Thursday 11 August

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3:22

Apart from wondering what happened to the rest of 2 Chronicles the biggest question I’m asking about today’s reading is “what the heck is this??”  Everything is meaningless is it?  Surely that can’t be a biblical statement?  Has a demon slipped this book into the bible without God noticing??  But I think these kind of questions are absolutely God’s intention with this book.   Ecclesiastes is classic Hebrew wisdom literature and, as such, is not to be read in the same way as the gospels or the Old Testament prophets.  I think Hebrew wisdom literature is meant to mess with our head a bit.  It’s meant to tip us slightly off balance, chucking out ideas that draw us into truth from a range of different perspectives.  Hebrew wisdom literature wants us to wrestle with ideas, not just passively accept them.  And as we wrestle with the ideas that life is meaningless, that there is nothing new under the sun, that there is nothing better than to be happy and do good, we gradually find ourselves being put in a headlock by God.  He grips our minds and he grips our hearts and he twists them into a more robust connection to him.  He convinces us that we are most definitely not just like the animals, he convinces us that while to dust we may return, it will not be our final resting place.  It’s time to wake up our brains.  It’s time to let God re-position our souls.

1 Corinthians 7:1-16

God has given two great gifts to the church - the gift of marriage, and the gift of celibacy. That is Paul’s view anyway.  We hear a lot about marriage being under-rated in society today. We hear a lot about the value of marriage being eroded and society suffering.  It’s all true.  But more under-rated than marriage, way more under-valued than the exchanging of rings is the decision to remain celibate for Jesus.  And society and the church are suffering for it.  Paul regarded singleness as a good thing - he wanted other people to remain single for the whole of their life.  To want such things for our friends today would probably be considered to be cruel.  But that is probably because we have lost something of our trust in the genuine goodness of God.  We need to get that trust back.  We need to build a case for singleness and celibacy being a blessing rather than a curse.  And we need to talk about it a lot in church.  That, and the importance of married couples not depriving each other.   Because through it we will find ourselves living more in the peace that God has called us to.

Psalm 94:12-23

“Can a corrupt throne be allied with you?”  I find myself increasingly challenged by this idea of justice - treating others with absolute fairness and compassion.