Saturday 31 December

Nehemiah 13:1-31

The pulling out of hair and the beating I am not so sure about.  But the rest of it seems bang on.  These Old Testament readings for the year end in an interesting place with the leaders of the community actively holding the others to a certain standard of holiness.  And I don’t think anything in the New Testament ever negates this requirement.  As ambassadors of God and as reverential worshippers of the Lord it is only appropriate for us to act and speak and make decisions in a way that pleases Jesus.  It should only be expected of us that we would seek to do all we can with all we can to try to help everyone we can to honour God as much as they can.  The Old Testament has provided us with example after example of people who have manifestly failed to do this.  Solomon is only one name of many that could be cited as a warning.  And it only makes sense for us to heed these warnings, to learn from other’s mistakes and to equip ourselves with all biblical and godly wisdom.  For if we do this, and if we manage to achieve a higher level of purity for ourselves and for those around us then the Lord will remember us and He will show us mercy according to His great love.  Not because we will have earned it (we never could!) but because He will see our efforts and be pleased with them.  He will  be pleased that his work in us is bearing rich fruit.

Revelation 22:1-21

The Fall is overcome.  The river of life raises The City and its inhabitants way up above even the lofty heights of Eden.  For now there is a throne.  Now there is no night.  And they will reign for ever and ever without a pesky snake coming and wrecking it all up.  So unspeakably brilliant is this vision, so nostril-flaringly outstanding is this sight that John - even John who saw the transfigured Jesus and who ate the broiled fish with the risen Christ - even John can’t help himself but fling his whole being down onto the dust and physically express his utter unworthiness to be around it.  I can’t remember the last time I felt such a depth of astonishment and conviction.  I end this journey with a similar sense of trepidation to that with which I started it, except now I feel more aware of the sheer inadequacy of my knowledge, the meagre extent of my faith.  This Jesus who I love, this Jesus who in my worst moment I feel I fully know - this Jesus is the same one who gave this vision to John.  This Jesus is the same one who is called the Root, the Offspring of David and the Bright Morning Star.  This Jesus has shown me Himself - he really, truly has - and so far all I’ve been able to look at is the nail of his little toe.  What I’ve seen has been amazing.  What I’ve seen nearly brings me to tears right now in this seat and yet it is just a whiff.  It is just a tiny fragment of gold compared to all of Fort Knox.  But there will be a day when I see it all.  I pray I will keep seeing more and more until that day comes.  But there will be a day when Jesus will come, where Jesus will come and claim his own and will reward for what’s been done.  And then I will see him as he is.  Then his whole phenomenal, beyond-ordinary, beyond-temporary, beyond-constraint body will be unveiled before me.  And I will fall face down and I will eat the dust.  I can’t wait for that day.  Please come, Lord Jesus.

Psalm 150:1-6

What a way to finish; “let everything that has breath praise the Lord”.

Friday 30 December

Nehemiah 11:22-12:47

Make time for thanksgiving.  That is what the energetic new community in Jerusalem were doing by going back to the Mosaic laws about allocating some Levites as singers. And it led them into joy.  The more we thank God for what he has done the more joy we will feel sloshing around in our life.  So I think we should intentionally allocate a portion of each of our resources to pure unadulterated thanksgiving.  Maybe the resource we most need to allocate is time - making time to get in worship on a Sunday and at housegroup and on our own as well.  Maybe we need to sett an alarm or configure our screen-saver or get together with a friend or buy some worship albums or start keeping a journal.  These could all be ways that we develop and strengthen mental patterns of thankfulness to God.  For he really has done amazing things for us.  Tiny things and huge things, temporary things and everlasting things.  And the more we deliberately remember those things and the more we deliberately thank him for them the more joy we will feel.  And the more joy He will feel too.

Revelation 21:1-27

This is our great hope.  This is what we cry out for like our own bed and shower after a long week of camping.  And so it is worth us really thinking on it.  Because the bed is super-comfy and the shower will really ease our aching back.  The shower is not just a dribble.  The hope is not in vain.  I think the biggest attack on this hope is to make it seem like a super-spiritual, out-of-body floaty-sunny fantasy land that is so far from our experience that we cannot accept it at all.  So here is the antidote to that poisonous thought - the hope of Revelation is not for us to go to heaven.  The hope of Revelation is not that we will float out of our bodies and out of this earth to some hovering utopia in the skies.  No.  The hope of Revelation comes down out of heaven.  It doesn’t stay there and we certainly don’t go there.  God comes down to live with his people.  The New Jerusalem comes down to the earth.  Now the earth will have been transformed - it will have been made new and perfect and fully redeemed in every way - but it will still be something that we could only describe as ‘earth’.  I appreciate that we cannot possibly grasp the staggering beauty or awesome detail of what the earth will look like once the old order has passed away but it seems like it will have nations and kings and people who can make and bring things of splendour to the Lamb.  Because ultimately our faith is one that started in Eden and started with God saying the universe was good.  We believe in a creator God who made all things and who will re-make all things.  He will re-make them so they look similar but different, the same but renewed.  Like a populated, thriving, swirling, life-infested Eden but better.  So if you start to feel sick of camping and bored of feeling half-washed then do not despair.  The hope is coming.  The hope is real.  And the hope is good.

Proverbs 31:21-31

“When it snows she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet”.  What??

Thursday 29 December

Nehemiah 9:38-11:21

These skim-read bits feel like a bonus so close to the end of the year.  But this oath in the middle of it all is interesting.  I suspect that today any such oath would be looked upon as legalistic.  And indeed it probably was the sort of foundation upon which the Pharisees built their hollow practices.  But that does not take away its value.  For this was not a commitment to dry activity but to serious lived-out worship of God.  It is not legalistic to try to obey the bible.  It is not legalistic to try to carefully organise your life to make it as pleasing to Jesus as possible.  This kind of commitment is to be commended.  This kind of commitment is what brings about holiness.  

Revelation 20:1-15

I don’t know what to say about the 1,000 years.  I know people have defined their faith by what they think about it.  That seems a little bizarre considering that it is just a stage history will pass through on the road to its final destination.  To define yourself as pre-millenial or post-millenial seems a bit like defining your house move by what time the removal company are arriving.  I guess you can do it if you want but it seems to be slightly missing the point.  It doesn’t seem like the main and the plain.  But what does seem so main and plain it is pretty much head-butting me in the nostrils is this phrase “the dead were judged according to what they had done”.  Now hold on a minute but don’t you think we need to call in the heresy squad?  Don’t you think the grace-police need to pay this passage a visit?  Doesn’t John know that we are saved by grace through faith and it is not down to works?  Doesn’t he realise that we can do what we bally-well please once we have been washed in the blood?  Oh.  He doesn’t.  And if he doesn’t then maybe I shouldn’t either.  For what has kept coming back time and time again through our voyage across the bible has been this idea that salvation actually means being made more holy.  What has become increasingly clear is that forgiveness for sin and healing from the things that cause us to sin are so intertwined that they can’t be separated.  The whole point is that Christians will do good things.  The whole point is that Christians will live blameless lives.  The whole point is that we will be holy as He is holy so that, upon judgement day, God will look at what we have actually done and will say “well done my good and faithful servant”.  And if you have gone to church week in week out and if you have sung some worship songs and if you have read the bible and even if you have asked Jesus to forgive you for things you have done wrong in the past - if you have done all of that and yet have not actually in any way submitted yourself to the Lordship of Jesus and sought to change your behaviour to honour him, and if you have not tried to give things up that you think he wouldn’t like and if you have not tried to start things that you think he would like well then I think you need to be scared about judgement day.  But there is still a chance to change.

Psalm 149:1-9

The Lord takes delight in his people.

Wednesday 28 December

Nehemiah 9:1-37

This could have saved us a whole heap of time.  I feel like the pupil who has spent hours reading the whole of A Passage to India only to find that everyone else has just watched the film.  If only I had known that the crib sheet for the history of the Old Testament was here in Nehemiah I could have skipped out that trudging through Jeremiah, that wading through 1 Chronicles and that slogging through Leviticus.  But then again using other people’s summaries is never a good way to go.  As my professor always used to tell me at university - you have got to read the primary text.  So, as we approach the end of the Old Testament, I feel like I need to start constructing my own potted history of God.  I need to start speaking with God about what He has done, and how my ancestors have responded, and how I now fit in.  There seems to be a huge amount of intimacy, and of reverence, in consciously placing my pin in the enormous atlas of redemption.  Praying in this way helps me personalise my faith and take ownership of my identity in Christ.  It helps me see I am just a drop of water in the torrent of history.  It helps me appreciate the aching grossness of my refusal to listen to Him.  He alone is the great God.  He alone is from everlasting to everlasting.  And to speak with Him is sensational.  To be forgiven by Him is sublime.  And to be saved by Him is indescribably good.  The more I read, the more I realise this.  It can sometimes feel like hard work.  But reading the Book really does beat the film.

Revelation 19:11-21

Never again.  That was the refrain from yesterday.  Never again will Babylon be found.  Never again will a lamp shine in her.  Never again will she lead the nations astray.  It is worth lingering a while on that ‘never’.  We get so used to the ugly runt head of the devil popping up in our lives that it can be hard to believe that a time is coming when it will never happen again.  The Word of God is continuing relentlessly with the annihilation of evil.  The birds of the air will gorge on its flesh.  I say again that this is worth a linger; a sure and certain conviction that evil will be ravaged would be more than a little portion of our daily bread.  To know that evil’s days are numbered would inspire us, it would embolden us, it would help us stand firm.  And we can know that it is true because it is already happening.  This takes us back to what I said right at the start of Revelation - this is not so much a prophecy about the future as a revelation of the Now.  The word of God is already dressed in a robe that has been dipped in the blood.  The armies of heaven are at this moment white and clean.  KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS has already summoned the birds, he has already started treading out the winepress.  He started in on the cross.  He started it at Calvary.  Every time we see an addiction overcome, every time we see a healing occur, every time we see someone filled with the Spirit or forgiven of their sins or growing in love or standing firm in trial - every time we see these things we see the victory of Faithful and True, we see the two being thrown into the fiery lake.  Jesus is doing his thing.  Our world is being redeemed.  It is an awesome thing to behold.  It is an amazing thing to see.

Psalm 148:7-14

Let them praise the name of the Lord.

Tuesday 27 December

Nehemiah 7:4-8:18

Now that is how to preach.  Ezra starts his 4 hour marathon at dawn and doesn’t stop exegeting until the heat of the mid-day sun is scorching his brow.  And the people are rapt in attention.  They are weeping.  And they go off and change.  They go and do things different; they turn to repentance and then they turn to celebration and then they turn to obedience.  In a day when preaching is being questioned as an art-form, surely this passage speaks up in its defence.  Good, biblical, Spirit-filled preaching can arrest the senses.  It can grip hearts and expose sin.  It can also channel emotions to the glory of God.  It can steer us to reverence - real reverence, real joyful reverence.  And preaching can move a people-group.  Preaching can stir and inspire a community like very little else.  It can be like the word of God for the people, uniting them and encouraging them and leading them into very great joy.  

Revelation 18:17b-19:10

“For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”  In our day the wedding is about the bride.  She is the star attraction.  Her dress is the thing that people talk about (or at least that is what I’m told people talk about - all the dresses look the same to me).  But here it is the groom that gets the plaudits.  It is the groom that everyone is raving about.  All the guests are kicking their chairs out the way and prostrating themselves before the groom.  And the bride hasn’t even walked down the aisle yet.  As the Pachelbel Cannon starts to play no-one can take their eyes off the groom.  No-one can stop raving about his awesomeness.  For he has just won the great, cosmic, epoch-defining victory (but more of that tomorrow).  But if you were to look closely at this dazzling groom you would see his eyes were fixed in one place.  You would see his smile was tweaked towards one thing - the whole church of Jesus.  The groom has given his bride a fine dress, the groom has helped his church live right.  He has saved us and he will wed himself to us - all of us from every age and country and denomination and language - because he loves us.  Glory to his name.

Psalm 148:1-6

That is some serious praise-megamix he has got in mind.

Monday 26 December

Nehemiah 5:1-7:3

They were charging 1% interest and Nehemiah was very angry.  I can’t imagine how he would react to the economic norms of our day.  I’m increasingly feeling that the Lord must find them disgusting.  The word of the Lord through Nehemiah (I think it is fair to say that it was the word of the Lord even though it doesn’t explicitly say it.  At the very least it surely must be seen as the standard for God-fearing people) commanded the nobles and officials to not only give people back the interest they had paid but also the land and property and people they had confiscated as well.  The conclusion is unambiguous - you take a loss rather than worsening the plight of the poor among you.  Throughout the whole bible this seems to be the stance; the Proverbs repeatedly speak of power needing to be used to benefit the marginalised rather than for personal gain.  And what does money bring if not power?  So I am more and more acutely convicted that I need to use my dosh to help the poor.  Or, perhaps more accurately and perhaps more difficultly, I must ensure that my use of my money does not trample the marginalised.  I feel this must have enormous consequences for what I purchase and where I invest, to say nothing of where I get my mortgage from and who I choose to work for.  I don’t think I can just shrug off this challenge and mosey along with my fellow-Londoners.  If I want the Lord to remember me with favour I probably need to give up some of my rights.  I probably need to forego good portions of my salary.  For the Lord loves ‘these people’ and he will remember everything I do for them.

Revelation 18:1-17a

“Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.”  It is regularly said that God doesn’t care whether you are poor or rich as long as you are generous.  I agree.  But the description of Babylon, the defining feature of this sinful, arrogant power lies much closer to one of those states than the other.  I think it would be true to say that the rich live on the dangerous border-regions of the Christian faith.  I suspect there are few things more perilous than following Jesus and being rich.  For when you are rich it is so much easier to justify spending on yourself.  And when you are rich it is so much easier to think that your riches are due to your brilliance, your skill and your glory.  When you are rich there are so many more areas where you have to make a call on what to give and what to keep.  When you are rich there is so much more possibility to give yourself luxury.  When you are rich it is so much easier to start to look just like Babylon.  And - we should never doubt it - Babylon will be tortured.  Babylon will weep in torment.  For what brings smoke to God’s nostrils is when people that He has made take more than their fair share of the stuff He has made.  What God will not tolerate is people thinking they deserve more than God has allotted them and people claiming as their own the turf He has given to others.  God will consume those people with fire.  He will bring them to ruin in just one hour.  And I know I need to be careful about this because I know I am rich.  I know He has given me an abundance.  But very little of it is for me to keep.  And none of it is due to my greatness.

Proverbs 31:10-20

Goodness. For a minute there I thought I was listening to Beyonce.  Either that or something by the Spice Girls.  God seems to be a fan of Girl Power.

Sunday 25 December

Nehemiah 3:1-4:23

That dirty Sanaballat.  He was a baddies’ baddy.  He had obviously listened attentively at Evil School.  He knew well the first two tricks of opposition and he played them like trumps in a game of contract whist.  The first trick of Evil School is to make God’s people feel stupid.  You need to wait until they have played their ace, wait until they have built up a fragile sense of hopeful anticipation, and then you smash down your trump on it.  You add to that a look of utter contempt - or even pity if you can master it - and then add to that some attack on their identity.  Maybe you call them weak.  Or fat,  Or thick.  Or unpopular.  Or maybe you say a fox could knock their best efforts over.  It doesn’t matter quite what you say as long as it wracks the Christian with an overpowering sense of self-doubt.  And if that fails (which it rarely does) then you can pull out trick number two.  Trick number two is less subtle than trick number one but it is equally effective; plot an attack.  The attack is to overwhelm God’s people with fear.  Get in their face, cause them trouble, freak them out.  If God’s people prove resilient to self-doubt then you can often just scare them into inactivity.  It is amazing how often this will work.  But the thing baddies have to be scared of, the thing that will out-trump all of their trumps, the thing that will overcome all of the Evil School tricks is prayer.  Prayer to the great and awesome Lord.  Prayer that leads to hard work and boldness.  Evil School has no answer to that.  

Revelation 17:1-18

I’m sat in Starbucks (I’ve got ahead with my readings).  I’m listening to the lovely twinkly Christmas music and looking at all the delicious treats on offer and I’m finding it hard to equate what I see with what I have just read.  The passage tells me of great powers raging in this world.  It tells of a huge grotesque and adulterous force that is intoxicating us all with worship of false gods.  It says that this force is violently opposed to me and my faith.  It says that it wants my blood, and it has some pedigree.  But everything I see looks so jolly.  Christmas is just so jolly... isn’t it??  I think this is one of the areas of my faith that I struggle with more than anything else.  I think it is because I am middle-class.  I have grown so accustomed to presenting myself and having things presented to me in a way takes the edge of them.  Life is manicured around me.  It has been de-clawed.  It has been jollied-up.  I suppose there is nothing wrong with that except that it belies the truth.  It is fine, as long as I can see through the facade and perceive the truth.  I need to take my middle-class glasses off a bit more often and look with the eyes of faith.  I need to see that in their hearts - in their souls - people are haggard.  People are on the brink.  I need to look, and I mean properly look, at the cancer and the divorce and the loss and the loneliness and the people struck by trains and the slander against Jesus and grasp that this is the work of a disgusting and despicable force.  It is the work of THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES.  It is ultimately the work of the Beast.  And I need to hold its gaze.  I need to hold the gaze of this blinged-up force of fetid ugliness.  For when I do that I will see its days are numbered.  I will see its days will be ended by the Lamb.  For the Lamb will triumph.  The Lamb will overcome.  To live blind to this would be a tragedy.  To pretend to be jolly while not realising this truth would be a savage irony.  For we can overcome with Him.  We can overcome.  If we keep on looking.  We can overcome if we remain faithful.

Psalm 147:12-20

“He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat” (v14).

I will never look at my weetabix in the same way again.

Saturday 24 December

Nehemiah 1:1-2:20

I think I heard somewhere that Nehemiah contains more prayers per square foot than any other book of the bible.  So it is a nice book to finish on.  I think the Lord loves it when we pray.  I think he really loves to hear our squeaky little voices.  And Nehemiah seems to provide us with quite an interesting gauge of how healthy our prayer life is.  Nehemiah prays in lots of different ways.  That seems to be a healthy thing.  And, when he prays, Nehemiah layers up the names of God like some posh chef making dauphinoise potatoes.  He starts at Lord.  Then he jumps to God of heaven.  Then he goes to “Great and Awesome God”.  And then he finally ends with describing Him as the one who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him.  I think the more healthy our prayer life is, the more names of God we will use.  The more we press into God the more we will become unsatisfied by just addressing him as “God”.  We will want to say more, we will have to say more because we will know He is more.  

Revelation 16:1-21

Such is the strength of His commitment to justice.  Such is the strength of His commitment to mercy.  Such is the strength of His commitment to grace.  God opposes the proud but He brings grace to the humble.  And who could have thought it would not involve a fight?  But our God is willing to fight for us... and then some.  The position of the enemy is so entrenched, the world is so corrupted and the hostility towards the saints is so strong that the whole world needs to be shaken.  The world needs to be shaken to root out every cause and consequence of evil.  The world needs to be shaken to provide unopposed goodness and unchallenged hope and undisturbed peace for the people of God.  The world needs to be shaken.  So God rolls up his sleeves and starts labouring on our behalf.  He whips up His bowls of wrath and splits the great city into three parts.  He causes the islands to flee away and the mountains to disappear.  And these geographical phenomenons are echoed by spiritual ones; an earthquake is occurring and all evil is being brought to the surface.  God is bringing his fight to the devil.  God is commencing the final assault to bring justice, to bring mercy and to bring grace to His people.  Our God is willing to fight for us... and then some.

Psalm 147:1-11

He calls each star by name and yet he chooses to delight in the likes of you and me.  Is He crazy??

Friday 23 December

Ezra 10:1-44

Choosing to lead is like choosing to be ugly.  To lead can be humbling.  To lead can be harrowing.  To lead can be lonely.  But if you lead well then you will lead people into joy.  I constantly want to flinch from the grubby aspects of leadership.  I don’t want to go around confronting people with their sin.  But I don’t suppose Ezra did either.  I don’t want to confess and weep and throw myself down in full view of any passer-by.  But I don’t suppose Ezra did either.  I guess all of us who aspire to lead others come to a point where we have to decide what we want most.  Do we want to honour God and lead the people into the promised land or do we want to take a tourist trip through the desert?  I don’t think we can do both.  Every week we have to choose one or the other.  Leading people towards Jesus can be pretty tough.  But it can also be the most amazing experience in the world.  It is like choosing to be ugly.  But it is also like choosing to be rich.

Revelation 14:14-15:8

It has shocked me how much worship has gone on in Revelation.  I knew the big passages like Revelation 4 and Revelation 19 were soaked in the worshipful crown-casting of the elders but I hadn’t realised the praise-liquid had soaked into every corner of this book.  And most shocking perhaps is the fact that worship seems to lap right up and over all the most awkward bits about bowls of wrath and sharp-sickle-swinging angels.  To me it feels a little hard to read about trampling the winepress until blood flowed out and then to say ‘Great and marvellous are your deeds Lord God Almighty”.  But then again, I’m not yet on the right side of this view.  I don’t yet have the perspective of one who has been victorious over the beast.  I have not yet been given a harp by my God.  And so I must humble myself before this Word of God.  If this is what the Holy Spirit has disclosed to John and through John to me then I need to accept it.  I need to change my patterns of thought so that they fit in with the priorities of the word rather than just try to move on unchanged and unredeemed.  For God alone is holy and I most decidedly am not.  And I’m not going to become so unless I accept his word over mine.

Psalm 146:1-10

“Do not put your trust in princes”

Thursday 22 December

Ezra 8:15-9:15

I’ve been there.  At times I’ve felt like pulling hair from my beard (if I had a beard that is), so let down and upset and convicted have I been of my own evil deeds.  And I suspect I am not alone.  It is the tragedy of Eden played out in our lives times and time again.  And I think it is a more fundamental doctrine of christianity than I had ever grasped before.  As people we are unbelievably thick.  We see the woe of keeping God at arms length, we experience the woe of keeping God at arms length.  And so we cry out for his mercy and, quite shockingly, he gives it to us.  But only a brief moment after reveling in God’s graciousness do we once again go off and do our own thing.  It might be shacking up with the worshippers of a foreign God or it might be some other, equally potent, form of unfaithfulness.  These things are manifestations of our waywardness; they undeniably expose our divided heart.  And they should lead us swiftly to the foot of the cross.  They should walk us brusquely to the empty tomb.  They should usher us rudely to the flames of pentecost.  For these evil deeds show us our need of redemption.  These evil deeds should push us to repentance and faith in the One who died and was raised and is now in our hearts.  For we can know deliverance from this pitiful cycle in this life.  We can keep a bit more hair in our beard, if we remain in Him.  For He is faithful, and He will do it.

Revelation 14:1-13

The confusion just keeps on coming.  And yet there is still a good bit of meat to chew on.  One thing that particularly jumps out at me is the suggestion that the 144,000 had not defiled themselves with women but had kept themselves pure.  Although on first reading this seems like the 144,000 must all have been men who had never had sex, having considered it I just don’t that is what this is talking about.  Nowhere else in the whole bible has having it off with your spouse been regarded as a defiling act.  In fact the evidence has been massively to the contrary.  And in the whole of the New Testament there is no suggestion that men are entitled to a higher level of heavenly dwelling than the womenfolk.  What I think is going on here is that the referenced ‘women’ are the sort of women mentioned in the Ezra passage above.  These women who can defile the people of God are those people - men or women - who turn us to foreign gods.  They are those who win our affection and turn it away from Jesus.  Often in the bible narratives these are sexual relationships eg the Midianite women during the exodus, Solomon’s wives, the foreign women in Ezra, but I guess it isn’t just restricted to that.  We need to beware any influence (particularly from attractive people) that lure us away from the worship of Jesus.  If we patiently endure and remain faithful to Jesus then we will receive rest... and a whole lot more.

Proverbs 31:1-9

Should leaders use their power to get stuff done or to speak up for the rights of the destitute?  Lemuel’s mum had an opinion.

Wednesday 21 December

Ezra 6:1-7:10

Ezra discovered the hand of his God was upon him... and his whole world looked different.  Suddenly he knew he had sufficient wisdom for the day.  Suddenly he could take courage.  Suddenly he could gather leaders around him and press ahead with a bold, almost crazy plan.  It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that the hand of my God is upon me.  I’m not entirely sure why that is.  One thing that might have contributed to it is all the talk about the ‘dancing hand of God’.  What this can suggest is that God puts his hand on you for a fleeting, flukey moment when suddenly everything goes spanking brilliant.  But then, a second later the hand dances off again like a conga line that you just can’t find the end of.  It suggests that the hand of God doesn’t remain upon you.  It makes everything seem flighty.  But Ezra knew different.  And so did Jesus.  Jesus didn’t talk about the dancing hand of God resting on him.  Heck, Jesus didn’t even just talk about the hand of his God being upon him - he talked about the Father remaining in him.  He talked about the Spirit making his home in each and every follower of his and that the Spirit would permanently empower, would continually sanctify, would persistently lead into all truth.  When Ezra accepted that the hand of his God was upon him he saw the world as his oyster.  If we have God’s whole being within us then what does that make the world for us??  This is a call for us to find who we are in God.  This is a call to truly accept that God has disposed himself to us.  And that God wants to use us and He will use us for his glory and his honour and his kingdom to come.

Revelation 13:1b-18

When Bob Dylan (who I utterly love) sang about us needing to serve somebody - “it may be the devil or it may be the Lord..” - he was pretty much echoing Revelation 13 but with one little twist.  Revelation 13 doesn’t just talk about service; it talks about worship.  It unambiguously asserts that people will either worship Satan or Jesus.  Satan may be worshipped in the form of the beast or the dragon or the second beast but it makes no odds.  Jesus may be worship as the lamb or the lion or the figure of burnished bronze but it makes no odds.  There is only one choice; worship Satan or Jesus.  And so we find in Revelation 13 a binary choice that is so loathed by post-modernism.  There is black or white with no shade of gray.  There are no centered sets.  You have your name in the book of life or you don’t.  And this both raises the stakes of our faith and acts like a rocket pack towards patient endurance and godly wisdom.  If we know there is no gray then we become very wary of any indication of our surroundings darkening.  If a dabble with sin is actually an act of worship of Satan.. well it seems much harder to write off as harmless.  If letting other Christian’s have their own false beliefs is letting them slip towards destruction... then it no longer feels so gracious or kind (we are talking here about the major doctrines like the need to live for Jesus rather than peripheral ones like the importance of tongues or infant baptism).  And this indeed is what we saw in the communications of the early church.  They ranted about this stuff like it really mattered.  They preached with passion and loved others with huge commitment and fled from sin like it was the plague itself.  They didn’t want the tambourine man to play a song for them.  They didn’t think the answer was blowing in the wind - they already knew the tune they were living to.  They were pressing on to the higher calling of their Lord.

Psalm 145:13b-21

He is loving towards all he has made.  Even the conies.

Tuesday 20 December

Ezra 6:1-7:20

Now that is inventive, but ultimately silly.  I just don’t think Darius has thought through this execution method.  The main problem would be the ever-increasing number of renters.  Is Darius suggesting that you should pull a beam from the perpetrator’s house and then impale them on it, even if they were only a temporary tenant?  Surely that would cause no end of problems with the landlord’s insurance company?  Just think of all the paperwork involved!  And then you’d have to hire a band of local demolition workers to turn the house into rubble - and the health and safety checks on that would be nothing short of laborious.  No, I think the good old-fashioned hanging would have been a better option.  But whatever the method that Darius decreed, the amazing thing is that he decreed it at all.  We see here a clear example of Paul’s doctrine that he talks about in Romans 13 - that God uses human authority to bring his justice.  And in that, it is quite a nice example of it.  Because Darius is not altogether good.  Darius is not a representation of Jesus.  He even takes a while to work out what the right thing is that he is meant to be doing.  But ultimately God uses him to oppose the proud and bring grace to the humble.  God ultimately uses Darius to see his people encouraged and his temple rebuilt.  So we can respect the authorities over us.  But we can respect God even more; that he can oversee even the most unlikely of rulers and mould their actions to his purposes.

Revelation 12:1-13:1a

You know those houses of mirrors that you used to get at fairgrounds - where the walls are covered with mirrors that make you look short and fat or tall and thin or upside down or whatever?  And you know when you had been in them for a while your brain started to hurt a bit as you slightly lost track of what was real and what was mirror and you actually just wanted to get back outside?  That is how I feel now.  I feel like I’m in the deepest part of this house of mirrors and my brain is beginning to fizzle.  But I can take heart from the fact that (for once?) there is a pretty clear explanation embedded in this imagery.  The dragon is the Devil.  And his agenda is laid bare - he wants to lead the whole world astray, he accuses all believers and in furious anger he is waging war against those who obey god’s commandments.  This is unambiguous in the extreme. The devil, the Satan, is ferociously evil and hard set upon destruction.  He wants to kill us.  I think this is helpful when temptation comes round.  This knowledge helps us smell the poison in the attractive-looking drink.  Sin is Satan’s way of killing you.  We are so foolish to think it is the easy option or a quick bit of fun.  And self-doubt and self-hatred and a lack of confidence in who we are in God and uncertainty over our calling - we should fully expect these things to come.  And we should fully expect to see them flee when we kneel before the throne and ask the Lamb for his help.  Because the Accuser was not strong enough and his plans will ultimately fail.  The great woman (I think that is us) will be helped and the great woman will be given wings.  We don’t get the end of the story today, but the signs so far are good.

Psalm 145:8-13a

The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.  The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all that he has made.

Monday 19 December

Ezra 4:6-5:17

When attack and discouragement and assault comes - which indeed it will - history is a value defensive shield.  I don’t mean that stuff about King Canute getting shot in the eye with an arrow at the battle of Trafalgar (or whatever it was).  I mean the history of God.  I mean the history of the world from the view of God.  I mean God’s redemption narrative that has coursed and spun through generation to generation, growing ever more complex and ever more established until it has enveloped us in the safety of its core.  When people make us feel stupid for pursuing what we think God has called us to, when it all feels too hard or too forlorn, then we can bring ourselves back to our call by God.  We are servants of the God of heaven and earth.  He has shown himself faithful and just in the face of ardent opposition.  People in the past, and indeed we ourselves, have failed him and let him down.  But we don’t want to repeat that mistake.  We can see how He has continued to work for us.  His purposes have continued to prevail.  And so, dear accuser, we sniff your discouragement but we turn our noses up at it.  We see the plate of resignation that you are serving for us but we will not eat.  We will stand by our convictions.  We will press on to the goal.  We will not give up.  For our God is the God of heaven and earth and anyone who opposes him will ultimately fail.  We are more than conquerers in Christ Jesus.  And so we will keep working to the glory of His name.

Revelation 11:1-19

I remember when I read the “Left Behind” book about the Two Witnesses.  That was a waste of several hours of my life.  It nearly sent me loco.  What I wish I’d spent that time doing was thinking about the phrase “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ”.  Phewee, that is some pretty hot stuff right there.  That makes me feel some vigour when I look out of my window.  To think that God is going to take his power and apply it serious-style to the world.  That he is going to get rid of all destructive powers that destroy the earth and he is going to reward all the people who reverence Hiss name.  Wow.  That is a future that I want to believe in.  That is an intent of God that I want to feel in my bones.  I want to see this world redeemed.  I want to see my country redeemed and my city redeemed and my town redeemed and my family redeemed and my own heart redeemed.  And God is going to do it.  God is going to do it.  This isn’t some fairy-story book or inspiring film but it is the word of God speaking these promises to us.  That is something to get excited about.

Psalm 145:1-7

“Every day I will praise you.”  That sounds like a good discipline.

Sunday 18 December

Ezra 2:68-4:5

Emotion in church has a good pedigree.  Sometimes I get a bit uncomfortable on a Sunday when people give a little whoop or let out a little wail.  But compared to the mayhem that Ezra saw - this medley of weeping and shouting that was so loud that no-one could distinguish one from the other - I suspect our Sundays sound like the archaeology section of the British library.  Emotion is to be embraced.  If we can’t shout for joy in church then where can we?  If we can’t weep aloud in church then where can we.  The truth about faith, if we really want true faith, is that it is a tapestry of inexpressable joy and bitter sorrow.  True faith opens the door into the surging stream of the emotions of God - love, hope, joy, anger at sin, jealousy, sorrow - and these emotions, if truly felt, will be too much for us.  They should be too much for us.  Because they are divine in origin.  So let’s agree to show emotion in church.  Let’s agree to follow the example of our forefathers and express our bitter sorrows and let out our giddy joy.  Because God is worthy of our authentic expression.  He is good.  And his love for us; the real true us that is splattered in emotion; this love endures for ever.

Revelation 9:13-10:11

Call me a coward, but if I saw an angel who had one foot on the sea and one foot on the land and who shouted like a roaring lion, if I saw that angel and someone asked me to go up to him and take his scroll off him... I would leg it.  I would do a Jonah and be hoiking myself over the back fence.  I may love Jesus but I am not completely insane.  And then, even if I’d been eaten by some passing whale and spat back at the feet of this monstrous angel and had somehow forced myself to take the scroll from him and had it in my hand, even if I had done that, if the angel then told me to eat the scroll and that it would turn my stomach sour... I think I’d be pulling the old ‘food in the handkerchief’ trick, licking my lips and saying “mmm that tastes like honey” while discretely hiding the scroll between my legs.  You see, the thing about this section of Revelation, the thing about the whole bible is that it cracks open the door to the dressing room of God and we see he is big, hairy and terrifying.  God’s enormousness is pretty much blasphemous to our pathetic little human senses.  The sheer weight and size and power of God utterly forsakes any pretensions of power that we have ever had.   Even his angels scare us witless.  And I so often lose sight of that.  I so often look at my problems and look at other people’s theft and my own bias to idolatry and I let them become the big story.  But they are not the big story.  God is the big story.  God is the hulking monster that prowls across this universe.  God is power incarnate, awe incarnate, glory incarnate.  And, most surprising of all, God is love incarnate.  He deserves every heart-beat to be in worship of Him. And yet he chooses to love us and work for our good.  Who could measure the depths of his grace?

Proverbs 30:24-33

You’ve got to respect those conies.  

Saturday 17 December

Ezra 1:1-2:67

It should have been glorious.  It should have been the moment that the whole generation remembered at their grave.  But it all fell a bit flat.  It seemed like there was one silver pan missing - surely there should have been 30 rather than 29 (1:9)?  And that sense of incompleteness sets the tone for the book.  Ezra should be a book of epic victory, and yet it feels more like drinks party that you didn’t want to be at.  Ezra chronicles the second exodus, the second time of “let my people go”, second time of traveling to and populating the land of milk and honey.  But the milk tastes slightly off and the honey seems past its best.  Ezra points beyond itself.  It confirms God’s intention to release his people from exile but it points to the fact that the exile isn’t really about the land.  It affirms God’s desire to see his people free from oppression but it points to the fact that the Babylonians (or the  Persians or the Romans or the Americans(!)) are not the real oppressors.  Ezra is a book of promise, but of promise unfulfilled.  Wise readers digest the message of Ezra and look for the true Governor who was to come - to free them from exile, to walk them into the land, to establish them in the gate.  

Revelation 8:1-9:12

Oh boy.  And that was only the first woe.  If I’m honest I’m just getting pretty sick of it.  I’m sick of all this judgement.  I’m sick of all this pain and all this punishment.  I’m sick of the smoke and the scorpions and the agony and the longing for death.  But most of all I’m sick of my own sin and I’m sick of our sin that requires this kind of tragic response.  Woe to me.  That is the truth of it.  Woe caused by me and my stupid, always-in-the-background, never-quite-quashed desire to do my own thing, to put two fingers up to God and choose to please myself.  Woe to my flesh that keeps on dragging me down to my most base self.  Woe to the devil for being such a complete git.  None of these trumpets or woes should have been necessary.  None of these trumpets or woes would have been necessary if we had just clung close to our loving and merciful God who only ever wanted to provide for us and nurture us.  I repent of my fallenness.  I repent of my sin.  O God, please would you spread more repentance.  Please would you turn more of us from our sin.  And turn us to prayer.   

Psalm 144:9-15

“On the ten-stringed lyre I will make music to you.”  It won’t be very good because a 6-string guitar is tricky enough but it will be for you...

Friday 16 December

Malachi 2:17-4:6

“You have wearied the Lord with your words” (2:17).  Oh no.  He’s read my blog hasn’t he?  I knew I should have stopped in April.  I just get so excited about all these amazing passages packed with promises.  And I get so convicted by these warnings.  It shocks me how far the pendulum swings in both directions.  The judgement against the arrogant and the unjust and the stingy is so flaming severe.  And the provision and compassion on the repentant and the God-seekers is so abundantly lavish.  And it all seems to come down to this thing that Malachi says about it being like a man who has compassion on his son who serves him (3:17).  At the end of the day our life is dictated by who we serve.  Will we take our words and our deeds and our money and seek to use them to serve God’s Word and God’s Will?  If we will then He will rise over us.  He will heal us.  He will throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing on us that we will not have room enough for it. 

Revelation 7:1-17

You’d have to be pretty annoyed if you were number 12,001 in the tribe of Naphtali.  So close and yet so far!  But, while I want to joke about this stuff I do have to watch what I say because while I think that these tribes and these numbers are likely to be symbolic (12 may mean something like ‘perfection of government’ and 10 might refer to it being God’s choice so 12,000 might be those who have been definitely and irrevocably chosen by God to carry out His perfect governance) - I may well be wrong.  With Revelation you never can be sure!  What is undeniable though is the continual stream of worship that seems to smother the chapters of this book.  It is like a fire hydrant of amazement at Jesus that is constantly switched onto full blast.  Everywhere you look, everyone you see, whatever their background, whatever their experience, whatever language they are speaking in, whatever clothes they are wearing - everyone is going mental about Jesus.  Everyone is doing everything they can with everything in them to put Him at the centre.  To give Him his due.  And the great promise of this chapter is that we can be among them.  And so can the Nigerians.  And the North Koreans.  And the Nicaraguans.  All of us can be epically pure.  All of us can be washed and made white.  All of us can have the tears wiped away from our eyes.  For Jesus is building a broad church.  Jesus is building a diverse church.  Jesus is building a unified church.  Jesus is building a worshipping church.  And, in his name, His church will overcome.

Psalm 144:1-8

God trained David’s hands for war.  That is not fair.  All he seems to have trained mine for is how to dress salad.

Thursday 15 December

Malachi 1:1-2:16

Tokenism.  If there is one thing that is certain to wreck your faith then it is tokenism.  Tokenism knocks at every one of our doors.  It pleads that it will make things easier for us - it will get things more in balance.  But the Lord doesn’t want us ‘in balance’; he wants us leaning hard into him.  So what does Tokenism look like?  First of all it looks half-hearted in worship.  It worships in a way that suits it - only when it wants, only to the extent that it wants, only for as long as it wants.  It offers defiled food - it sings without meaning it, it shows up late, it keeps checking its phone throughout housegroup.  Tokenism worships God with a coin but it keeps the purse-strings in its grip.  And secondly tokenism looks like divorce.  Tokenism tells us that we can observe our faith without obedience, we can fulfill our calling without a fight.  Tokenism says that if a relationship is in trouble then it is not worth the effort - maybe God wasn’t in it after all.  It denies that God actually heard the marriage vows.  It denies that in flesh and spirit we are his.  And so it wrenches us free of any sense of obligation to those he has given us.   But the Lord hates tokenism.  Because tokenism wrecks us while we remain blind to the damage.  So we need to beware of tokenism.  And some of us need to repent.

Revelation 6:1-17

The Spirit can make this clear to us.  The Spirit can lead us into the truth in this.  Which is a good job because most of it is lost on me.  The trouble seems to be that John’s brain would not have had the ability to grasp the incomprehensible majesty of what he was witnessing.  And his language would have been woefully inadequate to describe that fragment of splendour that his brain had managed to grasp.  And my mind is neither intellectually nor spiritually refined enough to bridge the cultural and religious gap between John and myself in order to discern the tiny slither of God’s awesomeness that his language was communicating.  And so I feel I need to approach this passage with extreme humility, humbly seeking the Spirit’s guidance and only making very tentative advances in the direction that I think he is showing me.  And this morning I think that direction is reverence before the Lamb.  Heck, if the likes of President Bashar Assad and Lady Gaga and Warren Buffet and Fernando Alonso are all going to hide in caves and among the rocks of the mountains in an attempt to escape the gaze of the Lamb then I think I better show Him some reverence as well.  I think I better also recognise the power of his throne and pay some serious regard to his great day of wrath.  Because no matter how it is going to happen and no matter what it is going to look like, I  think it is clear who is going to be running the show.  And I’d like to get on his side before the day comes.

Psalm 143:1-12

My soul thirsts for you... but it also thirsts for a grande cappuccino.  Why am I so conflicted?

Wednesday 14 December

Esther 9:1-10:3

Oooh that was a bit nasty.  I used to have a secret crush on Esther until she went and asked for that second day of reckless killing.  I could have stomached her asking for one day - but the second???  Like I said, I don’t really know what to do with this book.  But I guess the lesson from the life of Esther is that things that seem a bit nasty (like having an old king letch all over you) can end up being for your deliverance.  

Revelation 5:1-14

It’s all getting a bit undignified.  Angels are shouting in an impolitely-loud voice, John is weeping and weeping and the elders of the universe are completely forgetting their station and falling on their faces - did they learn nothing in Etiquette for Elders Finishing School??  And the one unleashing all this mayhem is a Lamb that looks like it has been slain.  It is Jesus - gentle Jesus all meek and mild.  Except now we see that Jesus is a flipping rock star.  He is The Flipping Rock Star.  All the celebrities and all the big-wigs of the universe have gathered together and even the awesomest among them, even the most high-flying, triple-first-ing, most-highly-promoted of them is mushing his face into the dirt in reckless abandon before the Jesus Lamb who was slain.  This is a vision of reality right here.  Never mind Newsnight.  Never mind I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here.  If we we really want to know where it is at, if we really want to get a glimpse of royal ruddy power then we need to flick off the television and get our face in Revelation 5.  This is the future.  And this is the present.  And this is the past.  Right here in pen and ink.  Every created thing.  Every cell and amoeba and donkey and water particle can’t help but freeze in permanent salute to the One who formed them.  Every angel and demon and any other spiritual thing cannot ultimately do anything other than acknowledge that Jesus is awesome, that Jesus is great, that Jesus is their boss.  People may deny it for a time.  Creation may groan against it for a while.  But one truth remains and on truth resounds.  Jesus is the Rock Star of the Universe.  And before him, we are not worthy.

Proverbs 30:11-23

One of the greatest tragedies in my life is my loss of wonder.  I want to be able to say that the way of an eagle in the sky is too amazing for me.

Tuesday 13 December

Esther 6:1-8:17

God (who I assume was working through this whole episode) really can make the first to be the last and the last to be the first.  In just one night he really can tear down the proud and exalt the humble.

Revelation 4:1-11

Try as I might I just can’t imagine a voice that sounds like a trumpet.  And my idea of a flying eye-infested ox is so pathetic that it is truly comic.  But in amongst these difficult-to-understand descriptions are two mountainous truths that are so monstrous and so overwhelming that they feel like Everest and K2 slammed down right in front of me.  These truths are so big that I can’t see around them, or over them, or through them.  I can either vainly try to ignore them or begin the long and arduous journey to scale them and, ultimately, to understand them.  And because I haven’t yet made much progress on that journey I will struggle to even explain these truths.  But the living creatures and the 24 elders have trekked far higher than I and they talk in such terms as holiness and eternity.  Holiness as a term seems to have lost a lot of its punch these days.  It conjures up feelings of a trip to the dentist or having your hair cut - a bit functional, a bit of a hassle, a bit dry and cold and uninspiring.  But true holiness, the holiness of God is far from that.  The holiness of God is like a jumbo jet to our paper aeroplane - it is epic, it is glorious, it is worthy of all glory and all respect and all accolades and all honour.  Eternity, I think, still brings with it a degree of awe.  But maybe even eternity is not sufficient a descriptor.  The truth about God is that at the end of the day, his day hasn’t ended.  10:00 and 12:15 and 03:17 are no different to him.  In fact our whole concept of time itself - a concept that we are inherently incapable of seeing beyond - is just like a caterpillar crawling along the finger of God.  He was.  And He is.  And He is to come.  You can’t get any bigger than that.

Psalm 142:1-7

“You are my portion in the land of the living”.

Monday 12 December

Esther 2:19-5:14

That was a cold thing that Mordecai did to Esther.  He pretty much sent her to her death, and laid it on thick in order to do so.  It’s a good job Esther knew how to shake her booty.

Revelation 3:7-22

The thing that is getting me about these letters to the churches is not the stuff about synagogues of Satan or the luke-warm water but the lavishness of what is to come.  If we overcome - which doesn’t sound too hard when we factor in the awesome power of the Spirit - we will be able to eat from the tree of life, we will not be hurt at all by the second death, we will have authority over all the nations, we will have our name acknowledged before the Father, we will be made pillars in the temple of our God, we will sit with Jesus on his throne.  Isn’t that just ridiculously remarkable?  Isn’t it preposterous?  There isn’t an award ceremony on earth that could get close to giving anything as incredible as even one of those things.  There cannot be a person with such a mediocre record as mine who is even in the running for such a dazzling array of riches as these.  Sometimes I just wonder how on earth Jesus can stomach it.  I wonder what on earth he is doing giving me as much as he is.  But that wondering just leads me into gratitude and that gratitude just leads me into worship and that worship just leads me into humility.  How great is Jesus and how great is his generosity.

Psalm 141:1-10

“Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil”

Sunday 11 December

Esther 1:1-2:8

I don’t think there’s theology in this.  Esther as a book has always slightly perplexed me.  God is never mentioned, the characters don’t seem to pray, the narrative turns pretty bloody... and yet it is often held up as an example of living by faith.  Now I certainly couldn’t speak against that - the book after all is part of the bible and is Spirit-breathed and useful for equipping us for every good work.  But at this stage, when we are only a quarter of the way into the narrative, I think it would be a little over-hasty to pull out spiritual lessons.  So I positively reject the sermons I have heard from this passage about women needing to be ruled by their husbands or that spirituality for girls involves making themselves beautiful.  These may be good things or they may not.  I really don’t think we can work that out from this passage.

Revelation 2:18-3:6

His eyes are like blazing fire.  He uses them to search every heart and mind.  He is searching your heart right now.  He is searching your mind.  He sees every single thing that lives inside of you.  That is true whether you choose to engage with it or not, whether you choose to think about it or not.  God is searching your heart.  And after he has searched it he will repay you for what is in it.  I know that sounds like it bucks grace.  I know that sounds like it slaps the face of unconditional love.  But it doesn’t.  Grace and unconditional love are forces at work within us.  They change what is in us, they fill us with stuff that is pleasing to Jesus.  They kick out the stuff that he doesn’t want to find.  So as we are filled with the Spirit and as we welcome his eyes blazing with fire we find ourselves being sanctified - thinking and acting in purer and purer ways.  And then we get the reward for the Spirit’s hard work.  We get the payment for the deeds done in the Spirit.  We get authority over the nations.  We get the morning star.

Psalm 140:6-13

“The Lord secures justice for the poor.”

Saturday 10 December

Zechariah 12:1-14:21

“When he prophecies, his own parents will stab him”.  Eeek.  I’ve never heard anyone quote that verse before!  I just can’t think what to say about it.  Nor can I think of much to say about this plague that will rot people’s flesh while they stand, nor the lack of rain for the Egyptians who don’t celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.  And, while we are on about it, I have not a single syllable of sense to utter about the lack of Canaanites in the house of the Lord.  But, while I am lost on the detail, I am deeply convicted that the overarching message is one of the establishment of justice in this real world of ours.  Maybe one of the greatest tragedies about all this “End Time” discussion has been the growing idea that it relates to bizarre, supernatural events in a distant, supernatural place at a distant, slightly-supernatural time.  But that is closer to Return of the Jedi than the prophecies of the bible.  The coming day of the Lord that Zechariah spoke about is so scary and hard to digest because it is so earthy, so grounded in everyday experience of life.  The Day of the Lord will come on this earth and will have implications for this earth.  It is not a ‘heavenly’ thing but an earthly one.  The Day of the Lord is the justice of God - the way of God - coming to the Gerkin and the ferries on the channel and the Syrian parliament and the Masai tribes.  The Day of the Lord is Immanuel - God with us.  The Day of the Lord is two bits of wood on a hill called Golgotha.  The Day of the Lord is a stone rolled away from a burial cave.  The Day of the Lord is the sound of a mighty wind around the heads of the early believers.  The Day of the Lord is the Roman swords  slashing and conquering the stronghold of Jerusalem.  And the Day of the Lord is still to come.  Injustice still reigns.  Poverty still remains.  Sin and idolatry and arrogance are doing their thing.  And God will come again to sort them out.  And to bring his goodness to bear on this land.

Revelation 2:1-17

Hear me.  You are doing great! Good job!  But there is something that is not right.  Repent from it!  Then listen to me!  The best is yet to come!  It is the same format for each of the three letters to the three churches and I believe it is the same format as the word of the Lord to us.  He invites us to lean towards Him.  He is the one speaking, he is taking the initiative - and he wants us to start by listening.  If you are anything like me, that takes a moment to act upon, it is not something that I naturally do.  And once we listen he lavishes us with such bewildering encouragement that we start to think that he has the wrong guy.  But the look in his eye and the warmth of his tone gradually assure us that he really means us.  Again, if you are like me, you may find that hard to take in.  But you really must - give it the time it deserves.  And then, when we are safe in his arms he begins in his love to cut out the cancerous cells.  It’s like pulling grass-seeds out of my parent’s dog’s ears.  He identifies the seed - the sin - and he asks our permission to tackle it.  Our repentance is our ‘yes’ and by his forgiveness he pulls it out.  We need to stay alert to our sin.  We need to be quick to repent.  And after the repentance comes a further invitation to intimacy, a second request to be still.  And He closes the conversation with an even greater promise, a sweeter kind of word, a yet more brilliant hope.

Proverbs 30:1-10

“give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread”

Friday 9 December

Zechariah 9:1-11:17

This tells of a day when the earth and the people of the earth will be shaken up like the letters in Boggle and will fall to spell “holyisthelordalmighty” (which I’m sure you’d agree would be the most awesome boggle word in the history of the game).  All the stories of the Old Testament, all the experiences of the people of God have been nudges and winks towards the one big event that will occur.  They have whispered of the coming peace for the nations, they have alluded to the ultimate destruction of despotic powers, they have screamed and bellowed about God’s saving desires.  And like someone looking at a reflection in a rippling pond Zechariah sees some bits of this day very clearly, and other bits not really at all.  He sees a gentle king riding on a donkey, he sees the breaking of the old covenant for the ransom of 30 silver coins.  He sees anger burning against the former shepherds and the Lord Almighty himself now caring for his flock.  He sees false powers being torn down and the rule of the gentle king extending from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.  And he sees peace for the nations and the strengthening of God’s people and restoration for them and compassion from their God.  Zechariah sees all these things happening on a day in the future.  But what he didn’t see (or at least what we don’t pick up from his words) was that this day would actually be two days.  Two long days, with the first one being about 40 years in length.  The Day of the Lord seen by Zechariah began sometime around Jesus’ baptism and it probably ended on the day in AD70 when Jerusalem fell.  It saw the establishment of the new king, the destruction of the temple (and all the trappings of  the covenant that went with that) and the promise of peace beginning to spread to the nations.  We have seen the First Day - it revolved around Jesus.  He was shown to be king.  But we have not yet had the Second Day.  We continue to wait for the job to be finished.  We continue to wait for Jesus to return.

Revelation 1:1-20

Wow.  That is quite a start.  It feels a bit like when you go bowling and your first throw is a strike.  You stare in slight disbelief, a little tweak of a smile in the corner of your mouth and you begin to hope that this will be awesome.  So let us start by laying out just how awesome this book is.  And to do that I think we need to get one thing straight right at the start - Revelation is not a book about the future.  Revelation is not really about the end of the world.  Sure it does contain some stuff about what is coming but the main thrust of this book and the adrenalin-pumping truth that is focuses on is what is going on now.  Revelation gives us an eye on God and his counsel, right now, this very day, this very moment while you sit here reading.  Revelation lets us squint with hands over our eyes at the unapproachable light, at the one whose face is like the sun shining in all its brilliance.  And in doing so we realise how teeny weeny we are.  Revelation shows us that our perspective is too tiny, that our human-centered analysis has been grossly misplaced.  Revelation reminds us again that there is only one Almighty and He sure as heck isn’t me and He ain’t even here on this earth.  Revelation even scorns our human obsession with time; with what is happening in the future at what we’re doing at 4.30.  It lifts our chin to the Alpha and Omega who was and is and is to come - the one who watches clocks spin round like they are fake dials on a toy.  He is no more dictated to by time than a builder is dictated to by his drill.  He is the one who loves us.  He is the one who has freed us.  He is the one who has made us his kingdom and priests to serve him forever.  So let’s fix our eyes on Him now and worship him now and fall as if dead before him now.  He is the Living One.  He is the firstborn from the dead.  And he is the ruler of the kings of the earth.

Psalm 140:1-5

Yeah, please do keep me from people who stir up war every day.