Wednesday 9 November

Ezekiel 17:1-18:32

Repent and live!  That is not a threat - it is a sweet, sweet promise.  It is a word to a tree growing in diseased soil, edging its way closer and closer to decay suddenly being told that it can be moved to good soil and have hope for the future.  It is a man who has stolen from his family and abused his neighbours and shagged anyone he comes across and given himself to anything he could find suddenly being told that he can be pure and clean and good and hopeful.  It is an offer of a new start in a good place with fresh prospects and no fates being set.  Life can change.  People can change.  There are no inevitabilities when God is around.  Because He takes no pleasure in the death of anyone.  He doesn’t want people to be swamped by their own mess.  He loves finding ways to give people new hearts and new spirits and of giving them life.  He is for us.  He is fighting for us and working for us and he is strong enough to save us.  And to save anyone who we know and anyone who we come across.  If we and they will just repent.  If we and they will just take ourselves out of our fetid, diseased soil and put down our roots into Him.

Hebrews 9:16-28

More dense arguments which are hugely powerful for the right sort of person who thinks in a certain kind of way but which are, for me, a tad irrelevant.  What packs the punch though is the closing 2 verses that represent the conclusion of the argument.  I like the symmetry of the life of man and the work of Christ.  We die then we are judged.  Jesus died then we are saved.  A bit like tracing paper or even like a plastic stencil Jesus has overlaid the pattern of our life with the pattern of his life, re-drawing our destiny, usurping our appointed future.  And so all we need to do is wait for him.  The pattern, or arc, of our life no longer depends on us now.  It has been set by him.  He will bring salvation to us when we die.  We have a certainty in life that is incredibly good and is nearer by the day.  No wonder the ancients called it a blessed hope.  Our lives are secure in his hand.

Psalm 121:1-8

“The LORD will watch over your coming and your going both now and forevermore”