commendable and necessary commitment to Yahweh.  But they “stationed doorkeepers at the gates of the Lord’s temple so that no-one who was in any way unclean might enter” (23:19).  Sure, the law did not permit the unclean to enter the temple, but David’s doorkeepers were not charged with this as their primary task - they were there to watch over the treasuries.  The tone of Jehoiada’s charge to the gatekeepers - in focusing exclusively on exclusion - is what worries me, it sounds like he thought his calling was to police access to the Presence.  Now maybe Jehoiada was acting entirely right - I don’t want to read too much into the meaning of a single sentence but I’m conscious that so often a regard for God is matched with a rejection of people.  So often our joy in God is coupled with a judementalism towards others; with a desire to exclude them or disqualify them from the treasures of the kingdom.  So often we think this blessing is for us, but it sure ain’t for them.  But Jesus was not like that.  Jesus did not look to exclude people - he welcomed them in.  He sought out the lost, he walked up to the sick.  He called the sinners down from trees and held banquets with the deprived.  This is our God, this is our call.  He who welcomes any old loser and lavishes them with grace.  That’s what he did with me.  Will I do it for others?  Or will I just police the Presence and turn others from his door?

1 Corinthians 15:50-16:4

This is the Now and the Not Yet.  It’s a phrase I’ve used a lot but have never really bothered to ground in the scriptures.  But here it is.  Christ has been raised (15:20), we are no longer in our sins (15:17), the Spirit works among us giving us gifts (12:11), we have been bought at a price (7:23), our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (6:19),  we were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (6:11).  From a Jewish perspective none of these things should have happened yet.  All of these things should have come on the one final day of this Age, on the Day of Resurrection, on the Day of the Lord when the world would finally be righted in every possible way.  But we have these treasures now, we enjoy them now, even though that Day has not yet come.  The Day of the Lord has been split in two - Jesus has brought its dawn but the sun has not yet risen.  So we still look forward to everything being made right, to everything being made new.  We look forward to the sound of the trumpet, to the twinkling of an eye when the full promise of the kingdom, the full promise of resurrection will be achieved in us.  Then this body - this temple of the Spirit - will be clothed with immortality.  This heart - washed and sanctified and yet still stung by sin - will finally be victorious over all the powers that attack it.  Our dead relatives, and maybe even ourselves, will be brought out of our tombs, not to pick up life where we left off but to live something much stronger, something much purer something never-ending.  We will live in the new Eden, in a perfect place where the horrific consequences of Adam’s sin can longer be seen.  So what do we do now?  How should we live?  We should look at what is Now, we should look at the Spirit and the cross and the resurrection and rejoice in what we have, be convinced of what we have.  And then we should not let ourselves be moved.  We should give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, we should spend ourselves in advance of that day, dragging as many people with us into the gates of that Kingdom.  For we know that it is coming, and we know its going to be ace.

Proverbs 20:25-21:4

I believe in the original language 21:2 read something like “All a man’s ways seem right to him but not to his wife”.  

Tuesday 23 August

2 Chronicles 18:28-21:3

I’ve heard a few bad singers in my time.  My darling wife, beautiful though she is, is surely one of their number; I’ve often mistaken her heartfelt songs for a rat getting caught in our drain.  But I have never heard a group that are so bad at singing that they turn their audience to destruction and slaughter.  And that, it seems, is what happened at the Pass of Ziz.  But really, this wasn’t a story of human activity or achievement.  It wasn’t a story of the courage of Jehoshaphat or the faith-filled worship of the people.  It wasn’t the singing that saved them - “the battle was not (theirs), but God’s”.  So often we miss this.  So often we focus on ourselves.  We think we need more skills or to attend more conferences or to have been in this thing longer or to ‘do it like them’.  So often we think the battle is ours.  So often we live with this gnawing doubt that everything depends on us and that “we don’t know what to do” (20:12).  So we get consumed by paralysis and settle down to a life of stultifying boredom.   But the bible begs to differ.  The bible calls us to something more.  It agrees that we don’t know what we are doing, but it calls us to fix our eyes on Him.  It knows we are afraid and discouraged but it urges us to take up our positions.  It even describes us as wicked but it calls us to watch the deliverance of the Lord.  Our singing may indeed suck, we may be far from able to carry a tune, but that is not the point.  The battle is the Lord’s, it does not depend on our skill.  Our part is to fix our eyes on the Lord, to take up our positions and stand firm and trust in the faithfulness of Him.

1 Corinthians 15:35-49

Just like yesterday’s, this isn’t a theological passage so much as a pastoral one.  So often 1 Corinthians 15 is examined under a microscope, ripped out of the context of Paul’s letter as if it is not the writings of a man - crazy-for-Jesus - who is reassuring, guiding and correcting his beloved church members about the hope that is before them.  So often we approach these passages as if they are meant to give us details, details, details.  And as we get stuck on these little details our brains just chuck out the whole ruddy concept.  “How could that actually happen??” we ask, “surely our bodies won’t just jump out of the grave??” and “what about the ones who have been cremated?”  So we begin to dismiss this resurrection idea as an out-moded concept or a ploy used to make life seem less tough.  We choose to focus on today, and ignore death and what lies beyond.  But we have to climb out of the weeds, we’ve got to scale this heady peak mapped by Paul.  Up here in this rarefied place we are too high for the details, the horizon is too vast for small specifics.  But what is clear, what the horizon screams at our minds is that it goes on well beyond death.  We will be raised imperishable.  We will be raised in glory.  What Paul impels us to grasp is that we will bear the likeness of Him, we will be formed of heaven’s dust.  Our hope goes on for ever; even death is not the end.  Our hope can overcome every weakness; the best is yet to come.

Psalm 102:12-17

He will respond to the prayer of the destitute.

Monday 22 August

2 Chronicles 16:1-18:27

Would the Lord really send a lying spirit to trick the prophets into getting the king killed?  Well, first up, I guess we have to acknowledge that any human attempt to describe the heavenly realm will by definition be inadequate.  The limitations of language - not to say anything about those of us who try to use it and understand it - mean that our descriptions of God and his Council will always come up short.  So, we have to beware an overly ‘literal’ understanding of these things.  Perhaps it is a bit like a toddler describing an aeroplane as “a massive flying car”.  It’s not that they are wrong - it conveys the right sort of meaning - but it would just be a little inadequate as a design description for the Boeing construction team to work off.  So we approach this passage acknowledging that we are here looking for meaning, not for clinical descriptions about the design of the heavenly council.  And the meaning is manifestly clear; if you do as Ahab did and intentionally stifle the word of God, then God will see you as his enemy.  If you set up false prophets and charge them with muffling God’s voice and replacing it with human pronouncements, then the Lord will be against you.  God will decree disaster for you but, crucially, he will do everything he can to warn you of this.  He will send Micaiah’s to challenge you and lure you towards repentance.  God is great and he will not be mocked or ignored.  But he also won’t pass up a chance to show us mercy, we need to be alert to the rebukes of our Micaiahs.

1 Corinthians 15:1-34

This passage has more zing than a whole tanker full of orangeade.  And it could put more fizz in your soul than 20,000 soda pops.  Its nub - the source of its tanginess - is the arresting idea of Jesus as first-fruits.  First-fruits by definition carry a promise.  They promise that more of the same is coming.  One has been raised from the dead, not as an exception, not as a freak event, but as a sign of exactly what is going to happen to all the others who carry His name.  We also will be raised and, as it were, eat broiled fish for breakfast on the beach.  This is the defining hope of our faith.  Not just that we are forgiven, not just that we live in relationship with God, but that we will journey right through death and out the other side into a richer and fuller and purer way of being alive.  Who cares what we get now.  Who cares if we die every day.  We are not to be pitied, we are not to be depressed - for our greatest days are yet to come.  Our finest hour is on its way.  We know it, and we can be utterly convinced of it, because Jesus has shown us the way.  We are following him out of the empty tomb and into the kingdom of his God.  And there perhaps is the most shocking thing of all in this passage.  There, perhaps, is the bit where the fuzz surges even through our nose - when we realise that we, as fruit, are to be a rich source of delight for our God.  That we, as fruit, are being looked forward to by Him.  He’s still enjoying the first fruit - as Jesus sits on the throne to his right - but he just can’t wait to be all in all.

Psalm 102:1-11

“I forget to eat my food”.  What??  Now that is one bit of the bible I just cannot relate to.

Sunday 21 August

2 Chronicles 13:1-15:19

Asa had a slightly less flexible style of spiritual leadership than I would espouse (15:13 “all who would not seek the Lord ...were to be put to death”) but he had two characteristics that I would sell a kidney for; courage and an eager seeking after God.  And these sprung out of Azariah’s awesome prophecy “God is with you when you are with him”.  On one level it would hardly take a brain-surgeon to work that one out but, on another, spoken with the authority of a prophet at a time of national crisis, this was a dynamic rocket of encouragement blasted into the soul of the nation.  Get with God - seek Him earnestly and ceaselessly - and then trust that his mighty hand is with you - act with boldness and conviction to do what he bids.  I think I’m in need of a similar prophecy.  I need to be stoked up again to really earnestly seek God, to spend real time and expend real effort in prayer.  And, alongside that, I need to be fired again into acting boldly, speaking and showing the vibrant love of God that is found in Jesus.  For God is indeed with us, for we live and remain in him.

1 Corinthians 14:20-40

Bit of a choker this one.  The women keeping silent bit feels like a huge stinking kipper round the chops of our church practice.  So, should Ele Mumford have kept her trap shut last Sunday and deprived us of that word from the Lord?  Matthew Henry obviously would think so - “Our spirit and conduct should be suitable to our rank. The natural distinctions God has made, we should observe....The woman was made subject to the man, and she should keep her station and be content with it. For this reason women must be silent in the churches, not set up for teachers; for this is setting up for superiority over the man.”.  But there is good reason to think he is mistaken.  The whole section of this letter from chapter 11-14 focusses on how church meetings should work in order to build up everybody present.  If Paul believed women being silent in church was a fundamental principle of achieving this then he would have explained that right at the start of the section.  But he didn’t do that.  In fact, all throughout this section Paul has constantly used the Greek word that means “men and women” when talking about people giving prophecies or people receiving gifts from the Spirit to build others up or people eagerly desiring the gift of prophecy.  In the rest of the letter Paul has given every reason to suggest that he expected both men and women to fully engage in actively building up the rest of the congregation.  And, in fact, at the start of chapter 11 Paul talked specifically about how women should dress when they were giving prophecies in church.  So, the major thrust of this letter’s argument is strongly supportive of women actively engaging in church life in exactly the same way as men.  What Matthew Henry seems to have done is take two verses (14:34-35) out of their context and then use them as the primary statement on the topic despite all the contradictory statements of the rest of the letter.  I don’t believe that is a good way to approach the bible.  I think Ele Mumford can keep her speaking engagements for now.  But, this still leaves us with the tricky question of what to do with the two verses themselves.  Did Paul just have a funny turn when he wrote them?  Or is his writing just hopelessly inconsistent?  I’ve seen suggestions that some cheeky mega-chauvinist editor slipped the verses in at a later stage (I think this is very dangerous as there is no indication of this in the manuscripts) or that these instructions were particular to the Corinthian women and the way they were choosing to act at the time.  I’ve also seen people suggesting that these two verses are actually Paul quoting the Corinthian’s own statements in order to cut them down and show how they have missed the point (like he does with a different issue in 10:23).  I don’t know exactly what the answer is but I do know that I’ve got a nicely rotting kipper that I’m preparing to slap round Paul’s chops.  Why couldn’t he have been a bit clearer?  Thank the Lord that the whole bible is not this complicated...

Psalm 101:1-8

“My eyes will be on the faithful in the land”.  It’s always nice to focus on the positives.

Saturday 20 August

2 Chronicles 10:1-12:16

Everybody listens to stuff.  I don’t believe anybody doesn’t listen, no matter what they (or their mother) will tell you.  But the question is what are they listening to - which stuff are they choosing to soak up and then apply.  Rehoboam listened to his young advisors and he didn’t listen to his older advisors.  That’s how I’ve always understood this passage - it is a lesson in respecting the advise of your elders.  But, today I saw there was a much more important lesson that I’d previously overlooked.  The thing that really splintered the kingdom, the thing that really screwed up the covenant was not Rehoboam’s refusal to listen to his father’s advisors but his refusal to listen to Israel (10:16).  Rehoboam had been appointed to shepherd the flock of Israel but he couldn’t be bothered to listen to their bleating.  Leadership is a funny old thing.  Increasingly I think that the foundational biblical picture for leadership is one of being a shepherd.  And at the core of shepherding is listening to your sheep, hearing their concerns and their complaints and their desires and then responding to them with encouragement or care or loving correction.  I think every Christian is a leader in some way because every Christian is a priest and every Christian is called to make disciples.  So for all of us, as we grapple with how to lead, as we struggle to know quite what to do, let us heed the warning of Rehoboam and start by learning to listen.

1 Corinthians 14:1-19

I just love the way Paul slashes through all the super-spiritual, sanctimonious, head-in-heaven-not-on-earth piffle-crap that the Corinthians had been spouting.  I just hate it when people talk up their spirituality so much that it just disempowers everyone around them (if you ever do see me doing it please do shoot me).  And Paul seemed to be against it as well - his primary motive that he comes back to again and again in this letter is building up other believers.  His solid agenda for church meetings is the nurturing of those next to us.  We really do have to acknowledge how dangerous our society’s individualism is for the church.  It would probably say that speaking in tongues - if it worked for you - would be absolutely the best thing for you to do on a Sunday.  Equally sitting at the back and not talking to anyone, or skipping house group because you are a little bit tired.  But Paul takes a different view.  The question is not “what works for you?” but “what works for us?”.  What can we do to best help our fellow pilgrims and what can we do that will best help others come to life?  Encouragement has got to be foundational to it.  Encouragement has to hum and vibe through it.  And that is why prophecy is so glorious.  Human words can massage a pain but only God’s words can take it away.  Human insight can ease a situation but only God’s insight can transform it into goodness.  Prophecy is perhaps one of the purest forms of encouragement that can be spoken into a person’s specific situation.  And prophecy is something that all of us can do.  All we have to do is ask for it; to eagerly desire it.  All we need to do is ask God to speak through us to encourage the people we’re sat next to.

Proverbs 20:15-24

“How then can anyone understand his own way?”  Phew, that’s a relief. 

Friday 19 August

Song of Songs 5:1-8:14

Call me old-fashioned if you like but if a lady came to me and said they wished their lover was their brother then I think I might just struggle to smile and nod approvingly.  If she then said she wished this so that she could publicly kiss her lover without anyone despising her well, I think I might begin to doubt her sanity.  But, rather than a yearning for incest, I think this section rather tries to express one person’s desire to continually be close to the one whom they love.  People have said that Song of Songs is allegory for our relationship with God or his relationship with us.  I don’t know if it is exactly that.  But I do think it exposes and celebrates the rampant emotional cravings that lie in the core of us humans.  It revels in God’s creation and soars in poetic delight over the expression of intimacy between spouses.  But it also points beyond the married relationship.  It wallows in the beauty of life; it affirms the non-mechanical, it espouses the ‘softer’ side of things.  It shows us that God doesn’t want us to be gruff and focussed bible-bashers, stepping over person after person in a relentless quest for converts.  He wants us to seek his will - and to do this in our passionate enjoyment of one another, in dwelling on what is good and radiant and joyous and in spreading this zest for life with the world.  Beauty deserves to be shared - it leads us to bid others to ‘come’.

1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13

Don’t let the distant sound of wedding bells fool you - this is about so much more than marriage.  It is one of the most inspiring and most challenging mandates for every church, every house group, ever prayer triplet and every household.  It is full of poetic beauty and yet it is more down to earth than a French toilet at a motorway service station.  Every single descriptor of love is a relational word - it rams us into the blokes who are sitting next to us. It chains us to the moody-looking woman behind us.  Yes, people have more than us and are worse than us and annoying to us and doing wrong to us.  And yes there is evil and there is need for protection and need for perseverance.  But don’t let this drive you apart.  Don’t let this make you insular and just going for your own thing.  Choose to love.  Choose to commit and give and forgive.  Choose to do what you can to overcome these problems.  Choose to spend yourself on building others up.  Ask God for gifts that will most help other people.  Don’t make excuses for yourself, saying that your thing is to really know the bible or that your thing is really knowing how to prophecy and that other people can do the people stuff.  That’s to misunderstand eternity, that’s to focus on the temporary rather than eternal.  Just choose to build up other people, and then pray like crazy for the Spirit to equip you to do it.

Psalm 100:1-5

His faithfulness continues.

Thursday 18 August

Song of Songs 1:1-4:16
Heck.  All this talk of lover-stuff is making me a little hot under the collar.  I think I need to lie down with a cold flannel on my face.  I mean does Jesus actually know that his book talks about breasts?  And not in a disapproving way either!  And that bit about the lover being a sealed fountain and a well of flowing waters - well I don't know if I could spot a more blatant euphemism for orgasms even if it bounded across the hills and bid me "arise and come with me".  Is it really appropriate in Christian circles to talk about lovers "browsing among the lilies until the day breaks" (2:16) or a man refreshing his lover with his apples (2:5)??  Well, I think the answer is a pretty north-wind-awakening yes.  Sex is a gift of God to married couples for them to enjoy and revel in and ravish one another by.  So we should banish our embarrassment and be willing to speak of the mountain of myrrh and the choice fruits of the garden.  And not only speak of it but to enjoy it.  I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field - let us agree to speak about sex and to encourage one another not to awaken love until it so desires and then to awaken it like crazy.  Speaking of which, I wonder where Lesley has got to...

1 Corinthians 12:1-26
What is the point in church?  A lot of people have been asking that question recently.  Some people answer it by saying that there isn't much point in meeting in an organised way on a Sunday morning - that doing so is just plain old-fashioned or even is buying in to institutionalism.  They may say instead that their friends are their church or that they do church with their family.  Others don't quite go that far but say that the point of church is to get a 'Holy Spirit boost' to empower and equip them to get back in to the busyness of life.  Often times these people will come to church every now and then, say once or twice a month.  Both answers have some merit but the problem I have with them, that I can't seem to shake off, is that they seem very close to what Paul calls ignorance in 12:1.  Paul says that we can't choose who we do church with - it is the Spirit who chooses that.  He determines how he is going to cobble the bumbling mass of believers together and he arranges us together, just as he wants us to be (12:18).   He chooses what he wants the body to look like and he chooses what role he wants us to play. For us to opt out of that by staying away from our church seems to me like a dangerous step towards disobedience.  And then, there is the question of the point of church which caused all these problems in the first place.  And Paul gives a short a devastating answer - church is for the common good.  We come not to get a Holy Spirit boost but to give a Holy Spirit boost to others.  We come not to be empowered and equipped to get back into our busy life but to empower and equip others to get back into theirs.  I mourn the denigration of the local church in our day.  It is the place where the Spirit sends all his gifts - it is the place where God arranges us just as he wants us to be.  Its the place where the Spirit works through us for others' good.  And that is the most beautiful thing of all.

Psalm 99:1-9
"You were to Israel a forgiving God".  It's still shocking, but it's still true.

Wednesday 17 August

2 Chronicles 7:11-9:31

Ah, at last, the silver bullet - the secret key to a life of rich prosperity and joy.  But it isn’t anything fancy.  It doesn’t sound that sexy.  It is simple humility and honest prayer.  I keep feeling so much pressure to move beyond this, to adopt a more assertive pose, to power dress or to find the magic formula.  I keep hearing a voice that tells me I haven’t got what it takes, that I somehow need to find something else to really begin to live well.  Maybe I need to listen to more sermons or read more books or attend more conferences or receive an impartation from one of the truly ‘anointed’ ones.  And, in a way, I do need to do these things (at least some of them).  But they are not the silver bullet, they are not the secret key to a full life.  Humility is.  Submitting myself to God is.  Being prepared to up sticks or put down roots or do something new or stop something old just at the slightest hint from the Lord.  That is the silver bullet.  That along with real and honest prayer.  Prayer that is tenacious and persistent in really seeking God in trying to find the core of Him.  Prayer that takes a chunk out of my day, that leaves a bite in my timetable.  Prayer that gives me sores on my knees through its relentlessness and longevity.  Prayer that is every day silent fumbling towards the Light of the World.  Humility and prayer.  God commended them to Solomon (7:14) and he commends them to us.

1 Corinthians 11:2-34

This long-hair, head-covering, head-shaving thing is a bit complex isn’t it?  I haven’t got a clue on that one right now.  I think I’ll shelve it and come back to it in Ephesians 4 or 1 Timothy 2.  

But the stuff on the Lord’s Supper - that is a bit more straight-forward.  And in Paul’s rebuke is hidden an absolute gem on the power of this sacrament.  Paul says that approaching the Lord’s Supper in the wrong way can actually make you sick.  In fact it can actually kill you.  How could it do this if the bread and the wine were just theatrical traditions to help us remember the cross?  There must be more to them than that; these pieces of food, when used in Communion must somehow actually carry a spiritual power.  They must actually somehow become Jesus’ body and blood for us.  And so, when we eat them, we must actually be feeding ourselves on Jesus; we must actually be doing ourselves some spiritual good.  We must actually be doing the same as an athlete drinking some Lucozade or as a car taking on some petrol - we are giving ourselves spiritual energy.  And, when we do the Lord’s Supper together - as we all stand alongside each other and watch and support each other in each other’s taking of the Lord’s Supper - then we must also be truly bolstering our community and firing up our church.  The Lord’s Supper is a huge and potent event for the church.  It not only calls us to come together but actually pulls us all together, it not only points our hearts to Jesus but also fills our hearts with Jesus, it not only points our bodies to mission but empowers our bodies for mission.  What an amazing gift it is that Jesus has given to his church.

Psalm 98:1-9

New songs come out of a sense of wonder, not a sniff of royalties.

Tuesday 16 August

2 Chronicles 5:2-7:10

This is the drum-beat that underlies this narrative.  This is the thumping rhythm for the whole of this book.  God is good.  Genesis established it and the Torah explained it and the history books explored it and the prophets shouted it.  But do we know it?  God is good.  The word ‘good’ is actually surprisingly potent.  It’s a strong word that can reverberate around a room.  It seems to imply action and positive intent and ripe juicy exuberance.  He is good.  God is good.  That’s a message for the church today.  That’s a message for the world today.  Let us press ourselves into the goodness of God.  But that’s not the end of it.  God is not only good; his love also endures for ever.  Love is maybe a slightly more compromised word.  So I like a suggested alternative translation - “his mercy is endless”.  Endless mercy.  That’s the foghorn that blasts unexpectedly, tilting us off our seats in a fluster of movement.  That is the continuing shock of the kingdom, the eternally-repeating drama of the gospel.  His mercy is endless.  We can never plumb its depths, we can never chart its horizons.  What an astoundingly glorious inheritance we have received.  What a wonderful faith we hold.  Our God is indeed good.  And his mercies are endless.

1 Corinthians 10:14-11:1

When the wife takes the kids out and I’m at home on my own I like to sit in my pants, break wind and watch all sorts of obscure sport.  It’s great to get some time for myself for a change.  For those few precious moments I can do whatever I want.  But when they stay away longer than I planned I start to find my ‘me time’ gets a little bit boring; there’s only so much pleasure that can be gained from watching women’s judo.  And I start to realise that now would be a perfect time to fix that door handle or play my guitar or speak to a friend on the phone.  Paul’s only pointing out what my experience has shown - doing stuff that is permissible is not actually as fun as doing stuff that is beneficial.  Giving is better than receiving.  Using your time, money and energy to do something for someone else - mowing their grass, making them a cake, listening to their problems - is actually far better than just spending them on yourself.  If we choose to seek the good of many then our lives will undeniably become richer.  And we will know we are imitating Paul, just as he imitated Jesus.

Probers 20:5-14

“Stay awake and you will have food to spare”.  Huh?  He obviously never got the late night munchies.

Monday 15 August

2 Chronicles 2:1-5:1

He was worth every bang of the hammer.  He was worth every stoke of the flames.  It took 153,600 men working flat out for 7 years - that’s at least 270 million man days - and the Lord was worthy of every single second of labour.  He was worthy of every drop of sweat, every jammed finger and every haggard face.  In fact, he was worth more.  Solomon himself exclaimed - “who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?” And I want to say “exactly Solomon - who could?”  This God of ours is so physically ginormous, so spiritually weighty, so intellectually lofty, so emotionally potent, so sovereignly dynamic that we could never do Him justice.  If he won’t even fit in the stratosphere then how could our brains comprehend him and our mouths be able to describe him or our hands be able to construct something worthy of him.  We wouldn’t even get as close as ants offering their nest to a pod of blue whales.   And I want to remember this every time I come to a period of sung worship.  I want to bellow it out every time the guitar-player starts to strum - “WE’RE NOT WORTHY GOD, WE’RE NOT WORTHY”.  Our songs and our hands raised and our hips swaying gently from side to side when we think no-one else is looking - they could never express anything even close to the greatness of God.  We will never be able to worship properly; we will never be able to give God his worth properly.  And yet the wonderful intimate Spirit of God still beckons us to try.  He still stands alongside of us and stirs up within us a yearning and a longing to say something to do something to try something to acknowledge the greatness of God.  And when we respond to this beckoning?  Well, then it is my belief and it is the testimony of scripture that God is well pleased.  This awesome God is well pleased.

1 Corinthians 9:10-10:13

Assuming you are a Christian - and if you have got this far with bible in a year without being a Christian then I sincerely commend your commitment - but, assuming you have become a Christian at some point in your life then the significant question is surely “What now?”.  There are so many different Christians doing and advocating so many different things that it can be quite baffling as to how we should live.  Paul speaks into this question in two ways.  Firstly he warns of the dangers of complacency.  This terrible disease of complacency has been blighting Israel since the birth of Esau and there are some ominous early symptoms appearing in the church at Corinth.  A tolerance for sin, a gradual neglect of Jesus, a tendency to grumble.  If we find ourselves going that way we need to repent and then be careful, trusting in the faithfulness of God and clinging closely to Him.  Secondly (although Paul actually puts this first) he goes beyond the negative and stresses the positive aspect of life in the kingdom - choosing to live for the gospel - re-organising your life so that you can get alongside people and point them to Jesus.  This is what Christian living is about.  This is what Christians should do; train themselves to get alongside people and speak the words of Jesus to them.  It can be done at work, it can be done with neighbours or friends or acquaintances, it can mean choosing one pub or one coffee shop or one supermarket and making it your ‘local’, it can mean joining a sports club or a book club or an art class.  But it is being strict with 

ourselves, making ourselves a slave to the people around us so that we can serve them up hope.  It’s choosing to live in such a way that we can best offer others undistilled life.

Psalm 97:1-12

He guards our lives.

Sunday 14 August

Ecclesiastes 9:13-12:14

It’s a mega twist.  Like the best that Hollywood has offered in the last few years.  A closing image that sucks you into a vortex and suddenly changes your perspective of all that has come before.  We had landed.  The matter was settled.  Life is meaningless. We’d explored it every which way but the conclusion was unavoidable - the all pervading nature of death makes every effort, every talent and every achievement in life ultimately meaningless.  In the long run nothing really matters; life under the sun is meaningless.  But then, as the camera pans out, as the earth fades into the background and we pan out beyond the sun we see the image that rocks every kind of conclusion that Ecclesiastes has reached.  There is life beyond the sun.  When the sun fades and this world is no more, God will still remain.  Life under the sun is not the end of it.  Our analysis should not end at death.  Beyond death, beyond the fading of the sun God will bring every deed into judgement.  And judgement will look like this - God will somehow take all these frayed ends and seemingly meaningless events and will weave them into a beautiful tapestry of justice.  Life is now defined not by how well we do before death but by what we are storing up for ourselves in God’s judgement.  Every unrecognised smile, every well-intended piece of advice, every unacknowledged prayer, every attempt to speak of our hope in Jesus - all these things are treasure-builders for us for that day.  An awareness of a coming ‘day of the Lord’ wrapped up Israel like a thick winter coat.  Does it do the same for the church, is it so impressed on our minds in SWLV?  Do we think about eternity enough?  Without an understanding of a coming ‘Day’, life can seem meaningless.  But with it, every act suddenly has new meaning.  With it, each act can define eternity, for us and for those we love.

1 Corinthians 9:1-18

Paul was not a vicar - he had a proper job.  Doesn’t that blow our expectations of what is possible?  Paul held down a job and yet he was possibly the most effective church-planter and evangelist who ever lived.  How did he do it?  I think there was one primary way that Paul worked this out; he saw God as his boss.  I’m sure Paul felt compulsions to fulfill contracts and satisfy clients and respect and support his colleagues but he always let one compulsion trump all of those - the compulsion from God for him to preach the gospel.  All the work compulsions had to be submitted to the God-compulsion.  I’m not saying that is easy but I do think it is critical.  And I’m sure Paul experienced a lot of woes.  Woe over leaving a thriving market to up sticks and move on to a new city.  Woe over fellow tentmakers shunning him or speaking badly of him.  Woe over never really prospering like he could because of his extensive commitments outside of work.  And yet Paul never let these woes influence his decisions as much as the woe he would feel from God if he did not preach the gospel.  In the church today we are great at saying that Jesus is king.  But we are used to a constitutional monarchy.  A claim to kingship is not necessarily a claim to control of the day-to-day.  Maybe we should start saying that Jesus is our boss.  Maybe we should say that Jesus is our line-manager.  That would really cut to the root of it.  That would really challenge our daily decisions.  If we did that, it would truly free us up to discharge the trust committed to us.  If we lived that, then every single man and woman in SWLV would have their expectations blown out the water for how much God would use them.  

Psalm 96:1-13

“Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy” - what Jesus is bringing to the world is so magnificent, so richly endowed with goodness and life that even the bushes and the shrubs will do the hokey cokey.

Saturday 13 August

Ecclesiastes 7:1-9:12

Life is boring, pointless and unfair.  It’s good to get the bible putting that point of view right out there for a bit of debate.  It’s a bit depressing though.  It does sap the get-up-and-go out of your thighs.  But we have to acknowledge that it is a very common perspective on ‘life under the sun’.  And that phrase ‘life under the sun’ is the crucial one in Ecclesiastes.  For me ‘life under the sun’ is short-hand for life with a personal, redeeming God cut out of it.   ‘Life under the sun’ knows nothing other than what is sees in front of it maybe with the addition of a vague distant idea of a vague distant God.  “Life under the sun” is the theism of many religious folk who believe in a Being who wound up the pocket watch of the earth and then sat back and started eating popcorn.  “Life under the sun” sees life as a human-defined existence that ends completely and utterly at death.  “Life under the sun” seems to be what most people live today.  And, to put it crudely, “life under the sun” is crap.  “Life under the sun” reaches its peak when you’ve had some nice tucker, a little too much booze and when your circumstances are, for once, not against you.  But this peak is almost always temporary and it quickly tails off into a sense of boredom, pointlessness and injustice.  If only there was some way out for people.  If only there was someone who knew of something more...

1 Corinthians 7:36-8:13

Some of this sounds a bit weird.  I think it’s because we haven’t got the letter that the Corinthians wrote to Paul and that Paul seems to be quoting.  The letter seems to have included statements like “One of our members - who has the Spirit of God - has declared that all widows must re-marry within 6 months of their husband’s death” and “those of us who are spiritually strong enough are enjoying attending the idol temple steakhouse”.  And Paul doesn’t seem to have liked those statements too much.  So he tackles them in the way he always does - he shows the Corinthians their identity in Jesus and then draws the obvious conclusions.  The Corinthians are asserting their own individual rights and pursuing their own individual desires.  They are acting as if they can do whatever they want as long as it is not a sin.  But Paul says that denies their identity in Jesus.  Acting that way denies that they are part of a body.  Acting that way denies that they belong to each other.  Paul says this life is not about just doing whatever we want.  This life is about helping the family of believers, submitting ourselves to the well-being of the local church, restricting ourselves and giving ourselves to agendas that are not our own and to causes that are not our own just for the sake of our brothers and sisters.  This is what loving our neighbour means within the church, this is part of what loving God means in the context of the local church.  I find it really challenging about what I do on a Sunday.  I find it even more challenging about how I spend my time during the week.  And there is more of it to come - the implications of being part of a body are worked out even more fully in the chapters that are to come.

Psalm 95:1-11

We are the flock under his care.  He really does care for us.

Friday 12 August

Ecclesiastes 4:1-6:12

I think I need to check myself.  It says “Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” and I’ve spent a lot of time not satisfied about my income.  Does that mean I actually love wealth?  I’ve said that I’ve just chased money because that’s what it takes to live in this part of London but have I unwittingly bowed myself down to the God of abundance?  I think I need to check myself.  It says “the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep” and over the time I’ve lost sleep over current and planned home improvements.  Does that mean I have abundance?  I’m sure two thirds of the world would say that I do.  So what is the best provision I can make for my family, for myself, for my church?  What is the way that I can best honour God?  Maybe, rather than being bothered about getting more I should be bothered about being content with what I’ve got.  That would be a gift from God.  But there is such an insatiable demand for more surging all around me, can I really just opt out of it?  I need to check myself and I need the Spirit to help me do it.

1 Corinthians 7:17-35

What God gives to us is better than an improvement in personal circumstances.  Relationship with Him, grace from Him, peace from Him is so monumentally valuable that it renders our status-in-life insignificant.  We might even be suffering from the shame and struggle of life-long slavery and yet, this thing from Jesus is better than a day of freedom would be.  It’s not that Paul is pro-slavery (as some have accused him of being) it’s just that spending your whole life trying to fight an entrenched personal injustices might seem like a bit of a waste of time once you are living in the rich and super-abundant treasures of the kingdom.  It would be like spending years fighting an unfair parking ticket when you know you’ve won the Euromillions.  Does that sound like it’s belittling the aching grind of slavery?  Maybe.  But Paul was far more acquainted with slavery than I am and, if anything, I suspect it is more likely that I’m belittling the unspeakable riches of the kingdom.  So, in view of how awesomely great God’s generosity is, it’s probably just worth sucking up our personal injustices and enjoying the incredible goodness that is on offer.  Do we feel like we’re being mistreated at work?  Are we under-appreciated at home?  Is there something, or someone, really hassling us?  Paul would say “don’t stress it - chill out”.  If an opportunity comes to get free of the problem - then take it, but don’t spend your whole time agonising over how to remedy your situation.  Be happy to remain in it.  God is good enough and strong enough to make your life wonderful even in spite of this.  All that really matters is keeping the commandments of God - then we will really know what it is to have joy.

Proverbs 19:23-20:4

“Every fool is quick to quarrel” - what a load of rubbish.