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.