Monday 5 December

Daniel 11:36-12:13

It’s a bit like riding fast down a hill on a bike.  While it is happening you get the windchill on your chest, bugs on the face, your eyes just focus on the road and you start to feel your pulse pounding in your head.  Your chance of being able to describe the view is very very low.  You could say with Daniel “I heard, but I did not understand”.  But then the incline ends, your heart calms down, you lift your head and you look around.  And you find yourself in a different place.  You feel in your body the exhilaration of the ride.  And that is how I feel now.  Daniel’s dreams were scary at times.  The spiritual adrenalin flowed.  But now they are over I feel like I am in a different place.  The chaos of the princes and the ‘times’ and the ‘sevens’ has passed and I can see how it ends - it ends with resurrection.  It ends with all of us rising from the dust.  It ends on Jesus’ terms.  That is the new panorama before us.  The end will come when God wants it to come and how God wants it to come.  And when it comes Jesus will bring complete and utter eternal justice - the wicked will get the contempt their acts deserve and the righteous will get the inheritance they don’t deserve.  That is the main and the plain in this book.  That is the message to take home.  History is arcing towards the judgement of Jesus.  All people one day will kneel before his throne.  And neither furnaces nor lions nor exile nor foreign gods nor death nor life can separate us from that fact.  God has everlasting dominion and that will never be destroyed.

1 John 5:1-21

“He who has the Son has life” (5:12).  Life is the shore that the love of God blows us towards.  The early Christians didn’t think the simple word ‘life’ summed up the sheer magnificent extravagance of what was on offer so they put the word “eternal” in front of it.  But today the phrase ‘eternal life’ can seem a bit religious and dry.  It shouldn’t.  What we are talking about with Jesus is the most exquisite and long-lasting pleasure available on this earth.  What we are talking about is life in all its fullness.  Breakfasting in the most satisfying way possible.  Having deep and vivid friendships.  Truly understanding who we are.  Knowing peace while sat on a train.  Overflowing with joy while sitting on the toilet.  Getting out into the world and exploring its beauty and its potential and our role in its redemption.  This is what we have in Jesus.  Let us firmly resist any attempt to scale this back and shackle us down.  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  But let us also resist those common voices who try to turn life into the superficial - “more gold”, “more comfort”, “more success”.  Oh no, that is not the rich, vibrant, verdant life that Jesus offers.  They are mere trinkets.  It is a fuller pleasure than that.  It is a deeper and more eternal pleasure than that.  God has given us eternal life.  It would be rude not to enjoy it.

Psalm 139:1-10

“O Lord you have searched me and you know me.”  Oh bum.  I guess I might as well stop pretending then.