Monday 17 October

Jeremiah 35:1-37:21

Burning the scrolls - it’s a powerful symbol.  Jehoiakim’s contempt for the words of his God is deeply shocking.  How could he have been so audacious?  How could he have been so blind to the judgement he was heaping up on himself?  And yet, when I think about it, I realise that I do a very similar thing all the time.  I come to read the word and hear challenges to my life-style, I hear calls to care for others and to stretch out my hands to the poor.  I hear calls to sacrifice my desires and to take up my cross.  I hear calls to repent and truly believe in the awesome provision of my Saviour.  And then I close my book and carry on with my life, jumping back into the rush and rubble of the day as if I’ve not read anything at all.  So often I don’t address the issues raised by the book, so often I don’t carry the words of God around with me during the day, so often I allow my focus to return to me and my little world rather than my neighbour who the word calls me to love.  I may not be physically throwing the pages onto my parents’ wood-burning stove but I might as well be - the effect is nearly the same.  So I do really repent today of when I have lived like Jehoiakim.  I know I deserve to be in exile; I deserve to be cast away from my God.  But I am so deeply grateful that he chooses to show me mercy and he allows me to come back to him today.  His desire is always to forgive wickedness and sin.

1 Timothy 2:1-15

I don’t know what to do with verses 11-15.  But I mourn the fact that they are the verses that get all the attention in this chapter.  For the first few verses are so  barn-stormingly brilliant that they could get a standing ovation several times over.  I love the fact that God is called Our Saviour.  I know its a phrase we’ve heard time and time again but I really love the fact that a defining feature of the One who holds time in his hands is that he is saving us.  And I love the fact that his desire - when it could be so fixed on the beauty of the stars or the expansiveness of space or the iridescence of His own being - is for us to be saved.  God spends time thinking about and longing for all kind of people from all kinds of places to come to Him for cleansing and healing and empowering and loving.  God actively chooses to fix his attention on ‘them out there’, desiring that they will discover what their life is really about.  And as people who love our God and who want to become like him there is a clear call to action - to lift up holy hands in prayer; to pray for everyone.  Paul sees us coming to the throne-room of our God and gazing upon his splendour and seeing his compassion for the nations and being drawn into that compassion through prayers, intercessions and teaching the true faith.  And so we pray for our work-colleagues and our neighbours and our bosses and our politicians and whoever else we come across.  We lift them up to God in prayer, pleading for their eyes to be opened to His goodness and their ways to be conformed to his will.  It is a magnificent call.  O Jesus please help me live it out.

Psalm 119:49-56

“You have given me hope”