Saturday 3 September

Isaiah 3:1-5:7

“The plunder from the poor is in your houses”.  Gulp.  It’s quite hard to get out of that one.  I could mumble excuses about ‘looking after it for a friend’ or never having seen it before, but they just won’t wash.  I’ve looked at my fellow Christians and decided not to help them.  They have been mourning and I’ve walked on by.  They have been hurting and I’ve not bothered to pray with them.  They’ve been alone and I’ve not talked with them.  They have been wrong and I’ve not bothered to correct them.  They have been hungry but I just haven’t fed them.  God has given me treasures for them, but I’ve just kept them for myself.  I’ve minced around like the women of Zion, focussing on the level of my riches, yearning desperately for more blessing for me and so I’ve pushed the slightly irritating people around me out of my mind.  You see I have been busy trying to get myself right, trying to heal my own wounds.  Too much about life and church has hurt me and depressed me so I couldn’t help others, I just needed to pursue my own agenda.  But in so doing I’ve decided not to share God’s riches with others, I have effectively plundered the church.  The riches I have for the poor are in my house.  And so the rollercoaster of Isaiah has reached a huge drop and it looks like the track ends half-way down.  Am I done?  Is my condemnation complete?  Isaiah would say no.  Isaiah would point to a Day, a day of beauty and gloriousness when “The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion, he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem...”.  I’m so thankful for that day.  I’m so, so thankful for that Day.

2 Corinthians 6:3-7:1

This stuff about yoking to unbelievers is not really about marriage.  That is just ripping it out of context.  It’s actually the climax of Paul’s argument about what should impress us, what should appeal to us, what we should value.  The Unbelieving Life values an absence of difficulty, a freedom from struggle.  The Unbelieving Life looks for comfort above all things.  Troubles, hardships, distresses and beatings are all things to avoid in a life that ends at death.  They make absolutely no sense from that perspective.  The Unbelieving Life has as its mantra “blessed are the comfortable for they will have an easy life”.  But a life that has been infiltrated by eternity, a life that has resurrection power at work in it can stomach discomfort.  Eternal Life (to use Jesus’ phrase) doesn’t need to expend effort trying to avoiding any kind of difficulty.  It has a far richer and more precious and more satisfying goal to expend its effort on - the goal of perfecting holiness.  Eternal Life has as its goal the beautiful and deeply satisfying work of purifying ourselves from everything that contaminates the body.  Eternal Life has as its mantra “blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God”.  And so the call to not yoke ourselves to unbelievers is actually a call to separate ourselves from the mantra of the Unbelieving Life.  Its not a call to shun all people who aren’t Christians but rather to avoid committing ourselves to their goals of comfort and ease.  We are sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty and we can actually ‘see’ our God.  That is worth any amount of hardship.  That is worth any amount of struggle.

Psalm 105:12-22

Not the most inspiring section of psalm ever written but a good illustration of how God puts his people in places to teach wisdom to the world.