Ezekiel 22:23-23:49
I’m crying. My stomach is all churned up. I know I’ve let my breasts be fondled, I know I’ve let my virgin bosom be caressed. I wish I hadn’t. Oh God I really wish I hadn’t but I know I have. I know I’ve lusted after foreign lovers - I know I have defiled myself on the genitals of braggadocio and self-promotion. I know I’ve passed big houses and lusted after the power they convey. I know I’ve followed the way of Egypt and Babylon - of taking the power and the strength that you have given me and using it to subdue and take from others rather than to serve and provide for and love them. And most of all I know I have despised what You have given me. I know I’ve taken the copious, relentless, generous gifts that you have lavished on me and I have dropped them on the floor and then looked out the window, longing for what my neighbour has. I know I’ve chosen to overlook all the incredible provision you have made for me and have focussed instead on the bits that I find hard. I have dared to pick fault with you, O God, when I lie and sit and walk in a continuous stream of your treasures. Oh God, I am so deeply sorry. I’m crying because I know I am lewd. I know I’m promiscuous. I wish I wasn’t. I wish I hadn’t been so disrespectful and ungrateful. You should slay me O God. I know you should drag me out of my house by the hair and call all the street to stone me to death. I know that is what I deserve. And yet you don’t crush me. You don’t give me what I deserve. Instead you are working for me - you are working to put a stop to my lewdness and my longing. You are changing me so that I no longer look on those things with longing. How could you be so kind?
Hebrews 11:1-16
The now and the not yet. Recently we’ve reclaimed the now - and, if I could, I would turn a few backflips for that. But faith must retain the ‘not yet’ or it is not faith at all. Faith looks at what is now and delights in the salvation of our God made manifest among us - people coming to faith, people being healed, people being set free, love being shown. But faith always regards the now with slight disappointment. And so it should. Faith always says ‘Is this it?‘ and faith knows that unfortunately it is, for now. That is why faith longs for that better country, the heavenly one that is not yet here. Faith is willing to sacrifice the now for the not yet. Faith sacrifices the first-fruits and builds arks and leaves homelands and lives in tents and admits that this earth is not our home. Faith is willing to leave rewards and longed-for-results and desired-satisfaction until a future time. Faith ultimately invests its efforts in this current age for the promise of the future age. And if some of that future age can be experienced now - well that is a glorious faith-strengthener and a stimulus to wait for it more keenly. It is not a suggestion that we should expect everything now. And I feel the ramifications of this, for me, are huge. I feel like I’ve only just started to understand real faith. I feel like I’ve just begun to say with integrity that I have entrusted things to God for Him to give back to me on That Day.
Proverbs 27:15-22
How does iron sharpen iron?
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