Monday 14 November

Ezekiel 26:1-27:36

I don’t imagine I’ll be rushing back to this passage, not unless I ever decide to re-sit my history GCSE and have to do some coursework on the cultural and commercial norms of Tyre in the 7th Century BC.  But I guess the one small thing I can take out of this section is a reminder that when God says He is sovereign, it means He is sovereign.  In my heart I find that ‘doctrine’ tested every single day - I see people scorning Jesus and the way of the cross and then merrily going off and prospering and smiling and being celebrated all over the place.  That makes me doubt who is the boss.   It makes me doubt that my eggs are in the right basket.  When I hear of bank-bonuses in the City or watch politicians wielding immense influence I sometimes wish I had followed in their footsteps instead of my bumbling efforts to follow in Jesus’.  I see all kinds of things in the world that suggest prosperity and happiness and satisfaction is dished out by Money or Power or Other People - that they are the sovereign ones rather than God.  So this passage, as bleak and curious as it is, is a helpful tonic to my heart; it reminds me that God is Sovereign, and He will have His way in the end.

Hebrews 12:1-13

I’m offended.  How dare the writer to the Hebrews say I have feeble arms?  How dare he say I have weak knees?  OK, so I couldn’t life that box the other day but it was at least half full and Lesley did also struggle with it for a bit before she carried it up the stairs.  But then again I shouldn’t just be offended - “be the change you want to see”, that is what Gandhi said, so I think I’ll head off down the gym - that must be the answer... but then again I won’t go often enough to make any difference.  It’s almost like my trouble is not my feeble arms but my feeble soul.  My short-coming is not my weak knees but my weakness towards sin.  Too often I see disobedience to God as a nice - if fleeting - distraction on a difficult day.  I don’t realise it is crippling me.  I don’t realise it is entangling me.  I don’t realise that these little ‘indulgences’ (or sometimes big, ongoing indulgences) are actually holding me back from running the race marked out for me.  I moan like crazy when I am slightly physically disabled in any way - when I have hurt my foot or cricked my neck or something small like that - and yet I am content to carry on regardless of my chronic spiritual lameness that is not being healed.  So thanks be to God that he takes the initiative and he sets me on my spiritual physio, training me how to walk right and move right, adjusting my patterns from ones that damage me to ones that free me.  He ‘disciplines’ me so that I can walk, and not only walk but run.  God chooses to do for me what I am not even doing for myself - healing me of my sin.  How grateful I am for that.  I want to submit to him and really live.

Psalm 125:1-5

“the LORD surrounds his people”