Thursday 6 October

Jeremiah 11:18-13:27

God’s jockstrap.  That’s what the Lord calls Israel.  And so, by derivation, we are part of God’s jockstrap too (the boringly sanitised NIV calls it a ‘linen belt’ but jock-strap is much closer to the Hebrew).  Never mind the fact that the jockstrap ends up getting spoiled.  What is really shocking is that God would call his people his jockstrap in the first place.  I used to wear a jockstrap for cricket and let’s just say that I developed a relationship with it that was intimate in the extreme.  A jockstrap and a person are so tightly wedded together that it is almost indecent.  But God’s whole thing is indecent.  He attaches us limpit-like to the most tender and vulnerable part of himself.  He pulls us onto his crown-jewels, he draws us onto his loins.  It’s as indecent as you can get but I don’t think God cares one little bit.  His love for us is indecent.  The graphic and sweaty nature of his attachment to us makes our human relationships seem so superficial.  The depth of his disclosure to us makes our deepest confidences seem so plain.  This is the God who absolutely flipping loves us and couldn’t draw us closer to himself if we begged him.  He loves us, he is for us, he has drawn us to himself he has attached himself to us.  Let’s just enjoy that, let’s just revel in the indecency of it all.  He loves us he loves us he loves us.

Colossians 2:6-23

When you live in Jesus there is nowhere better to go.  I know I struggle with that but it doesn’t make it false.  There are many books and articles and voices around that beckon me out of my Jesus-house and into some other sort of dwelling.  Sometimes they sound virtuous; the voice whispers to me that I need to deprive myself of all pleasures in order to really grow and then later says that I can’t qualify for real Christian status until I attend some super-spiritual conference or read the next ‘apostolic’ book.  Sometimes the voices are just plain aggressive, casting aspersions on Jesus and claiming that other powers are superior - like money or ‘science’ or ‘the human spirit’ or pleasure.  But all of these voices are actually hollow.  All of them are just deceptive.  They can just be dismissed as wrong.  Jesus crushed all these things on the cross.  He made a spectacle of every pretentious posing idea that makes out like it has got it sussed.  He showed that none of them have and only he has the authority.  And he killed their power over us and buried them in the tomb.  These ideas just float loosely around us now, these voices just wash over us - they are not commands but just weak appeals.  Of course we can choose to listen to them but why would we?  In Jesus we have been given fulness. In Jesus we have been raised to the bountiful life of the kingdom.  In Jesus we can be rooted and built up into a glorious illustration of the creative and redemptive power of our God.  In Jesus we can overflow with thankfulness.  When you live in Jesus there is nowhere better to go.

Psalm 118:1-16

“Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous”.  Well at least we have half of it right - my house definitely resounds with shouting...