Wednesday 2 November

Joel 2:18-3:21

Yesterday was repentance.  Today is joy.  Be glad.  Rejoice in the Lord your God.  He sends you abundant showers (especially in England) he will send you enough to satisfy you fully.  And afterwards... he will pour out his Spirit.  On servants will be the deliverance of God.  Dreams and visions and wonders.  The Spirit is the eschatological gift of God.  The Spirit is the outpouring of the favour of God after the day of his wrath.  Pentecost comes after Golgotha.  Tongues of fire and rushing wind comes after a crown of thorns and scourges of iron.  Jesus took on himself the army of locusts.  All the years the locusts were eaten were put on him.  He took our punishment to release to us the blessing of “afterwards”.  We live in the “afterwards”.  We live in the eschatological age of the Spirit.  Not fully, but in part.  Through our repentance, through our recognition of the grace of Jesus do we walk into the outpouring of the “afterwards”.  We can know this abundance and this joy and this gladness.  We really can know it.  If we repent and believe. If we receive the Spirit of God.  It is the greatest source of the greatest joy we could ever experience.  It is the answer to every woe the world has ever know.  We will have plenty to eat, until we are full.  As we know that He is the Lord our God, and there is no other.

Hebrews 4:1-13

Fumbling all the way back to the start of time.  Tickling the aeons long forgotten was a story about the God of All creating and then resting, delighting in what was good, having peace with what he had made.  And we go back to that now.  It was not just a story for a camp-fire but it is a story for the heart.  It speaks a promise.  It unfolds and then unfolds a vague hope for a time of peace.  It reaches out to the place in our hearts that wails for rest.  And now the vague hope has become specific.  We can have rest - if we remain in Christ.  The one who sat there on that seventh day is right here now offering us his rest.  If we remain in him.  The sabbath is not a day - it is the mood of the kingdom.  The Sabbath of peace is not 24 hours of inactivity but a lifetime of beautiful encounter.  Sabbath is lived out every moment of every day in the Kingdom of our God.  It is peace with God, it is peace with creation.  It is marvelling at all that is good and delighting in all He has made.  And we can enter it - if we remain in Him.

Psalm 119:145-152

I don’t believe it!  I also rise before dawn!  My eyes also stay open through the watches of night!  I also cry for help...  Oh God please shut this baby up!!  (wonderful blessing that he is from you.)  Oh God please help us get some sleep.