Tuesday 9 August

1 Chronicles 28:1-29:30

“Who am I?”...  “Who are my people?”...  David is starting to sound like an old man with dementia.  At least he didn’t ask “where am I?”; then his diagnosis would have been certain.  But strangely enough this withered old man knew the answers to these 3 questions more accurately and more acutely than most spritely young things that have ever set foot on this earth.  The dying David was able to answer these 3 questions so well because he had the most inspired and incredible context for all his knowledge.  The context for this knowledge is laid out in David’s sublime praise-poem in 29:10-13.  David was friends with God, he was intimate with God but he never lost sight of the fact that God was the Almighty One from everlasting to everlasting.  David never lost sight of the fact that God was the sovereign creator who could dish out kingdoms like lollipops and lollipops like grass seed.  So, despite having been a king for 40 years David still regarded himself as a humble shepherd and, despite having been humbly shepherded by God for 40 years David still regarded Him as his King.  When it comes down to it, the question that will define our walk on this earth is “who do we really believe Him to be”? Working out our answer to that question is more crucial than any other conundrum or task.  It’s one that I want to really give myself to, hoping that somehow, someday I can come up with an answer that is close to being as awe-filled as David’s.

1 Corinthians 5:1-13

Goodness me, this doesn’t fit too well with many modern concepts of church.  Paul asks “Are you not to judge those inside the church?” and many of us today would look around slightly baffled trying to work out if it was a trick question.  “Of course not” we would say, probably citing the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ principle of “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.  But Paul hasn’t waited for our answer.  He hasn’t hung around waiting for us to finish our awkward faffing about authority and community and expectation.  He gets on and passes judgement on the ‘wicked man’.  And then he expels them.  Then he hands them over to Satan.  It’s enough to make me want to puke in horror.  But this is part of scripture.  So I guess we have to believe it is inspired by the Spirit. No matter how awfully unacceptable that might seem.  And I guess some comfort is found in the fact that this mother-lover was celebrating his activities and was being celebrated by others.  He didn’t see his unusual sleeping arrangements as an issue he was working through, he saw it as a sign of his spiritual maturity (or something similarly weird).  So Paul was raging against the dropping of standards in the church, not its loving welcome to all people no matter what their issues.  But, even with that caveat, this passage is still a challenge.  It still speaks volumes about how much inter-dependence there was in the very first churches, about how much everybody in the church belonged to each other and had obligations to each other.  Obligations which people would be held accountable for.  And this passage speaks volumes about how much that approach is lacking in our churches today.  I long to be part of a church that does deep relationships, that pings with holiness as well as resounding with welcome and love.  Let’s work and pray for that to be how SWLV becomes.  Let’s work and pray that the spirits of many many people will be saved on the day of the Lord.

Psalm 93:1-5

Mightier than the thunder of great waters...