DAILY BYTE
[Parts of today’s devotion have been adapted from John Ortberg].
Lewis Smedes, a renowned ethics professor and author, used to love to ask his students if they wanted to go to heaven when they died. Almost everyone would raise a hand. Then he would ask, “Be honest, now – who would like to go right not, today, before the sun goes down?”
There would be a little more ambiguity at this point. A few would raise their hands, but most people would opt for that moment to be delayed for quite a few years!
There is a final form to this question however. How many of you would like for the earth to get fixed up ... right now? No more babies with bloated bellies from hunger. No more stories about corporate greed and corruption. No more guilty, awkward distance between people of different races. No more souls tortured by addictions of one form or the other. No more battered children. No more ambulances. No more hearing a siren and wondering who its going for.
No more caskets. No more soldiers. No more wars. No obituary writers. Everybody has a place they love to live. Everybody has work they love to do – that brings joy and fulfilment. Everybody has people they love to befriend – connections that feel like family – no more orphans and widows.
How many would like for every sword to be beaten into plough shares? For the lions to lie down with the lambs? For peace to break out and justice to flow like water? For the defeat of death and the triumph of joy? And over all of this for there to be a God that we can all lovingly and meaningfully abide in and love each other through.
Well, if you want all of that then you want what it is that Jesus always talked about. Then you want heaven, and then you can become gripped and inspired by what is to come. You can be filled with joy and hope as you rejoice in God’s great plan to save not just you and me, but to redeem all of creation itself.
And doesn’t that sound good?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Below you will find the prayer of St. Francis which powerfully sums up everything that we have been talking about for the last two days. Pray it constantly over the course of this weekend as a way of allowing your life to become a channel or conduit for God’s Kingdom.
Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me bring you love;
Where there is injury, your healing pow'r,
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.
Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there's despair in life let me bring hope;
Where there is darkness, - only light,
And where there's sadness, ever joy.
O Spirit, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul - .
Make me a channel of your peace.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
In giving to all that we receive,
And in dying that we're born to eternal life.
Monday 25 May 2009
Thursday 28th May - Rethinking heaven & hell – It’s not just ‘up there’ and it’s not just ‘for later’
DAILY BYTE
The final and very common misconception regarding heaven that we shall deal with can be summarised in the phrase – it’s not just ‘up there’ and it’s not just ‘for later’. If you have become used to envisioning heaven as a place separate from earth, somewhere far away, way beyond the blue, well that’s not how the Bible sees it, not at all.
As the celebrated New Testament scholar, Bishop N.T. Wright reminds us:
“The early Christians, and their fellow first-century Jews, were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet.”
The Hebrew view was that heaven was all around us and that heaven and earth are two different dimensions that interlocked and interweaved in some mysterious but magnificent way. Significantly, the final picture given us in Revelation 21 is of a marriage between a new heaven and a new earth. Just as the spiritual and material are wonderfully married in all human beings already, so one day heaven and earth will find their ultimate completion in each other.
The cosmology of the Ancient Near East believed that the structure of the universe was such that above the earth there were no fewer than seven heavens. The first heaven referred to the atmosphere around our heads, and quite literally the air that we breathe. This is a really important distinction because if we operate on the understanding that heaven is separate and far away, then when Jesus tells us to pray to ‘Our Father in heaven’ it actually means, ‘Our Father who is far away.’ However, because Jesus saw heaven as all around us (including both immediate space and all the vastness of our universe), then he is actually teaching us to pray something like, ‘Our Father who not only fills the entire universe but is also right here with us, close at hand.’
So because heaven is not just ‘up there,’ it dramatically effects how we should be acting right now. We learn that God’s Kingdom, the sheer heaven of it, is not just for tomorrow – some future date to come - but can be known, lived, breathed, experienced in the right here and right now. (As our Sacraments remind us – we can experience ‘foretastes’ of the heavenly banquets to come).
For you see, everything that we do (or don’t do) really, really matters because we either bring something more of heaven or more of hell into the here and now by how we live: Either more of the wealth of love, grace and joyful God-given relationship, or more of the hell of selfishness, pride and regretful loneliness. Again, it was C.S. Lewis who warned us that even in our very smallest choices, we daily transform ourselves either into a little more of a heavenly creature or a hellish one.
Our mission is to bring something of the hope and goodness of heaven into the right here and right now!
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, open the eyes of my soul to see and recognise that heaven surrounds me! Your loving presence, your goodness and grace are as near to me as every breath I take. May your Kingdom come and may your will be done in me just as it is in heaven. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Revelation 21: 1-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
The final and very common misconception regarding heaven that we shall deal with can be summarised in the phrase – it’s not just ‘up there’ and it’s not just ‘for later’. If you have become used to envisioning heaven as a place separate from earth, somewhere far away, way beyond the blue, well that’s not how the Bible sees it, not at all.
As the celebrated New Testament scholar, Bishop N.T. Wright reminds us:
“The early Christians, and their fellow first-century Jews, were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet.”
The Hebrew view was that heaven was all around us and that heaven and earth are two different dimensions that interlocked and interweaved in some mysterious but magnificent way. Significantly, the final picture given us in Revelation 21 is of a marriage between a new heaven and a new earth. Just as the spiritual and material are wonderfully married in all human beings already, so one day heaven and earth will find their ultimate completion in each other.
The cosmology of the Ancient Near East believed that the structure of the universe was such that above the earth there were no fewer than seven heavens. The first heaven referred to the atmosphere around our heads, and quite literally the air that we breathe. This is a really important distinction because if we operate on the understanding that heaven is separate and far away, then when Jesus tells us to pray to ‘Our Father in heaven’ it actually means, ‘Our Father who is far away.’ However, because Jesus saw heaven as all around us (including both immediate space and all the vastness of our universe), then he is actually teaching us to pray something like, ‘Our Father who not only fills the entire universe but is also right here with us, close at hand.’
So because heaven is not just ‘up there,’ it dramatically effects how we should be acting right now. We learn that God’s Kingdom, the sheer heaven of it, is not just for tomorrow – some future date to come - but can be known, lived, breathed, experienced in the right here and right now. (As our Sacraments remind us – we can experience ‘foretastes’ of the heavenly banquets to come).
For you see, everything that we do (or don’t do) really, really matters because we either bring something more of heaven or more of hell into the here and now by how we live: Either more of the wealth of love, grace and joyful God-given relationship, or more of the hell of selfishness, pride and regretful loneliness. Again, it was C.S. Lewis who warned us that even in our very smallest choices, we daily transform ourselves either into a little more of a heavenly creature or a hellish one.
Our mission is to bring something of the hope and goodness of heaven into the right here and right now!
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, open the eyes of my soul to see and recognise that heaven surrounds me! Your loving presence, your goodness and grace are as near to me as every breath I take. May your Kingdom come and may your will be done in me just as it is in heaven. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Revelation 21: 1-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Wednesday 27th May - Rethinking heaven & hell – It’s not just streets of gold or lakes of fire!
DAILY BYTE
What we often tend to forget when speaking of heaven and hell, is that the writers of Scripture were attempting to express to us what actually defies description. For example, if you had to describe a car to someone who lived thousands of years ago, how would you do it? Well, you would have to use symbols.
“It’s something like a giant metal box that glides along on four smooth, round objects,” you might well say.
You would have to use images of what they know, to convey something that they don’t know, (and even then your description would probably fall short of fully describing what a car is really like).
This is precisely what the authors of Scripture are attempting to do when it comes to heaven and hell. They make symbolic attempts to express the inexpressible. C.S. Lewis reminds us that if we want to take these symbols literally, and complain that heaven is nothing more than sitting around on clouds playing harps, then we might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, he intended for us to lay eggs.
So when some common images are used of heaven, like streets paved with gold, pearl-lined gates, or casting crowns, then we are being reminded that heaven is inexpressibly beautiful, and all that is truly worth something in this world will be found there too.
Remembering of course, that the treasures in heaven Jesus commanded us to store up have far more to do with relationships and love than with actual silver and gold. Thus, images like the streets of gold are symbolic attempts to express the incredible beauty of the joyful relationship with God and others that we will know in heaven.
As soon as we move onto some of the hell imagery in Scripture, we might begin to grapple with another very common human question, which is:
‘Why would a loving God allow hell to exist?’
Again, let’s not forget that these hell images are attempts to explain the unexplainable. The lakes of fire and places of total darkness, are actually meant to be symbols and metaphors of what life will be without God’s saving and loving presence – of being burnt up by regrets that you are no longer in a position to resolve, or of suffering in the darkness of your own pride and selfishness.
Today’s focus reading reminds us that God is not willing that any should perish, but would have all come to repentance. God will always be trying to reach us and to connect with us, BUT he will never take away our choice to say ‘no’ to him because that would defeat the framework of true love ... free choice.
So it is possible to be cut off from God, not because he is unloving but precisely because God IS loving. To take away our choice to decide for ourselves and to force us into relationship is no relationship at all. That’s called abuse. God will not do that.
As C.S. Lewis points out, on judgement day we will either say to God ‘your will be done,’ OR God will say to us ‘your will be done.’ Lewis goes onto affirm that God sends no one to these places of emptiness, but that we choose them for ourselves. The only lock on hell’s door, Lewis maintains, is on the inside.
Just as heaven involves images like streets of gold and pearly gates to reflect the wealth of love and relationship, so the images of hell are opposite – destroyed cities, burning fires of regret, and the empty wastes of self-imposed loneliness.
We are being asked to imagine being so locked up in our own pride and self-centredness that we become incapable of meaningful relationship.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, help me to move past any cartoonish images of heaven and hell I might have, and to understand more clearly the images and symbols that Scripture uses in a way that deepens my faith and enlarges my heart. Amen
FOCUS READING
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
What we often tend to forget when speaking of heaven and hell, is that the writers of Scripture were attempting to express to us what actually defies description. For example, if you had to describe a car to someone who lived thousands of years ago, how would you do it? Well, you would have to use symbols.
“It’s something like a giant metal box that glides along on four smooth, round objects,” you might well say.
You would have to use images of what they know, to convey something that they don’t know, (and even then your description would probably fall short of fully describing what a car is really like).
This is precisely what the authors of Scripture are attempting to do when it comes to heaven and hell. They make symbolic attempts to express the inexpressible. C.S. Lewis reminds us that if we want to take these symbols literally, and complain that heaven is nothing more than sitting around on clouds playing harps, then we might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, he intended for us to lay eggs.
So when some common images are used of heaven, like streets paved with gold, pearl-lined gates, or casting crowns, then we are being reminded that heaven is inexpressibly beautiful, and all that is truly worth something in this world will be found there too.
Remembering of course, that the treasures in heaven Jesus commanded us to store up have far more to do with relationships and love than with actual silver and gold. Thus, images like the streets of gold are symbolic attempts to express the incredible beauty of the joyful relationship with God and others that we will know in heaven.
As soon as we move onto some of the hell imagery in Scripture, we might begin to grapple with another very common human question, which is:
‘Why would a loving God allow hell to exist?’
Again, let’s not forget that these hell images are attempts to explain the unexplainable. The lakes of fire and places of total darkness, are actually meant to be symbols and metaphors of what life will be without God’s saving and loving presence – of being burnt up by regrets that you are no longer in a position to resolve, or of suffering in the darkness of your own pride and selfishness.
Today’s focus reading reminds us that God is not willing that any should perish, but would have all come to repentance. God will always be trying to reach us and to connect with us, BUT he will never take away our choice to say ‘no’ to him because that would defeat the framework of true love ... free choice.
So it is possible to be cut off from God, not because he is unloving but precisely because God IS loving. To take away our choice to decide for ourselves and to force us into relationship is no relationship at all. That’s called abuse. God will not do that.
As C.S. Lewis points out, on judgement day we will either say to God ‘your will be done,’ OR God will say to us ‘your will be done.’ Lewis goes onto affirm that God sends no one to these places of emptiness, but that we choose them for ourselves. The only lock on hell’s door, Lewis maintains, is on the inside.
Just as heaven involves images like streets of gold and pearly gates to reflect the wealth of love and relationship, so the images of hell are opposite – destroyed cities, burning fires of regret, and the empty wastes of self-imposed loneliness.
We are being asked to imagine being so locked up in our own pride and self-centredness that we become incapable of meaningful relationship.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, help me to move past any cartoonish images of heaven and hell I might have, and to understand more clearly the images and symbols that Scripture uses in a way that deepens my faith and enlarges my heart. Amen
FOCUS READING
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Tuesday 26th May - Rethinking Heaven & Hell – It’s not just about me and it’s not just spiritual
DAILY BYTE
At some point in time, Christian notions of salvation became both incredibly selfish and individualistic: Jesus was presented as nothing more than a passport guaranteeing entry to a better country. This kind of thinking tends to see the earth much like it was presented in the movie Wall-E - as being so trashed and messy that it would be better off for humanity to leave it all behind. So the plan is that one day Jesus will arrive to whisk Christians off somewhere better while the rest of it be damned.
In the 80’s there was a popular book called ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ which summarized this tendency – earth is gonna be smashed so get on the heaven bus while you still can. As the Christian rock pioneer once sang, we’re only visiting this planet.
Based on these assumptions, Christians have at times been pretty sour on creation. We have not cared for or stewarded creation as we are commanded to do in Genesis, but rather treated everything as disposable products ready to be used and consumed. After all, we think to ourselves, it’s all going to burn anyway!
You may be surprised to learn that this kind of thinking is actually thoroughly un-Biblical! As Romans 8 reminds us the WHOLE of creation is groaning, awaiting its final redemption.
John Ortberg writes that biblically speaking, “Redemption is always the redemption of all creation. God never creates something in order to destroy it, and if it goes wrong he intends to redeem it”. Revelation 21, which is a vision of the end of all things, provides a picture not of us disappearing in the nick of time whilst the earth is engulfed with flames, but of heaven coming down to earth! This passage of Scripture describes a new heaven and a new earth which does not mean a different heaven and earth but rather that the originals been redeemed, restored and transformed. Much like the Bible describes us as ‘new men or women’ after we have been re-born in Christ.
Yesterday, I mentioned that we would be focusing on a few different misconceptions of salvation, and this brings us to our first, which is that salvation is NOT JUST ABOUT US! God’s saving work is intended for all creation itself. This thought leads us directly into another very common misconception regarding salvation which is that it is NOT JUST A SPIRITUAL MATTER.
We imagine heaven and hell to be places where our spirits will exist but our bodies remain behind. This thinking comes not out of Scripture but out of the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plato who believed that our bodies, and in fact all material things, were inherently evil and should be done away with – thus salvation could be seen entirely as a spiritual affair.
Central to the New Testament promise is that we will all experience a bodily resurrection (as Jesus did). Nothing will be wasted, all will be redeemed. Where our bodies have been touched by suffering or evil, they will be healed and restored. In other words, God plans not just to save our spirits from death but our bodies as well!
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says that our present bodies contain the seeds of the bodies we will receive once death has passed. I am not sure what exactly our bodies will look like (or whether we will be taller or thinner!) but what the Scriptures are clear on is that we will have bodies and not just spirits. Essentially, all creation (all material things) are intrinsically linked to God’s great salvation plan.
If any of this confuses you, why don’t you spend some time carefully reading through 1 Corinthians 15 (where Paul develops his teaching of bodily resurrection). Jot down and pray over any questions you may have.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, sometimes my understanding of salvation is both selfish and individualistic. Help me to see how your dream is to redeem and restore all things and that you do not view material things as inherently evil, but rather you declare them to be good. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Roman 8:19-24 NRSV
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
At some point in time, Christian notions of salvation became both incredibly selfish and individualistic: Jesus was presented as nothing more than a passport guaranteeing entry to a better country. This kind of thinking tends to see the earth much like it was presented in the movie Wall-E - as being so trashed and messy that it would be better off for humanity to leave it all behind. So the plan is that one day Jesus will arrive to whisk Christians off somewhere better while the rest of it be damned.
In the 80’s there was a popular book called ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ which summarized this tendency – earth is gonna be smashed so get on the heaven bus while you still can. As the Christian rock pioneer once sang, we’re only visiting this planet.
Based on these assumptions, Christians have at times been pretty sour on creation. We have not cared for or stewarded creation as we are commanded to do in Genesis, but rather treated everything as disposable products ready to be used and consumed. After all, we think to ourselves, it’s all going to burn anyway!
You may be surprised to learn that this kind of thinking is actually thoroughly un-Biblical! As Romans 8 reminds us the WHOLE of creation is groaning, awaiting its final redemption.
John Ortberg writes that biblically speaking, “Redemption is always the redemption of all creation. God never creates something in order to destroy it, and if it goes wrong he intends to redeem it”. Revelation 21, which is a vision of the end of all things, provides a picture not of us disappearing in the nick of time whilst the earth is engulfed with flames, but of heaven coming down to earth! This passage of Scripture describes a new heaven and a new earth which does not mean a different heaven and earth but rather that the originals been redeemed, restored and transformed. Much like the Bible describes us as ‘new men or women’ after we have been re-born in Christ.
Yesterday, I mentioned that we would be focusing on a few different misconceptions of salvation, and this brings us to our first, which is that salvation is NOT JUST ABOUT US! God’s saving work is intended for all creation itself. This thought leads us directly into another very common misconception regarding salvation which is that it is NOT JUST A SPIRITUAL MATTER.
We imagine heaven and hell to be places where our spirits will exist but our bodies remain behind. This thinking comes not out of Scripture but out of the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plato who believed that our bodies, and in fact all material things, were inherently evil and should be done away with – thus salvation could be seen entirely as a spiritual affair.
Central to the New Testament promise is that we will all experience a bodily resurrection (as Jesus did). Nothing will be wasted, all will be redeemed. Where our bodies have been touched by suffering or evil, they will be healed and restored. In other words, God plans not just to save our spirits from death but our bodies as well!
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says that our present bodies contain the seeds of the bodies we will receive once death has passed. I am not sure what exactly our bodies will look like (or whether we will be taller or thinner!) but what the Scriptures are clear on is that we will have bodies and not just spirits. Essentially, all creation (all material things) are intrinsically linked to God’s great salvation plan.
If any of this confuses you, why don’t you spend some time carefully reading through 1 Corinthians 15 (where Paul develops his teaching of bodily resurrection). Jot down and pray over any questions you may have.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, sometimes my understanding of salvation is both selfish and individualistic. Help me to see how your dream is to redeem and restore all things and that you do not view material things as inherently evil, but rather you declare them to be good. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Roman 8:19-24 NRSV
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Monday 25th May - Salvation – Rethinking Heaven and Hell
DAILY BYTE
A wise old colleague of mine used to love to say, “Well, the mortality rate is still 100% you know.” The reason, I think, he used to say this so often is because we live in a culture of such denial.
We like to pretend that the more scary and horrible sides of life don’t exist, and top of all these is the probable likelihood of our own passing. We shut death away into mortuaries and hospitals; we limit our acknowledgement of it to quick in-and-out twenty minute memorial services.
All this denial and pretending that death just-isn’t-so, means that we are not a culture that knows a lot about heaven and hell. In fact, it seems that most Christian’s understanding of heaven and hell seems more rooted in bad ‘Peter and the pearly gates’ jokes, Far-side cartoons, misconceptions and myths than it is in actual Scripture.
As a result, most people just don’t seem to get excited about the concept of heaven, and really it is because we don’t properly understand it that heaven does not grip, stir and inspire us as it should. And as for that ‘other place’ – hell – well, most of us feel far more comfortable denying its existence. It just sounds ghastly, mean, rooted in superstition and plain un-pc. We worry that it knocks the concept of a loving God right off balance.
What’s more, the church hasn’t really helped with this at all. Since Medieval times, the church has tended to promote unreal, watery, pie-in-the-sky concepts of heaven on one hand, and turn-or-burn, graphic images of hell on the other. Some of you may be bearing the scars of these. You may have heard hell talked about in ways that are so manipulative and distorted that it pushes all kinds of buttons in you. I am aware of that, but can you see that this is exactly why it is so important that we do talk about these things?
This is because the mortality rate IS STILL 100%, and so questions like what happens to us when we die, and what should we do about it in the meantime are really important. I am convinced that if we study what the Bible teaches and begin to rethink some of our concepts regarding salvation (most particularly in regard to heaven and hell), then they might begin to grip and inspire us more as they should; and lead us into a deeper and more meaningful hope.
Through the rest of this week we will be dealing with some of the more common misconceptions about heaven and hell that seem prevalent in our society. We will then allow Scripture to guide us forward in our thinking.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, I give thanks that you are a God who saves us. You have always been reaching out to us and drawing us to you. Help me understand a little more what this means for me – not just for when I die, but also for right here and now. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Psalm 27:1 NRSV
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
A wise old colleague of mine used to love to say, “Well, the mortality rate is still 100% you know.” The reason, I think, he used to say this so often is because we live in a culture of such denial.
We like to pretend that the more scary and horrible sides of life don’t exist, and top of all these is the probable likelihood of our own passing. We shut death away into mortuaries and hospitals; we limit our acknowledgement of it to quick in-and-out twenty minute memorial services.
All this denial and pretending that death just-isn’t-so, means that we are not a culture that knows a lot about heaven and hell. In fact, it seems that most Christian’s understanding of heaven and hell seems more rooted in bad ‘Peter and the pearly gates’ jokes, Far-side cartoons, misconceptions and myths than it is in actual Scripture.
As a result, most people just don’t seem to get excited about the concept of heaven, and really it is because we don’t properly understand it that heaven does not grip, stir and inspire us as it should. And as for that ‘other place’ – hell – well, most of us feel far more comfortable denying its existence. It just sounds ghastly, mean, rooted in superstition and plain un-pc. We worry that it knocks the concept of a loving God right off balance.
What’s more, the church hasn’t really helped with this at all. Since Medieval times, the church has tended to promote unreal, watery, pie-in-the-sky concepts of heaven on one hand, and turn-or-burn, graphic images of hell on the other. Some of you may be bearing the scars of these. You may have heard hell talked about in ways that are so manipulative and distorted that it pushes all kinds of buttons in you. I am aware of that, but can you see that this is exactly why it is so important that we do talk about these things?
This is because the mortality rate IS STILL 100%, and so questions like what happens to us when we die, and what should we do about it in the meantime are really important. I am convinced that if we study what the Bible teaches and begin to rethink some of our concepts regarding salvation (most particularly in regard to heaven and hell), then they might begin to grip and inspire us more as they should; and lead us into a deeper and more meaningful hope.
Through the rest of this week we will be dealing with some of the more common misconceptions about heaven and hell that seem prevalent in our society. We will then allow Scripture to guide us forward in our thinking.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, I give thanks that you are a God who saves us. You have always been reaching out to us and drawing us to you. Help me understand a little more what this means for me – not just for when I die, but also for right here and now. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Psalm 27:1 NRSV
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Wednesday 20 May 2009
Friday 22nd May - Occasions to love God
DAILY BYTE
We’ve discussed this week some of the ways that God’s love abides in us and how we share that love with others.
A lot of songs about Jesus being our friend and lover can get quite campy. But, if you really think about what it means to be a friend and lover, it’s actually anything but campy – it’s quite daunting. A good friend emailed recently and said, “I am reminded today of how most people are lucky if they make it through life with just three good friends.” And it’s true – that friendship can be so challenging that we are blessed if we make it through our lives with a few that survive!
But being a friend and a person who loves is also divinely beautiful because it is only through God that we are able to love those who can seem different or unlovable to us.
During seminary, we came across a lot of people in ministry who were challenging to love. And our standard catchphrase was, “Well, I only have to love him with the love of Jesus.”
Which, as we know, happens to be the greatest love of all. It truly is only through the love of God that we can both give and receive such great love and reconciliation from those whose love we want to reject. It is through God’s love and grace that we can allow people who have opposed us and hurt us to help fill our buckets, becoming through Christ, a part of what makes us whole, completely fulfilled.
According to the Scriptures, Jesus never “fell” in love. That phrase really makes it sound like people accidentally trip and bonk their heads. No, as far as we know, Jesus never was “in love” and never got married, despite The Da Vinci Code’s best attempts to make us wonder. But Jesus lived filled to overflowing - out of the source of God’s love in friendships with people he intentionally chose – people who were often unlikely.
Jesus didn’t go looking for these tax collectors and fishermen and women of the city, thinking to himself, “Now, what does that person have that will benefit my ministry and life.” - Thinking things like, maybe Zacchaeus can get me a substantial, but legal, break on my taxes…
No, Jesus chose those whom God had created and loved, and he abided every day with them. He lovingly sacrificed everything for them so that they – and we – might love one another. Hannah Arendt said in her book on Love and St. Augustine that “every beloved is only an occasion to love God.”
And this is at the heart of the gospel, which says, living out of the source of God’s agape love is for those who have “fallen in love” and it is also for those who think they cannot love or be loved. It is for those who think they are complete and those who are continually grasping at others and things to try and fill the voids.
And so, no matter who you are, may the words “faith, hope, and love abide, and the greatest of these is love” live in your heart today, drawing you closer to Christ’s sacrificed heart so that it may complete you and bring you fullness of joy so that you may learn to lay down your life, living out of the source of God’s love for others.
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God, you have created us simply because you love us. Help us to recognize that your love is the core of all life. It is what makes us complete, filling us with joy. And so, help us to soak in that love, pour it out on others, and keep soaking it in even more for as long as we live. Amen.
We’ve discussed this week some of the ways that God’s love abides in us and how we share that love with others.
A lot of songs about Jesus being our friend and lover can get quite campy. But, if you really think about what it means to be a friend and lover, it’s actually anything but campy – it’s quite daunting. A good friend emailed recently and said, “I am reminded today of how most people are lucky if they make it through life with just three good friends.” And it’s true – that friendship can be so challenging that we are blessed if we make it through our lives with a few that survive!
But being a friend and a person who loves is also divinely beautiful because it is only through God that we are able to love those who can seem different or unlovable to us.
During seminary, we came across a lot of people in ministry who were challenging to love. And our standard catchphrase was, “Well, I only have to love him with the love of Jesus.”
Which, as we know, happens to be the greatest love of all. It truly is only through the love of God that we can both give and receive such great love and reconciliation from those whose love we want to reject. It is through God’s love and grace that we can allow people who have opposed us and hurt us to help fill our buckets, becoming through Christ, a part of what makes us whole, completely fulfilled.
According to the Scriptures, Jesus never “fell” in love. That phrase really makes it sound like people accidentally trip and bonk their heads. No, as far as we know, Jesus never was “in love” and never got married, despite The Da Vinci Code’s best attempts to make us wonder. But Jesus lived filled to overflowing - out of the source of God’s love in friendships with people he intentionally chose – people who were often unlikely.
Jesus didn’t go looking for these tax collectors and fishermen and women of the city, thinking to himself, “Now, what does that person have that will benefit my ministry and life.” - Thinking things like, maybe Zacchaeus can get me a substantial, but legal, break on my taxes…
No, Jesus chose those whom God had created and loved, and he abided every day with them. He lovingly sacrificed everything for them so that they – and we – might love one another. Hannah Arendt said in her book on Love and St. Augustine that “every beloved is only an occasion to love God.”
And this is at the heart of the gospel, which says, living out of the source of God’s agape love is for those who have “fallen in love” and it is also for those who think they cannot love or be loved. It is for those who think they are complete and those who are continually grasping at others and things to try and fill the voids.
And so, no matter who you are, may the words “faith, hope, and love abide, and the greatest of these is love” live in your heart today, drawing you closer to Christ’s sacrificed heart so that it may complete you and bring you fullness of joy so that you may learn to lay down your life, living out of the source of God’s love for others.
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God, you have created us simply because you love us. Help us to recognize that your love is the core of all life. It is what makes us complete, filling us with joy. And so, help us to soak in that love, pour it out on others, and keep soaking it in even more for as long as we live. Amen.
Thursday 21 May - Becoming complete
DAILY BYTE
So, how do we do it? How do we “abide” in God’s love?
Well, in John, Jesus says, if you “pay attention to” my commandments, you will abide in my love. And what are Jesus’ commandments? To love one another, as God has loved you.
It’s like a circle – we’re back where we started. You cannot love or receive love from others until you begin the long journey of grasping onto the deep love of God that remains with you at all times.
Jesus makes this comment three times in John – he really means that we should love one another as God has loved us – that the source of our love for others throughout our lives is derived from his love for us.
Loving others is sometimes draining, frustrating, and downright confusing. Sometimes it seems impossible to love those we’re supposed to love most and even more ridiculous to love those whom the world calls unlovable.
But, Jesus has already loved us all with the greatest love possible. He laid down his life. We are probably not going to be doing anything so drastic, but he has done it for us, so that as we give our lives to one another in relationships, no matter how hard they can be, we scoop our love out of the bottomless well of Christ’s – but only if we are allowing ourselves to be refilled with Christ’s love for us, as well.
If we constantly give without drinking in more of God’s love, then it’s like trying to pour water out of a bucket with holes in it. There is no vibrant life in that broken trickle of water, and the bucket is never able to be completely full.
This is the main reason we read the scriptures – to absorb and live in God’s love, learning how to share it with others. It’s why we go to church – to drink in love through the songs, through eating and drinking together in Holy Communion, through listening to love preached through the sermon, and through reading God’s words of love to us. If you feel today like this writing is just a flood of love – then GOOD. Drink it in.
Jesus says, he is telling us these things about living out of his source of love so that our joy may be complete. Jerry Maguire might have said, “You complete me.” But, no one person completes me. You’re not complete – we were made to be in relationship on a journey toward becoming complete through God.
And could there be a more joyful journey? It is a journey that allows us to glimpse snippets of heaven through the people we love, through the people we call friends, and even, surprisingly, through the people we despise or misunderstand. How are you abiding in the journey of God’s love?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a (NRSV)
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
So, how do we do it? How do we “abide” in God’s love?
Well, in John, Jesus says, if you “pay attention to” my commandments, you will abide in my love. And what are Jesus’ commandments? To love one another, as God has loved you.
It’s like a circle – we’re back where we started. You cannot love or receive love from others until you begin the long journey of grasping onto the deep love of God that remains with you at all times.
Jesus makes this comment three times in John – he really means that we should love one another as God has loved us – that the source of our love for others throughout our lives is derived from his love for us.
Loving others is sometimes draining, frustrating, and downright confusing. Sometimes it seems impossible to love those we’re supposed to love most and even more ridiculous to love those whom the world calls unlovable.
But, Jesus has already loved us all with the greatest love possible. He laid down his life. We are probably not going to be doing anything so drastic, but he has done it for us, so that as we give our lives to one another in relationships, no matter how hard they can be, we scoop our love out of the bottomless well of Christ’s – but only if we are allowing ourselves to be refilled with Christ’s love for us, as well.
If we constantly give without drinking in more of God’s love, then it’s like trying to pour water out of a bucket with holes in it. There is no vibrant life in that broken trickle of water, and the bucket is never able to be completely full.
This is the main reason we read the scriptures – to absorb and live in God’s love, learning how to share it with others. It’s why we go to church – to drink in love through the songs, through eating and drinking together in Holy Communion, through listening to love preached through the sermon, and through reading God’s words of love to us. If you feel today like this writing is just a flood of love – then GOOD. Drink it in.
Jesus says, he is telling us these things about living out of his source of love so that our joy may be complete. Jerry Maguire might have said, “You complete me.” But, no one person completes me. You’re not complete – we were made to be in relationship on a journey toward becoming complete through God.
And could there be a more joyful journey? It is a journey that allows us to glimpse snippets of heaven through the people we love, through the people we call friends, and even, surprisingly, through the people we despise or misunderstand. How are you abiding in the journey of God’s love?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a (NRSV)
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Wednesday 20 May - Friends
DAILY BYTE
We’ve been discussing love this week, but love is certainly not confined just to romance! Long-term friendships are based on giving and receiving throughout all kinds of crises and phases in life. Some friends give more than they receive. Others seem like a bottomless pit of reception. And sometimes, in friendship we find moments of balance. It never ceases to amaze me, though, how often the people I think will offer me the least end up becoming some of the friends I love the most.
I had a friend once who refused to spend time with some other friends. And when I asked her why, she said, ‘Those people simply exhaust me. I never receive anything from them, so I just would rather spend time with people who energize me.’ And while I see her point, that we must know ourselves so that we can be intentional about how we exert ourselves and reach out to others with our finite energy and love. But, her statement has still always saddened me.
Because it seems we approach a lot of friendships and other relationships by asking what can this person give me that I don’t have already. Equally sad is the alternative often given to such selfishness - of giving everything to everyone all the time, which can also be life-zapping and unsustainable. It’s all about what I can give – how others will be helped by me.
The kind of me-centeredness about what I need and I give very quickly can lead to emptiness and resentment. Because we were made in the image of God to be in relationship, as God is in relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and as God is constantly in relationship with us.
But to live in the kinds of relationships that we are called to – the kinds that love even when there is no return – we must totally redirect our concept of love from one that is derived from us and instead realize that all love is derived from God. We must translate our language of “being in love” to a language of “living out of a source of love.”
The passage from the Gospel of John today says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” That means, that we live in and through God every moment of our lives in every relationship that we encounter. All of the ways we live in life are about love. Because all of life is about our relationship with God, and God is all love – abounding in steadfast love, the scriptures say.
A famous Gregorian chant goes, “ubi caritas et amor, deus tibi est,” which means, “Where charity and love are, there God is.” It goes on, “The love of Christ has gathered us into one. Let us exult, and in Him be joyful. Let us fear and let us love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love each other.” Some scholars think these words come from the very earliest churches, and in the history of the church, this chant has been sung during footwashing ceremonies on Holy Thursday before Christ’s crucifixion. We learn how to serve and give all the love we are able in a given moment in time through abiding in – living every moment soaking in – the love that God has already given us.
If we rush to complete ourselves with other people and things, we run out of energy and love to give. But if we live out of the source of God’s living love, then the love we give others is endless, and the love we can receive from others is endless.
Is God the source of your love?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 15:9-12 (The Message)
“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done – kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.”
We’ve been discussing love this week, but love is certainly not confined just to romance! Long-term friendships are based on giving and receiving throughout all kinds of crises and phases in life. Some friends give more than they receive. Others seem like a bottomless pit of reception. And sometimes, in friendship we find moments of balance. It never ceases to amaze me, though, how often the people I think will offer me the least end up becoming some of the friends I love the most.
I had a friend once who refused to spend time with some other friends. And when I asked her why, she said, ‘Those people simply exhaust me. I never receive anything from them, so I just would rather spend time with people who energize me.’ And while I see her point, that we must know ourselves so that we can be intentional about how we exert ourselves and reach out to others with our finite energy and love. But, her statement has still always saddened me.
Because it seems we approach a lot of friendships and other relationships by asking what can this person give me that I don’t have already. Equally sad is the alternative often given to such selfishness - of giving everything to everyone all the time, which can also be life-zapping and unsustainable. It’s all about what I can give – how others will be helped by me.
The kind of me-centeredness about what I need and I give very quickly can lead to emptiness and resentment. Because we were made in the image of God to be in relationship, as God is in relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and as God is constantly in relationship with us.
But to live in the kinds of relationships that we are called to – the kinds that love even when there is no return – we must totally redirect our concept of love from one that is derived from us and instead realize that all love is derived from God. We must translate our language of “being in love” to a language of “living out of a source of love.”
The passage from the Gospel of John today says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” That means, that we live in and through God every moment of our lives in every relationship that we encounter. All of the ways we live in life are about love. Because all of life is about our relationship with God, and God is all love – abounding in steadfast love, the scriptures say.
A famous Gregorian chant goes, “ubi caritas et amor, deus tibi est,” which means, “Where charity and love are, there God is.” It goes on, “The love of Christ has gathered us into one. Let us exult, and in Him be joyful. Let us fear and let us love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love each other.” Some scholars think these words come from the very earliest churches, and in the history of the church, this chant has been sung during footwashing ceremonies on Holy Thursday before Christ’s crucifixion. We learn how to serve and give all the love we are able in a given moment in time through abiding in – living every moment soaking in – the love that God has already given us.
If we rush to complete ourselves with other people and things, we run out of energy and love to give. But if we live out of the source of God’s living love, then the love we give others is endless, and the love we can receive from others is endless.
Is God the source of your love?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 15:9-12 (The Message)
“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done – kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.”
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Tuesday 19 May - You complete me…
DAILY BYTE
As we put the gritty reality back into love, let’s first address romantic love because that’s where all our minds immediately wander when the topic of love arises, anyway.
In high school I can remember being absolutely enamored with the movie Jerry Maguire, where Tom Cruise tells Renee Zellweger: “I love you…you complete me.” How romantic. He’s found his other half, so now because of what one person gives the other person, together they can live one full, complete life…
Even if we’re not so obvious about it, we do seem constantly to be on a search for what other people in life can give us in relationships. The prince rescues Cinderella, seeing that she has all the beauty he wants, and he offers her all the riches she’s been denied, and they are whisked away into a life that we don’t get to see but we’re meant to believe is a life where they have completed one another – so this is love… This is what makes life divine?
In the movie A Mirror has Two Faces, Barbra Streisand comments that they never tell you “Cinderella drove the Prince crazy with her obsessive need to clean the castle.”
And Babs is right. Our concepts of romantic love are incomplete in the way we focus so intensely on how others must give us what we want and what we perceive we need and must fill in our personal feelings of incomplete-ness. Now, this is not to say that all our desires are bad, or that we are without needs, or even that our lives are complete, in and of ourselves. But it is to say that perhaps we must spend time reevaluating our “What a girl wants” culture, moving away from Cinderella and closer to scripture.
I’m in that period in life when literally everyone and their mother is getting married. And so I often ask my married friends and mentors questions about their relationships. Frequently, it seems, that the saying is true: “Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.” Because it seems that marriage calls not for the kind of Cinderella-ish “being in love” that we’ve described - the kind of love that expects the other person to come to the table with their fifty percent of the offering one hundred percent of the time so that both peoples’ needs will constantly be satisfied by what they get from the other person. That’s romance.
Now, I’m not dismissing some of the traditional ways cultures have taught us to be “romantic” because after all, those ideas of giving things like flowers and chocolates were derived from people learning how to show love and affection to one another – things that the world could definitely stand for more of. But, romance is thin – incomplete – if it is just a momentary show of affection without lasting depth beneath it.
Loving marriage is not just about surface level romance. It’s about agape love.
Agape love is a journey, spanning into an eternity – far longer than the life of a rose. It’s about loving even when the other person can give zero percent. It’s about gratefully absorbing the days when you are the one receiving 100 percent and giving nothing, and it’s about delighting in the sparse times when equal giving is shared.
It’s unfair that we receive more than we deserve, and it’s unfair that we have to give more than we think we are able. But, that’s love, and that’s life.
Do you try to complete yourself with other things and people? How might God’s concept of agape love alter your relationships?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 15:9-12 (NRSV)
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God,
You have loved us even when we have been unable to love ourselves and others. Help us allow you to complete us today and every day. Amen.
As we put the gritty reality back into love, let’s first address romantic love because that’s where all our minds immediately wander when the topic of love arises, anyway.
In high school I can remember being absolutely enamored with the movie Jerry Maguire, where Tom Cruise tells Renee Zellweger: “I love you…you complete me.” How romantic. He’s found his other half, so now because of what one person gives the other person, together they can live one full, complete life…
Even if we’re not so obvious about it, we do seem constantly to be on a search for what other people in life can give us in relationships. The prince rescues Cinderella, seeing that she has all the beauty he wants, and he offers her all the riches she’s been denied, and they are whisked away into a life that we don’t get to see but we’re meant to believe is a life where they have completed one another – so this is love… This is what makes life divine?
In the movie A Mirror has Two Faces, Barbra Streisand comments that they never tell you “Cinderella drove the Prince crazy with her obsessive need to clean the castle.”
And Babs is right. Our concepts of romantic love are incomplete in the way we focus so intensely on how others must give us what we want and what we perceive we need and must fill in our personal feelings of incomplete-ness. Now, this is not to say that all our desires are bad, or that we are without needs, or even that our lives are complete, in and of ourselves. But it is to say that perhaps we must spend time reevaluating our “What a girl wants” culture, moving away from Cinderella and closer to scripture.
I’m in that period in life when literally everyone and their mother is getting married. And so I often ask my married friends and mentors questions about their relationships. Frequently, it seems, that the saying is true: “Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.” Because it seems that marriage calls not for the kind of Cinderella-ish “being in love” that we’ve described - the kind of love that expects the other person to come to the table with their fifty percent of the offering one hundred percent of the time so that both peoples’ needs will constantly be satisfied by what they get from the other person. That’s romance.
Now, I’m not dismissing some of the traditional ways cultures have taught us to be “romantic” because after all, those ideas of giving things like flowers and chocolates were derived from people learning how to show love and affection to one another – things that the world could definitely stand for more of. But, romance is thin – incomplete – if it is just a momentary show of affection without lasting depth beneath it.
Loving marriage is not just about surface level romance. It’s about agape love.
Agape love is a journey, spanning into an eternity – far longer than the life of a rose. It’s about loving even when the other person can give zero percent. It’s about gratefully absorbing the days when you are the one receiving 100 percent and giving nothing, and it’s about delighting in the sparse times when equal giving is shared.
It’s unfair that we receive more than we deserve, and it’s unfair that we have to give more than we think we are able. But, that’s love, and that’s life.
Do you try to complete yourself with other things and people? How might God’s concept of agape love alter your relationships?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 15:9-12 (NRSV)
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God,
You have loved us even when we have been unable to love ourselves and others. Help us allow you to complete us today and every day. Amen.
Friday 15 May 2009
Monday 18th May - The Love Life
DAILY BYTE
A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him, and as he sits down, the waitress comes over and asks for their order. The man says, "I'll have a burger, chips and a coke," and turns to the ostrich. "I'll have the same," says the ostrich. A short time later the waitress returns with the order. "That will be 30.40Rand, please," and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out exact change for payment.
Every day they come, and it becomes a routine until late one evening, the two enter again. "The usual?" asks the waitress. "No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and salad," says the man. "Same for me," says the ostrich. A short time later the waitress comes and says, "That will be 80.20Rand." Once again, the man has exact change!
The waitress can't hold back her curiosity any longer. "Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to come up with the exact change out of your pocket every time?" "Well," says the man, "several years ago I was cleaning the attic and I found an old lamp. When I rubbed it a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket, and the right amount of money would always be there." "That's brilliant!" says the waitress. "Most people would wish for a million dollars or something, but you'll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!" "That's right! Whether it's a jug of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there," says the man.
The waitress asks, "One other thing, sir, what's with the ostrich?" The man sighs, "My second wish was for a tall chick with long legs who agrees with everything I say!" (Edited from www.lovelaughs.com)
He got what he asked for in life and in love… Thankfully, a talking ostrich doesn’t appear every time our ideas of love play out in our lives. Because we spend a huge portion of our life, trying to figure out the meaning of ‘being in love,’ and we make some pretty big blunders in the process!
I hope the cringe factor in the BDC this week is not too high – because it’s really all about love… No, this is not just a leftover from Valentine’s Day. Brace yourselves because every conversation we have about life must also be about love – not only because the idea of love consumes so much of our own daily actions and conversations but because love is how Jesus framed our entire lives and his entire life. All of life is about love.
Love can seem a fluffy word – one without backbone or depth that can particularly be hashed and rehashed by preachers so that we lose the weight of its actual meaning. But, the scriptures we’ll encounter this week are particularly saturated with the deep, abiding, everlasting love of God, and they drive home our need to reexamine what love really means in scripture and in our daily lives.
How would you describe the love in your life today?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NRSV)
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him, and as he sits down, the waitress comes over and asks for their order. The man says, "I'll have a burger, chips and a coke," and turns to the ostrich. "I'll have the same," says the ostrich. A short time later the waitress returns with the order. "That will be 30.40Rand, please," and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out exact change for payment.
Every day they come, and it becomes a routine until late one evening, the two enter again. "The usual?" asks the waitress. "No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and salad," says the man. "Same for me," says the ostrich. A short time later the waitress comes and says, "That will be 80.20Rand." Once again, the man has exact change!
The waitress can't hold back her curiosity any longer. "Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to come up with the exact change out of your pocket every time?" "Well," says the man, "several years ago I was cleaning the attic and I found an old lamp. When I rubbed it a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket, and the right amount of money would always be there." "That's brilliant!" says the waitress. "Most people would wish for a million dollars or something, but you'll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!" "That's right! Whether it's a jug of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there," says the man.
The waitress asks, "One other thing, sir, what's with the ostrich?" The man sighs, "My second wish was for a tall chick with long legs who agrees with everything I say!" (Edited from www.lovelaughs.com)
He got what he asked for in life and in love… Thankfully, a talking ostrich doesn’t appear every time our ideas of love play out in our lives. Because we spend a huge portion of our life, trying to figure out the meaning of ‘being in love,’ and we make some pretty big blunders in the process!
I hope the cringe factor in the BDC this week is not too high – because it’s really all about love… No, this is not just a leftover from Valentine’s Day. Brace yourselves because every conversation we have about life must also be about love – not only because the idea of love consumes so much of our own daily actions and conversations but because love is how Jesus framed our entire lives and his entire life. All of life is about love.
Love can seem a fluffy word – one without backbone or depth that can particularly be hashed and rehashed by preachers so that we lose the weight of its actual meaning. But, the scriptures we’ll encounter this week are particularly saturated with the deep, abiding, everlasting love of God, and they drive home our need to reexamine what love really means in scripture and in our daily lives.
How would you describe the love in your life today?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NRSV)
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Friday 8 May 2009
Friday 15th May - Big & Beautiful
DAILY BYTE
There is one final image of growth in this parable that I would like to call you attention to. It is an image that is both big and beautiful ... it is the sheer size of the harvest.
God blesses the farmer who sows with such crazy abandon beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Normally, the farmer who reaps a two-fold harvest would be considered fortunate. A 5-fold harvest would be cause for celebration throughout the surrounding village, a bounty attributable only to God’s particular and rich blessing.
But this foolish farmer, who in a world of scarcity, casts his seed on soil everyone else knows is worthless and is blessed by God in shocking abundance: a harvest of 30, 60 and even 100 times beyond what he sowed.
‘Listen!’ Jesus is saying. If you aim to rule the world and to gain all its wealth and acclaim, then the problem is not that you are aiming too high but TOO LOW! This is because the whole universe and the real essence of that universe – God’s Kingdom – could be yours if you looked to grow God’s way.
This wondrous growth, up to a 100 times, happens not just inside the church or among Christians, but rather here and there and countless places throughout the wide world which God loves. It happens where anyone acts from a sense of mercy, justice, compassion and love. It happens whenever relationships are mended, wounds are healed and hope restored.
For the Kingdom of God HAS come among us!
God has blessed us richly, and God’s people have been entrusted with that which is most precious in this world. Ironically these priceless commodities only gain value – they only bear fruit and bring growth – when God’s people scatter them absolutely heedless of who is worthy to receive them.
Perhaps this is why Jesus sandwiches this parable with the command to listen. Because we are called to treat God’s love, justice and blessing - precious as they are - as if they are absolutely limitless in supply for one simple reason:
They are. They really, really are.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O God of gracious and loving generosity, help me now to go out into the world as a sower of the seed that you have so graciously lavished upon me. Let me sow grace and forgiveness and hope wherever I go not worrying about who deserves it but sharing with crazy abandon. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
READING
Mark 4:1-9 NRSV
Jesus began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:
“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
There is one final image of growth in this parable that I would like to call you attention to. It is an image that is both big and beautiful ... it is the sheer size of the harvest.
God blesses the farmer who sows with such crazy abandon beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Normally, the farmer who reaps a two-fold harvest would be considered fortunate. A 5-fold harvest would be cause for celebration throughout the surrounding village, a bounty attributable only to God’s particular and rich blessing.
But this foolish farmer, who in a world of scarcity, casts his seed on soil everyone else knows is worthless and is blessed by God in shocking abundance: a harvest of 30, 60 and even 100 times beyond what he sowed.
‘Listen!’ Jesus is saying. If you aim to rule the world and to gain all its wealth and acclaim, then the problem is not that you are aiming too high but TOO LOW! This is because the whole universe and the real essence of that universe – God’s Kingdom – could be yours if you looked to grow God’s way.
This wondrous growth, up to a 100 times, happens not just inside the church or among Christians, but rather here and there and countless places throughout the wide world which God loves. It happens where anyone acts from a sense of mercy, justice, compassion and love. It happens whenever relationships are mended, wounds are healed and hope restored.
For the Kingdom of God HAS come among us!
God has blessed us richly, and God’s people have been entrusted with that which is most precious in this world. Ironically these priceless commodities only gain value – they only bear fruit and bring growth – when God’s people scatter them absolutely heedless of who is worthy to receive them.
Perhaps this is why Jesus sandwiches this parable with the command to listen. Because we are called to treat God’s love, justice and blessing - precious as they are - as if they are absolutely limitless in supply for one simple reason:
They are. They really, really are.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O God of gracious and loving generosity, help me now to go out into the world as a sower of the seed that you have so graciously lavished upon me. Let me sow grace and forgiveness and hope wherever I go not worrying about who deserves it but sharing with crazy abandon. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
READING
Mark 4:1-9 NRSV
Jesus began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:
“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
Thursday 14th May – Growth & Giving
DAILY BYTE
There is another lesson regarding Kingdom growth that I want to bring out of this story and is as follows:
Growth is about abundance, not hoarding; and about receiving, NOT taking!
We learn from this story that in the Kingdom of God, growth does not come as a result of hoarding or saving – by holding desperately onto every good thing we have until we have more than the rest. Yet, of course, that is how the rest of the world defines growth because acquisition lays the foundations of all of our world’s empires.
However, that understanding of growth makes no sense to God!
The parable of the sower was first told in an age when most people were really poor and lived hand to mouth. Seed was precious and carefully saved and yet this farmer flung them about with crazy abandon. This would have shocked many of Jesus’ listeners because of its senseless waste. Economically speaking it made no sense to farm that way.
Is Jesus trying to tell us that the way God’s Kingdom works is similar to a crazy, wasteful farmer?
Indeed, this is one image of God’s Kingdom that you will do well to take away with you! Divine generosity is imprudent, uncalculating and concerned with something more than just outcome. Always and everywhere the sower goes out to sow, casting the seeds of new opportunities and new possibilities in every direction.
God flings Kingdom encounters and opportunities for growth around haphazardly, generously and even a little crazily. It’s as if God is willing to let this Kingdom seed fall wherever it may in the hope that wherever we are, we might still be able to encounter possibilities of new life.
Funnily enough, when it comes to the things that God gives us in such crazy abundance – love and grace and more – if we try to hoard them and save them for ourselves, then very much like manna in the Old Testament, they begin to rot and stink.
But the more we share of these things, the more we will find we have!
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God, thank you for the way you so generously share the seeds of your Kingdom – your love and grace. Help me to realise that hoarding and taking is not the way these Kingdom seeds will grow in my life, but only when I learn to share them as generously as you do. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Mark 4:8 NRSV
Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.
There is another lesson regarding Kingdom growth that I want to bring out of this story and is as follows:
Growth is about abundance, not hoarding; and about receiving, NOT taking!
We learn from this story that in the Kingdom of God, growth does not come as a result of hoarding or saving – by holding desperately onto every good thing we have until we have more than the rest. Yet, of course, that is how the rest of the world defines growth because acquisition lays the foundations of all of our world’s empires.
However, that understanding of growth makes no sense to God!
The parable of the sower was first told in an age when most people were really poor and lived hand to mouth. Seed was precious and carefully saved and yet this farmer flung them about with crazy abandon. This would have shocked many of Jesus’ listeners because of its senseless waste. Economically speaking it made no sense to farm that way.
Is Jesus trying to tell us that the way God’s Kingdom works is similar to a crazy, wasteful farmer?
Indeed, this is one image of God’s Kingdom that you will do well to take away with you! Divine generosity is imprudent, uncalculating and concerned with something more than just outcome. Always and everywhere the sower goes out to sow, casting the seeds of new opportunities and new possibilities in every direction.
God flings Kingdom encounters and opportunities for growth around haphazardly, generously and even a little crazily. It’s as if God is willing to let this Kingdom seed fall wherever it may in the hope that wherever we are, we might still be able to encounter possibilities of new life.
Funnily enough, when it comes to the things that God gives us in such crazy abundance – love and grace and more – if we try to hoard them and save them for ourselves, then very much like manna in the Old Testament, they begin to rot and stink.
But the more we share of these things, the more we will find we have!
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving God, thank you for the way you so generously share the seeds of your Kingdom – your love and grace. Help me to realise that hoarding and taking is not the way these Kingdom seeds will grow in my life, but only when I learn to share them as generously as you do. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Mark 4:8 NRSV
Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.
Wednesday 13th May – Growth & Goodness
DAILY BYTE
The next important lesson about growth this parable teaches us is:
Growth can be painful, but is ultimately always good.
First of all, there is no doubt that growth can be painful. We all know this to be true from observing the world around us. From a baby crying as it teethes to a massive body builder straining in the gym – growth can be hard and painful and sacrificial.
This was made clear to me again at the beginning of the year when my little daughter encountered a new growth stage – her first day at school. Taking her to school that first day was painful, she looked so small, vulnerable and overwhelmed.
Let me tell you that on that first day of school there was pain. There were tears, there was clinging on and refusing to let go, there was a temper tantrum, there was even being marched into the principal’s office to be severely reprimanded – and that was just me!
Growth is almost always hard, but also almost always good. Just like a seed entering the dark earth, all wrapped and hidden, but then eventually bursting through the soil - so the imagery of growth that Christ taught us is of us needing to die to live: dying first to self and selfishness, dying to greed and ‘me first’ attitudes, only so that we may burst into the new life of the grand things of God.
Have you ever noticed the strange abruptness of the original ending Mark’s Gospel, ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’? It is almost like the sentence ends half way through.
But perhaps that is the whole point, that the author meant there to be no full-stop but just a comma, to act as an invitation for us to enter into the resurrection story ourselves and complete something more of it. That really is how life’s bad times can be – they should be seen not as full stops but commas! They don’t have the final say because God does!
C.S. Lewis once wrote that ‘Pain is God’s megaphone.’ This does not mean that God only speaks to us during painful moments, but that we tend to turn up God’s volume button during tough times. We actively start listening more carefully to God during difficult moments, whereas when times are good we can drift along and ignore God.
The imagery in this parable reminds us that everything is God’s and is therefore God’s to grow. The field, the seeds and the types of soil all grow not because of human endeavour but because of the divine grace which falls on our lives like refreshing rain. This imagery reminds us how dependant we are on God for our growth. This keeps us real and humble, needing to trust in God to bring us through our dark moments and into the new life that waits beyond.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Great God, giver of all good things, bringer of life and hope and growth. I ask that you would give me all the strength I need to face the more painful aspects of growth. May your goodness mark and shape me even in tough times. Amen
FOCUS READING
Mark 16:8 NRSV
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid
The next important lesson about growth this parable teaches us is:
Growth can be painful, but is ultimately always good.
First of all, there is no doubt that growth can be painful. We all know this to be true from observing the world around us. From a baby crying as it teethes to a massive body builder straining in the gym – growth can be hard and painful and sacrificial.
This was made clear to me again at the beginning of the year when my little daughter encountered a new growth stage – her first day at school. Taking her to school that first day was painful, she looked so small, vulnerable and overwhelmed.
Let me tell you that on that first day of school there was pain. There were tears, there was clinging on and refusing to let go, there was a temper tantrum, there was even being marched into the principal’s office to be severely reprimanded – and that was just me!
Growth is almost always hard, but also almost always good. Just like a seed entering the dark earth, all wrapped and hidden, but then eventually bursting through the soil - so the imagery of growth that Christ taught us is of us needing to die to live: dying first to self and selfishness, dying to greed and ‘me first’ attitudes, only so that we may burst into the new life of the grand things of God.
Have you ever noticed the strange abruptness of the original ending Mark’s Gospel, ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’? It is almost like the sentence ends half way through.
But perhaps that is the whole point, that the author meant there to be no full-stop but just a comma, to act as an invitation for us to enter into the resurrection story ourselves and complete something more of it. That really is how life’s bad times can be – they should be seen not as full stops but commas! They don’t have the final say because God does!
C.S. Lewis once wrote that ‘Pain is God’s megaphone.’ This does not mean that God only speaks to us during painful moments, but that we tend to turn up God’s volume button during tough times. We actively start listening more carefully to God during difficult moments, whereas when times are good we can drift along and ignore God.
The imagery in this parable reminds us that everything is God’s and is therefore God’s to grow. The field, the seeds and the types of soil all grow not because of human endeavour but because of the divine grace which falls on our lives like refreshing rain. This imagery reminds us how dependant we are on God for our growth. This keeps us real and humble, needing to trust in God to bring us through our dark moments and into the new life that waits beyond.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Great God, giver of all good things, bringer of life and hope and growth. I ask that you would give me all the strength I need to face the more painful aspects of growth. May your goodness mark and shape me even in tough times. Amen
FOCUS READING
Mark 16:8 NRSV
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid
Tuesday 12th May – Growth & Death
DAILY BYTE
The Parable of the Sower contains some images which teach us something of how growth occurs in the Kingdom. The first lesson is this:
Simply put, if we don’t grow, we will die!
In this parable, in every instance where significant growth does not take root, the resulting imagery is deathly – both stark and desolate. There are birds that gobble up, shallow and arid soils, rocky paths, scorching sun and choking thorns.
Did you know that there is a medical designation for babies who are not growing and developing as they should be? Doctors will write on the medical charts FTT – which means ‘failure to thrive.’
This is because thriving is the natural condition of human beings. It is what a life is created by God to do. When something is stagnant and not growing, then it is dying. This is as true for our spirituality, as it is in anything else.
God wants us to grow! God wants us to love someone tomorrow that we could not love yesterday. God wants sin and selfishness to grip us less and less as the years go by. God wants us to grapple with and nurture forgiveness and generosity and hospitality.
Because if we do not grow, then we will wither and die Jesus’ explanation of this parable mentions hard heartedness being like rocky soil, superficiality being like shallow soil, and the worries of this world being like choking thorns. If you think about it, all of those – hard heartedness, shallowness, stress and worry - are all actually symptoms of disconnectedness. They are like dashboard warning lights which begin to flash when we lose touch with what is really important to God. They are examples of what happens when we allow things other than God to define and shape us and we become like those trees you find bent into weird shapes in an attempt to find the sun, because we bend ourselves horribly as we grow in all the wrong directions.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, I know that you created me to grow and to thrive, but so often I base my life upon things other than you which results in me becoming hard hearted and shallow. Help me to always be rooted in you, so that I may grow and thrive as you created me to. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Mark 4:4-7 NRSV
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.
The Parable of the Sower contains some images which teach us something of how growth occurs in the Kingdom. The first lesson is this:
Simply put, if we don’t grow, we will die!
In this parable, in every instance where significant growth does not take root, the resulting imagery is deathly – both stark and desolate. There are birds that gobble up, shallow and arid soils, rocky paths, scorching sun and choking thorns.
Did you know that there is a medical designation for babies who are not growing and developing as they should be? Doctors will write on the medical charts FTT – which means ‘failure to thrive.’
This is because thriving is the natural condition of human beings. It is what a life is created by God to do. When something is stagnant and not growing, then it is dying. This is as true for our spirituality, as it is in anything else.
God wants us to grow! God wants us to love someone tomorrow that we could not love yesterday. God wants sin and selfishness to grip us less and less as the years go by. God wants us to grapple with and nurture forgiveness and generosity and hospitality.
Because if we do not grow, then we will wither and die Jesus’ explanation of this parable mentions hard heartedness being like rocky soil, superficiality being like shallow soil, and the worries of this world being like choking thorns. If you think about it, all of those – hard heartedness, shallowness, stress and worry - are all actually symptoms of disconnectedness. They are like dashboard warning lights which begin to flash when we lose touch with what is really important to God. They are examples of what happens when we allow things other than God to define and shape us and we become like those trees you find bent into weird shapes in an attempt to find the sun, because we bend ourselves horribly as we grow in all the wrong directions.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, I know that you created me to grow and to thrive, but so often I base my life upon things other than you which results in me becoming hard hearted and shallow. Help me to always be rooted in you, so that I may grow and thrive as you created me to. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Mark 4:4-7 NRSV
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.
Monday 11th May - A BIG mistake
DAILY BYTE
Mere weeks after I first got married, I made my first big mistake. My wife and I were living in a small granny cottage, and early one morning I went off to gym. I arrived back, still a little sweaty but after having picked up a newspaper on the way home. I walked in just as my wife was finishing her breakfast, looked around and announced: “Gosh, this place is in a mess.”
She looked around, shrugged her shoulders in that gracious way she has, and got up to start what she thought would be helping me to clean up. But as she bent down to pick something up, I chose that exact moment to sit down at the breakfast paper and flick open my newspaper.
Even as I did so, I realised immediately that I had just made a huge mistake. It was as if time itself slowed down around me, my life literally flashing before my eyes. My wife gradually straightened with a glint in her eyes. It was one of those chilling moments – a moment where a woman looks at a man, and the man thinks, “This is NOT good.”
Believe me when I tell you that I spent the rest of that day doing punishment details as a result of my misdemeanour. I was forced to spring clean all day, carrying a mop and wearing a doek.
I only tell you this story because it is an example of how easily familiarity breeds contempt. I had been married for only a few weeks, and I reckoned I already had everything figured out.
Yet, this is exactly the kind of attitude we have with the Parables. This is especially true with the Parable we will be focusing on all this week – the Parable of the Sower (see below). This parable is probably one of the best known and most well loved of all the parables, but our extreme familiarity can cause us to lose sense of what this parable is actually all about. Our long comfortable association with this story, perhaps from as far back as Sunday School, causes us to think that we have the answers to it all nailed – like playing Trivial Pursuit when you have pre-read all the answer cards.
Except that parables don’t work that way at all. If we think we have them easily figured out, then it is quite possible that we are missing the point entirely. Here’s a general rule of thumb that I use for reading Jesus’ parables: if I interpret them in such a way that there is nothing surprising or even shocking, then it’s time to go back and read it again.
This is because we aren’t meant to interpret parables as much as they are meant to interpret us. We don’t read them, they read us. Perhaps, this is why Jesus begins and ends this particular parable with a very firm ‘LISTEN’!
Jesus wants us to pay careful attention here – that command to LISTEN cuts across our over familiarities and comfortable complacencies. This parable speaks in numerous ways concerning Kingdom growth in this world, and in our hearts and lives. And this is where we need to put aside our over-familiarities and to listen with careful openness, because this parable undoes and challenges almost everything we normally learn about growth.
Read through this parable carefully today, because we will spend the rest of this week attempting to allow its message to seep deeper into our hearts and lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, we ask that throughout this week you will open our hearts to the message of this parable, and shape and form us around its truths. Grow us, we pray O God, through the truth of this parable – may it read and interpret us. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Mark 4:1-9 NRSV
Jesus began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:
“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
Mere weeks after I first got married, I made my first big mistake. My wife and I were living in a small granny cottage, and early one morning I went off to gym. I arrived back, still a little sweaty but after having picked up a newspaper on the way home. I walked in just as my wife was finishing her breakfast, looked around and announced: “Gosh, this place is in a mess.”
She looked around, shrugged her shoulders in that gracious way she has, and got up to start what she thought would be helping me to clean up. But as she bent down to pick something up, I chose that exact moment to sit down at the breakfast paper and flick open my newspaper.
Even as I did so, I realised immediately that I had just made a huge mistake. It was as if time itself slowed down around me, my life literally flashing before my eyes. My wife gradually straightened with a glint in her eyes. It was one of those chilling moments – a moment where a woman looks at a man, and the man thinks, “This is NOT good.”
Believe me when I tell you that I spent the rest of that day doing punishment details as a result of my misdemeanour. I was forced to spring clean all day, carrying a mop and wearing a doek.
I only tell you this story because it is an example of how easily familiarity breeds contempt. I had been married for only a few weeks, and I reckoned I already had everything figured out.
Yet, this is exactly the kind of attitude we have with the Parables. This is especially true with the Parable we will be focusing on all this week – the Parable of the Sower (see below). This parable is probably one of the best known and most well loved of all the parables, but our extreme familiarity can cause us to lose sense of what this parable is actually all about. Our long comfortable association with this story, perhaps from as far back as Sunday School, causes us to think that we have the answers to it all nailed – like playing Trivial Pursuit when you have pre-read all the answer cards.
Except that parables don’t work that way at all. If we think we have them easily figured out, then it is quite possible that we are missing the point entirely. Here’s a general rule of thumb that I use for reading Jesus’ parables: if I interpret them in such a way that there is nothing surprising or even shocking, then it’s time to go back and read it again.
This is because we aren’t meant to interpret parables as much as they are meant to interpret us. We don’t read them, they read us. Perhaps, this is why Jesus begins and ends this particular parable with a very firm ‘LISTEN’!
Jesus wants us to pay careful attention here – that command to LISTEN cuts across our over familiarities and comfortable complacencies. This parable speaks in numerous ways concerning Kingdom growth in this world, and in our hearts and lives. And this is where we need to put aside our over-familiarities and to listen with careful openness, because this parable undoes and challenges almost everything we normally learn about growth.
Read through this parable carefully today, because we will spend the rest of this week attempting to allow its message to seep deeper into our hearts and lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, we ask that throughout this week you will open our hearts to the message of this parable, and shape and form us around its truths. Grow us, we pray O God, through the truth of this parable – may it read and interpret us. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Mark 4:1-9 NRSV
Jesus began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:
“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Friday 8th May - Being sheep together
DAILY BYTE
We often talk about the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus.
And, we talk about the importance of having good relationships with one another, but you see – God’s very self shows unified relationships. There is relationship between a father and a son and a spirit. God is community, and he sacrifices it all so we can all be joined together as one. So, our personal relationship with Jesus cannot be separated from our relationships with one another.
As we shepherd one another, we are first and foremost all called to follow the one voice of the good shepherd. One of the things I was first told when I became a minister was that you cannot be a good leader unless you are a good follower.
Followers join together, drawing strength from one another, sharing compassion with one another, and having a common direction. They walk on their journeys not as individuals, but they eat together, rest together, talk together, and argue together, and that’s not an easy way to live, is it?
I remember how difficult it was when I lived in community with three other women in graduate school. There were constant struggles, as we negotiated each other’s individual problems and hopes. And there were many things I wish we had done differently. But we were stubborn sheep, especially as people training for ministry who thought that our primary identity was one of shepherds. But during our final year of school, we began to go together and pray with one of the secretaries, who was struggling with cancer. Every Tuesday after a class we shared together, we would troop up to this lady’s office, stand in a circle, hold each others’ hands, pray for one another, and listen together for God’s voice.
We returned to being sheep, led by a good shepherd, laying down our life’s struggles and prayers together, and through that, God unified us from our scattered, individualist aims, and every week, God saved us.
The scripture encourages us this week that the seemingly small ways we reach out to one another, sacrificing for one another in the name of Christ’s unity actually work against the scattered divisiveness of the world, the church, and our closer relationships.
Because in the end, we don’t have to “like” all sheep. We will not like all people we encounter. But we are called to love them, and to be sheep, following the example of a good shepherd God who leads us and loves us all, as one flock.
Do you want to be a part of something greater than yourself? How does being Jesus’ “sheep” change the way you see your relationships with God and with other people?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 10:16b
So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, help us to follow you so that you will unite us with one another and bring your goodness into the world. Amen.
We often talk about the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus.
And, we talk about the importance of having good relationships with one another, but you see – God’s very self shows unified relationships. There is relationship between a father and a son and a spirit. God is community, and he sacrifices it all so we can all be joined together as one. So, our personal relationship with Jesus cannot be separated from our relationships with one another.
As we shepherd one another, we are first and foremost all called to follow the one voice of the good shepherd. One of the things I was first told when I became a minister was that you cannot be a good leader unless you are a good follower.
Followers join together, drawing strength from one another, sharing compassion with one another, and having a common direction. They walk on their journeys not as individuals, but they eat together, rest together, talk together, and argue together, and that’s not an easy way to live, is it?
I remember how difficult it was when I lived in community with three other women in graduate school. There were constant struggles, as we negotiated each other’s individual problems and hopes. And there were many things I wish we had done differently. But we were stubborn sheep, especially as people training for ministry who thought that our primary identity was one of shepherds. But during our final year of school, we began to go together and pray with one of the secretaries, who was struggling with cancer. Every Tuesday after a class we shared together, we would troop up to this lady’s office, stand in a circle, hold each others’ hands, pray for one another, and listen together for God’s voice.
We returned to being sheep, led by a good shepherd, laying down our life’s struggles and prayers together, and through that, God unified us from our scattered, individualist aims, and every week, God saved us.
The scripture encourages us this week that the seemingly small ways we reach out to one another, sacrificing for one another in the name of Christ’s unity actually work against the scattered divisiveness of the world, the church, and our closer relationships.
Because in the end, we don’t have to “like” all sheep. We will not like all people we encounter. But we are called to love them, and to be sheep, following the example of a good shepherd God who leads us and loves us all, as one flock.
Do you want to be a part of something greater than yourself? How does being Jesus’ “sheep” change the way you see your relationships with God and with other people?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
John 10:16b
So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, help us to follow you so that you will unite us with one another and bring your goodness into the world. Amen.
Thursday 7th May I am the good shepherd
DAILY BYTE
Yesterday, we looked at God’s aversion to scattering in Ezekiel – let’s look now at how God fleshes out his understanding of unity in the Gospel of John.
As we look at the Good Shepherd passage, keep in mind that the Gospel of John was written in the context of a community that was desperately struggling with unity. These were some of the very earliest Christians, and there were many questions of how to remain united as followers of Christ while still loving and interacting with the surrounding community. Things have not changed so much.
And so in the midst of this challenging situation, we thankfully find Jesus saying, “I am the Good Shepherd.” This is one of Jesus’ famous “I am” sayings. It takes us straight back to the beginning of Scripture, uniting us with all of the people of God since the Book of Exodus when Moses asked God for his name, and God said simply – I AM.
I AM - what? I AM the Good Shepherd is one response. In the core of my being, God says, I desire to lead you, to find you, to care for you, and I desire for all of you to follow who I am.
And Jesus doesn’t just say he is a shepherd. He says, I am the good shepherd, which reminds us that if there’s a good shepherd, there must be a bad way of shepherding. And we remember Ezekiel, where the shepherds exploited and scattered their own sheep.
But Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” I AM the God who does nothing for personal gain, but instead lays down my life. In these short eight verses, Jesus talks about laying down one’s life five times.
In Greek, the word for ‘life’ does not just mean bodily living. It’s the root from where we get our words like psyche and psychology. It means one’s inmost being – in addition to the physical body. As the good shepherd, God gives himself – his inmost being and his body – so that everyone might relate to one another with the same kind of loving sacrifice and bring his goodness into the world.
How have you seen the good shepherd working in your life?
What of your inmost being are you willing to lay down so that all people can experience goodness, love, and care?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE – John 10:11 (NRSV)
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
IF YOU ARE FEELING BRAVE…
Make a list of the ways you have seen the good shepherd leading and caring for you in your life. Pray about how you might be able to share some of this goodness and grace with others you meet today.
Yesterday, we looked at God’s aversion to scattering in Ezekiel – let’s look now at how God fleshes out his understanding of unity in the Gospel of John.
As we look at the Good Shepherd passage, keep in mind that the Gospel of John was written in the context of a community that was desperately struggling with unity. These were some of the very earliest Christians, and there were many questions of how to remain united as followers of Christ while still loving and interacting with the surrounding community. Things have not changed so much.
And so in the midst of this challenging situation, we thankfully find Jesus saying, “I am the Good Shepherd.” This is one of Jesus’ famous “I am” sayings. It takes us straight back to the beginning of Scripture, uniting us with all of the people of God since the Book of Exodus when Moses asked God for his name, and God said simply – I AM.
I AM - what? I AM the Good Shepherd is one response. In the core of my being, God says, I desire to lead you, to find you, to care for you, and I desire for all of you to follow who I am.
And Jesus doesn’t just say he is a shepherd. He says, I am the good shepherd, which reminds us that if there’s a good shepherd, there must be a bad way of shepherding. And we remember Ezekiel, where the shepherds exploited and scattered their own sheep.
But Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” I AM the God who does nothing for personal gain, but instead lays down my life. In these short eight verses, Jesus talks about laying down one’s life five times.
In Greek, the word for ‘life’ does not just mean bodily living. It’s the root from where we get our words like psyche and psychology. It means one’s inmost being – in addition to the physical body. As the good shepherd, God gives himself – his inmost being and his body – so that everyone might relate to one another with the same kind of loving sacrifice and bring his goodness into the world.
How have you seen the good shepherd working in your life?
What of your inmost being are you willing to lay down so that all people can experience goodness, love, and care?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE – John 10:11 (NRSV)
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
IF YOU ARE FEELING BRAVE…
Make a list of the ways you have seen the good shepherd leading and caring for you in your life. Pray about how you might be able to share some of this goodness and grace with others you meet today.
Wednesday 6th May 2009 Scattered
DAILY BYTE
As we continue to contemplate what it means for God to be a shepherd, it’s also crucial for us to think about the fact that we are made in the image of God and must grapple with how God calls us also to be shepherds. Otherwise, it seems we will become like the people of God in Ezekiel: where the people who were supposed to be leading and caring for one another were selfishly feeding their own mouths instead. The prophet Ezekiel says the shepherd leaders weren’t building up the weak ones and healing the sick, doctoring the injured, going after the strays, and looking for the lost. They were refusing to sacrifice anything of themselves so that the greater group would thrive.
And as a result, they turned people into “mere prey,” “easy meals for wolves.”
When people fail to look after one another, only seeking their own self-interest, a climate of fear is created instead of a climate of assurance and freedom.
Are we turning people into mere prey?
When on a pilgrimage around Durban in 2007, I was told that there were actually fewer robberies of stores in Warwick Triangle – a place that is often considered “unsafe” in the Durban community – than there are in Musgrave Centre, a “safe” community area. And the reason was that the shopkeepers in Warwick Triangle had banded together to form a community that protected one another from robbers, but the shops in Musgrave Centre continue to try to live as their own separate entities, therefore becoming - mere prey.
When God jumps into the scene in Ezekiel, he says, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I myself will make sure they get plenty of rest. I’ll go after the lost, I’ll collect the strays, I’ll doctor the injured, I’ll build up the weak ones, and oversee the strong ones.” God, here, presents a more comprehensive picture of a shepherd’s role than the people did. The people totally left out the need for the strong ones to be shepherded.
In their desire to seek power, the leaders of the community forgot that their primary roles were not as shepherds but as sheep, following God.
And as prophets do, Ezekiel spoke truth to those in power, reminding them that in God’s eyes, both the weak and the strong live together in community and are all overseen by the same shepherd. They all need someone to follow, or the community will fall apart and scatter.
God’s voice through Ezekiel is almost frantic in its frustration and anger about how people have been scattered. The Message’s account of Ezekiel describes God saying, “You bully and badger them. Now they’re scattered every which way because there was no shepherd – scattered and easy pickings for wolves and coyotes. Scattered – my sheep! - exposed and vulnerable across mountains and hills. My sheep scattered all over the world, and no one out looking for them!” God’s voice cries out against stubborn, individualistic disunity.
In the way that you lead others and participate in community, are you causing people to scatter? Do you see yourself primarily as someone who leads or someone who follows?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Ezekiel 34:11-12a (The Message)
"'God, the Master, says: From now on, I myself am the shepherd. I'm going looking for them. As shepherds go after their flocks when they get scattered, I'm going after my sheep"
As we continue to contemplate what it means for God to be a shepherd, it’s also crucial for us to think about the fact that we are made in the image of God and must grapple with how God calls us also to be shepherds. Otherwise, it seems we will become like the people of God in Ezekiel: where the people who were supposed to be leading and caring for one another were selfishly feeding their own mouths instead. The prophet Ezekiel says the shepherd leaders weren’t building up the weak ones and healing the sick, doctoring the injured, going after the strays, and looking for the lost. They were refusing to sacrifice anything of themselves so that the greater group would thrive.
And as a result, they turned people into “mere prey,” “easy meals for wolves.”
When people fail to look after one another, only seeking their own self-interest, a climate of fear is created instead of a climate of assurance and freedom.
Are we turning people into mere prey?
When on a pilgrimage around Durban in 2007, I was told that there were actually fewer robberies of stores in Warwick Triangle – a place that is often considered “unsafe” in the Durban community – than there are in Musgrave Centre, a “safe” community area. And the reason was that the shopkeepers in Warwick Triangle had banded together to form a community that protected one another from robbers, but the shops in Musgrave Centre continue to try to live as their own separate entities, therefore becoming - mere prey.
When God jumps into the scene in Ezekiel, he says, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I myself will make sure they get plenty of rest. I’ll go after the lost, I’ll collect the strays, I’ll doctor the injured, I’ll build up the weak ones, and oversee the strong ones.” God, here, presents a more comprehensive picture of a shepherd’s role than the people did. The people totally left out the need for the strong ones to be shepherded.
In their desire to seek power, the leaders of the community forgot that their primary roles were not as shepherds but as sheep, following God.
And as prophets do, Ezekiel spoke truth to those in power, reminding them that in God’s eyes, both the weak and the strong live together in community and are all overseen by the same shepherd. They all need someone to follow, or the community will fall apart and scatter.
God’s voice through Ezekiel is almost frantic in its frustration and anger about how people have been scattered. The Message’s account of Ezekiel describes God saying, “You bully and badger them. Now they’re scattered every which way because there was no shepherd – scattered and easy pickings for wolves and coyotes. Scattered – my sheep! - exposed and vulnerable across mountains and hills. My sheep scattered all over the world, and no one out looking for them!” God’s voice cries out against stubborn, individualistic disunity.
In the way that you lead others and participate in community, are you causing people to scatter? Do you see yourself primarily as someone who leads or someone who follows?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Ezekiel 34:11-12a (The Message)
"'God, the Master, says: From now on, I myself am the shepherd. I'm going looking for them. As shepherds go after their flocks when they get scattered, I'm going after my sheep"
Monday 4 May 2009
Tuesday 5th May - Stubborn wanderers
DAILY BYTE
Yesterday, we read a fairly unflattering comparison of humankind to stubborn sheep… and so, as we think about our own ‘sheep-ish’ qualities (excuse the pun…), we remember that while being a shepherd may look idyllic, wearing a bathrobe and rescuing fluffy lambs from bramble, shepherding is actually a terribly difficult job. Battling simultaneously with the tendency for sheep to be both stubbornly individualistic and mob-like, the shepherd’s challenging task is to care for them, which is dirty and smelly enough, but also to unify them. To teach them all to trust, following the sound of one voice, so that no matter what they encounter, they will not wander and they will not be scattered.
Churches talk a lot about how God, through Jesus, graciously rescues the lost sheep, when they wander away. We tend to point fingers at who those lost sheep are… And, we get warm and fuzzy inside when we think about Jesus saving us. But, God through Jesus, as the good shepherd, is not only about rescuing the lost. His greater task is about unifying the flock.
We struggle with unity, don’t we? Unity in politics like the election we’ve recently experienced, in the global church with all its denominational and hierarchical divisions, in the local church, with our personal stubbornness and relational resentments, and even in our families. And we ask ourselves time and time again, how is unity really possible?
Unity is possible because God is stronger, wiser, more patient, and more loving than the most stubborn of sheep.
When Desmond Tutu spoke in Durban a few weeks ago, he described the story of the shepherd who rescues the one lost sheep. And he said that we always picture that sheep as a fluffy little lamb that just happened to wander astray and innocently get caught. But, isn’t it more likely that the sheep who wandered was an old, stubborn ram with a matted, filthy coat, its limbs bleeding and scarred from being constantly stuck with bramble? This is the sheep that Jesus comes to find. He struggles to loosen it from the things that trap it, as it fights bleating and kicking because it rebels against the rescue the shepherd brings, but the shepherd still persists in bringing it back and uniting it with the rest of the flock.
Jesus’ description of himself as this kind of shepherd gives us a fuller picture of who God is. Philip Yancey says that “Books of theology tend to define God by what he is not: God is immortal, invisible, infinite”. God is, of course, all of those things. But they can make God feel very far away so that it seems easy to scatter and wander. But, the image of God we find in the shepherd shows us that God is also a God who is prepared to roll up his sleeves and get our blood on his hands disentangling us from things that bind us and entangling us in unity with him and with one another.
So, do you believe in this kind of God? The kind of God who seeks after all of us, even the people with the most tattered lives and the most resistant spirits?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Luke 15:3-6
So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'
PRAY AS YOU GO
Patient and rescuing God,
You have promised to seek after everyone in your creation. Help us to lay down our stubbornness and fear, instead opening us to your embrace and unifying us in relationship with one another. Amen.
Yesterday, we read a fairly unflattering comparison of humankind to stubborn sheep… and so, as we think about our own ‘sheep-ish’ qualities (excuse the pun…), we remember that while being a shepherd may look idyllic, wearing a bathrobe and rescuing fluffy lambs from bramble, shepherding is actually a terribly difficult job. Battling simultaneously with the tendency for sheep to be both stubbornly individualistic and mob-like, the shepherd’s challenging task is to care for them, which is dirty and smelly enough, but also to unify them. To teach them all to trust, following the sound of one voice, so that no matter what they encounter, they will not wander and they will not be scattered.
Churches talk a lot about how God, through Jesus, graciously rescues the lost sheep, when they wander away. We tend to point fingers at who those lost sheep are… And, we get warm and fuzzy inside when we think about Jesus saving us. But, God through Jesus, as the good shepherd, is not only about rescuing the lost. His greater task is about unifying the flock.
We struggle with unity, don’t we? Unity in politics like the election we’ve recently experienced, in the global church with all its denominational and hierarchical divisions, in the local church, with our personal stubbornness and relational resentments, and even in our families. And we ask ourselves time and time again, how is unity really possible?
Unity is possible because God is stronger, wiser, more patient, and more loving than the most stubborn of sheep.
When Desmond Tutu spoke in Durban a few weeks ago, he described the story of the shepherd who rescues the one lost sheep. And he said that we always picture that sheep as a fluffy little lamb that just happened to wander astray and innocently get caught. But, isn’t it more likely that the sheep who wandered was an old, stubborn ram with a matted, filthy coat, its limbs bleeding and scarred from being constantly stuck with bramble? This is the sheep that Jesus comes to find. He struggles to loosen it from the things that trap it, as it fights bleating and kicking because it rebels against the rescue the shepherd brings, but the shepherd still persists in bringing it back and uniting it with the rest of the flock.
Jesus’ description of himself as this kind of shepherd gives us a fuller picture of who God is. Philip Yancey says that “Books of theology tend to define God by what he is not: God is immortal, invisible, infinite”. God is, of course, all of those things. But they can make God feel very far away so that it seems easy to scatter and wander. But, the image of God we find in the shepherd shows us that God is also a God who is prepared to roll up his sleeves and get our blood on his hands disentangling us from things that bind us and entangling us in unity with him and with one another.
So, do you believe in this kind of God? The kind of God who seeks after all of us, even the people with the most tattered lives and the most resistant spirits?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Luke 15:3-6
So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'
PRAY AS YOU GO
Patient and rescuing God,
You have promised to seek after everyone in your creation. Help us to lay down our stubbornness and fear, instead opening us to your embrace and unifying us in relationship with one another. Amen.
Sunday 3 May 2009
Monday 4th May - We Like Sheep
DAILY BYTE
When I was in elementary school, every summer, I used to go to church camp for a week, and this was no ordinary church camp. It was church musical camp ... I was just that cool. We would go to the bush, sleep in mosquito-infested cabins and spend the whole week learning a dramatic musical production, which we would then perform for our parents and for a local retirement home.
One year, the chosen musical made a particularly strong impression on me, and perhaps it was because the theme song went like this: We like sheep, we like sheep, we like sheep ‘cause sheep is what we are. ‘Cause sheep is what we are, we think they’re the best by far…” And so it went. This kind of song has a strange habit of becoming lodged in one’s memory.
But in all seriousness, we do like sheep, don’t we? I used to beg my parents to buy me a sheep – a plea that seemed to fall on deaf ears. But we enjoy pastoral images of lambs peacefully grazing in a well-contained herd while shepherds lazily lounge nearby, catching rays of golden sun.
But, as my parents were quick to remind me when I expressed my desire to own one, sheep are not the brightest of bulbs in the barnyard. There is a reason that sheep need a shepherd! In his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, former sheepherder Phillip Keller says that “the behavior of sheep and human beings is similar…Our mass mind (or mob instincts), our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallels of profound importance.”
It’s not the most flattering picture of humankind, but I think we can all identify with at least part of that description.
And so, this may seem a goofy question, but consider today in what ways (both positive and negative) your behaviour resembles a sheep’s. Also ask yourself, in what ways (both positive and negative) you find your life resembling that of a shepherd. This week, we will be exploring God’s description of both himself and his people as shepherds and sheep, or lambs. To have a full picture of who God is and who we are, as his people, it is crucial for us to explore this sheep imagery!
So, do you like sheep?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Mark 6:34 (NIV)
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
When I was in elementary school, every summer, I used to go to church camp for a week, and this was no ordinary church camp. It was church musical camp ... I was just that cool. We would go to the bush, sleep in mosquito-infested cabins and spend the whole week learning a dramatic musical production, which we would then perform for our parents and for a local retirement home.
One year, the chosen musical made a particularly strong impression on me, and perhaps it was because the theme song went like this: We like sheep, we like sheep, we like sheep ‘cause sheep is what we are. ‘Cause sheep is what we are, we think they’re the best by far…” And so it went. This kind of song has a strange habit of becoming lodged in one’s memory.
But in all seriousness, we do like sheep, don’t we? I used to beg my parents to buy me a sheep – a plea that seemed to fall on deaf ears. But we enjoy pastoral images of lambs peacefully grazing in a well-contained herd while shepherds lazily lounge nearby, catching rays of golden sun.
But, as my parents were quick to remind me when I expressed my desire to own one, sheep are not the brightest of bulbs in the barnyard. There is a reason that sheep need a shepherd! In his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, former sheepherder Phillip Keller says that “the behavior of sheep and human beings is similar…Our mass mind (or mob instincts), our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallels of profound importance.”
It’s not the most flattering picture of humankind, but I think we can all identify with at least part of that description.
And so, this may seem a goofy question, but consider today in what ways (both positive and negative) your behaviour resembles a sheep’s. Also ask yourself, in what ways (both positive and negative) you find your life resembling that of a shepherd. This week, we will be exploring God’s description of both himself and his people as shepherds and sheep, or lambs. To have a full picture of who God is and who we are, as his people, it is crucial for us to explore this sheep imagery!
So, do you like sheep?
GUIDING SCRIPTURE
Mark 6:34 (NIV)
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
Saturday 2 May 2009
Sunday 3rd May - Makabongwe
Weekend Blurb
The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.
This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.
Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School had small beginnings with children sitting on cardboard in Grey Street, Durban. It was the initiative of a group of Christian women who felt that no child should be illiterate.
Today that initiative has grown into a bright, sunny pre-school with premises in Alice Street. Seventy children drawn primarily from the street vendors in the area now have a safe environment to learn play and grow as God intended. These disadvantaged children are given a good grade R education following the National Education Syllabus.
Makabongwe means “Let Him be praised” and we do praise Him for He has indeed blessed this little school.
You can help make a difference by sponsoring a child monthly or a once off donation, thus ensuring a brighter future for the children.
Contact:
Colleen 084209409.
Manning Road Methodist Church 031 202 8262.
Bank details:
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School
FNB
Account - 50710017936
Branch - 223526
The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.
This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.
Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School had small beginnings with children sitting on cardboard in Grey Street, Durban. It was the initiative of a group of Christian women who felt that no child should be illiterate.
Today that initiative has grown into a bright, sunny pre-school with premises in Alice Street. Seventy children drawn primarily from the street vendors in the area now have a safe environment to learn play and grow as God intended. These disadvantaged children are given a good grade R education following the National Education Syllabus.
Makabongwe means “Let Him be praised” and we do praise Him for He has indeed blessed this little school.
You can help make a difference by sponsoring a child monthly or a once off donation, thus ensuring a brighter future for the children.
Contact:
Colleen 084209409.
Manning Road Methodist Church 031 202 8262.
Bank details:
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School
FNB
Account - 50710017936
Branch - 223526
Friday 1 May 2009
Saturday 2nd May - Makabongwe
Weekend Blurb
The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.
This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.
Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School had small beginnings with children sitting on cardboard in Grey Street, Durban. It was the initiative of a group of Christian women who felt that no child should be illiterate.
Today that initiative has grown into a bright, sunny pre-school with premises in Alice Street. Seventy children drawn primarily from the street vendors in the area now have a safe environment to learn play and grow as God intended. These disadvantaged children are given a good grade R education following the National Education Syllabus.
Makabongwe means “Let Him be praised” and we do praise Him for He has indeed blessed this little school.
You can help make a difference by sponsoring a child monthly or a once off donation, thus ensuring a brighter future for the children.
Contact:
Colleen 084209409.
Manning Road Methodist Church 031 202 8262.
Bank details:
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School
FNB
Account - 50710017936
Branch - 223526
The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.
This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.
Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School had small beginnings with children sitting on cardboard in Grey Street, Durban. It was the initiative of a group of Christian women who felt that no child should be illiterate.
Today that initiative has grown into a bright, sunny pre-school with premises in Alice Street. Seventy children drawn primarily from the street vendors in the area now have a safe environment to learn play and grow as God intended. These disadvantaged children are given a good grade R education following the National Education Syllabus.
Makabongwe means “Let Him be praised” and we do praise Him for He has indeed blessed this little school.
You can help make a difference by sponsoring a child monthly or a once off donation, thus ensuring a brighter future for the children.
Contact:
Colleen 084209409.
Manning Road Methodist Church 031 202 8262.
Bank details:
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School
FNB
Account - 50710017936
Branch - 223526
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