DAILY BYTE
This story teaches one other vital factor of water-walking to us – that it is to be a hope-carrier!
To be a water-walker is to carry a vision of God-possibilities with us wherever we go. Sure, we all get moments like Peter, where the size of our obstacles, the sheer Tsunami scale of evil gets the better of us and our spiritual imaginations ... and then we begin to sink under the weight of it all.
But here we need to remember again how Jesus immediately grabbed Peter’s hand, and then also rebuked him (although gently) for his little faith. Is this not a powerful reminder that to walk on water is to keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus (our hope)? Is this not a gracious reminder that Jesus is willing to work even with our little faith?
Of course it would be silly not to be aware of the waves surrounding us, waves of crime and fear and poverty and disease all mixed in with our own personal hurts and failings, but walking on water means that we are EVEN MORE AWARE of the goodness of the God who is near and the amazing possibilities that lie within that!
For it was only when Peter took his eyes off hope, and concentrated more on the bad news of the waves that he began to diminish ... shrink ... sink.
To walk on water is to live in hope. It’s not wishful thinking, but living and acting in anticipating God’s desire to eventually still the storm. To walk on water is hope not as resignation to an unjust world, but rather a refusal to accept that this is what God wants for humanity.
So then, may you hope and then hope some more. May you hope in the God who finds us lost or stuck within our own storms, who loves us and heals us, but then calls us to enter the bigger social storms of life more fully ... to trust more, to love more, to be more.
May you hope in the God who calls us to do crazy things like walk on water. To walk over the systems of evil and hatred present in this world, to break all ‘natural’ human-invented laws of vengeance, violence and selfishness.
May you hope in the God who has promised to never let us sink beneath the waves of our life storms, the God who takes us by the hand and lifts us up.
And may you be lifted up into all these things, and more. Amen.
PRAY AS YOU GO
God of Life, help me to live in hope always and to keep my eyes fixed firmly upon you. I don’t want to be nieve and unaware, I just want to live in a way that is even more aware of your presence in this world. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14: 22-33 NRSV
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
Friday 27 November 2009
What does it mean to be a Water-walker?
DAILY BYTE
Yet it is in the stepping out of our boats, that we begin to wrestle with the biggest question of this story, which is:
What does it actually mean (for us) to be a water-walker? What exactly is the story trying to teach us here?
People have often wondered about the laws of nature that Jesus seemingly broke with impunity as he strolled across a couple of metric tons of heaving H2O. How did he do it we wonder?
Yet, perhaps the deepest part of the story is not so much how Jesus walked on water, but rather why? To be spectacular and gain attention? Well, we know from how Jesus actively avoided the attention his miracles brought, that this was just not his style.
No, the point is this: Only God can walk on the waves! That’s what the Bible teaches. In Job. In Isaiah. In Habakkuk. In the Psalms.
In Bible-speak, it is God who walks the sea, calms the sea, tames the sea, parts the sea. Again, why?
Well, because in ancient Near Eastern thought, the sea was a place of evil. Leviathan lived there – the enemy of everything right and good dwelled in the water. In the Bible, deep water represented a place of sheer chaos. And in this story, God, in the person of Jesus, walks ON the sea, putting everything that is oppositional to God literally under his feet.
To be a water-walker means that we follow God in this journey of walking over evil.
Jesus broke all natural laws of science (as we understand them), by walking on water, but we are called to break many other ‘natural’ laws of humanity by how and why we live.
It seems totally unnatural to forgive great hurts, but that’s what Jesus calls us to do. That’s walking on water. It seems bizarre to love not only our friends and family, but also our enemies and those we fear. That’s walking on water.
It seems fundamentally crazy to turn away from a survival of the fittest and wealthiest and instead seek to live lives of service to widows, orphans, and the poor and the weak. Well, that is walking on water. That is walking over this world’s chaos, hurt and pain.
To walk on water is to follow Jesus in walking over evil, and work to overturn many of our ‘natural’ laws of injustice.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, Lord of earth, sea and sky, you call me to follow you in overturning ‘natural’ human laws of un-forgiveness, greed and selfishness. Help me to walk on water as I obediently seek to do your will and work against the chaos in this world. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14 : 28-33
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
Yet it is in the stepping out of our boats, that we begin to wrestle with the biggest question of this story, which is:
What does it actually mean (for us) to be a water-walker? What exactly is the story trying to teach us here?
People have often wondered about the laws of nature that Jesus seemingly broke with impunity as he strolled across a couple of metric tons of heaving H2O. How did he do it we wonder?
Yet, perhaps the deepest part of the story is not so much how Jesus walked on water, but rather why? To be spectacular and gain attention? Well, we know from how Jesus actively avoided the attention his miracles brought, that this was just not his style.
No, the point is this: Only God can walk on the waves! That’s what the Bible teaches. In Job. In Isaiah. In Habakkuk. In the Psalms.
In Bible-speak, it is God who walks the sea, calms the sea, tames the sea, parts the sea. Again, why?
Well, because in ancient Near Eastern thought, the sea was a place of evil. Leviathan lived there – the enemy of everything right and good dwelled in the water. In the Bible, deep water represented a place of sheer chaos. And in this story, God, in the person of Jesus, walks ON the sea, putting everything that is oppositional to God literally under his feet.
To be a water-walker means that we follow God in this journey of walking over evil.
Jesus broke all natural laws of science (as we understand them), by walking on water, but we are called to break many other ‘natural’ laws of humanity by how and why we live.
It seems totally unnatural to forgive great hurts, but that’s what Jesus calls us to do. That’s walking on water. It seems bizarre to love not only our friends and family, but also our enemies and those we fear. That’s walking on water.
It seems fundamentally crazy to turn away from a survival of the fittest and wealthiest and instead seek to live lives of service to widows, orphans, and the poor and the weak. Well, that is walking on water. That is walking over this world’s chaos, hurt and pain.
To walk on water is to follow Jesus in walking over evil, and work to overturn many of our ‘natural’ laws of injustice.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, Lord of earth, sea and sky, you call me to follow you in overturning ‘natural’ human laws of un-forgiveness, greed and selfishness. Help me to walk on water as I obediently seek to do your will and work against the chaos in this world. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14 : 28-33
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
Step out the Boat!
DAILY BYTE
If we are left with only yesterday’s message: That God is with us even in our darkest times, then that it is good and true message, but it is actually only half God’s message. You will notice that we have covered only half the material in this story so far.
Faith should do more than just bring comfort, it should also bring challenge. This story reminds us that the very nature of faith means being challenged to step out in some way: To be more, to become more, to share more.
Peter says to Jesus in Matt. 14. 28, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” As John Ortberg has so famously said: “If you want to walk on water, you have to get out the boat.”
Sometimes our boats represent places of false security and safety for us. When I worked as a Youth Pastor, I spent years pastorally counselling a young teenage girl who had anorexia. We went through countless emergency visits, prayer times and hospital visitations until one day we both realised something.
She did not actually want to get better.
Perhaps in more frustration than I should have, I once asked her, “Do you really want to be healed?”
She gave me a strange look, thought for awhile, and then replied: “Actually I don’t think so. My anorexia is my thing, it brings me the attention I crave from my parents and friends. I can’t imagine my life without it.”
Sometimes we live in circles of dysfunction. It is like our little boat becomes stuck in a whirlpool and perpetually travels round and round the same old issues, never truly embracing the possibility of God-offered healing, wholeness and freedom.
There is no way of making this easier for us, and God does not even try. Notice that Jesus did not calm the waves for Peter. He just said ‘come,’ and within that call is a sense of ‘trust me, I’ll be here if you need me BUT if you want to walk on water, if you want to follow me, YOU HAVE TO GET OUT YOUR BOAT.
You have to leave behind your comfort zones and places of false security. It’s never going to be easy, but it just has to be done. Believing in God can give you wonderful life dreams, but following God will give you blisters. Or at the very least it will give you wet feet!
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus called his disciples to become fishers of people, but about half way through comes this change, where Jesus began to say ‘well, now I need to teach you to carry a cross.’
To be healed, comforted, loved and encouraged is only part of the bigger salvation story that we get to step out into. A story that seeks to move us beyond us, if that makes any sense.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, help me to obey your call to step more fully out into wherever you are calling me. Help me to get out of whatever boat I may be in, and to courageously follow you wherever you may lead. Amen
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14 : 28-33
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
If we are left with only yesterday’s message: That God is with us even in our darkest times, then that it is good and true message, but it is actually only half God’s message. You will notice that we have covered only half the material in this story so far.
Faith should do more than just bring comfort, it should also bring challenge. This story reminds us that the very nature of faith means being challenged to step out in some way: To be more, to become more, to share more.
Peter says to Jesus in Matt. 14. 28, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” As John Ortberg has so famously said: “If you want to walk on water, you have to get out the boat.”
Sometimes our boats represent places of false security and safety for us. When I worked as a Youth Pastor, I spent years pastorally counselling a young teenage girl who had anorexia. We went through countless emergency visits, prayer times and hospital visitations until one day we both realised something.
She did not actually want to get better.
Perhaps in more frustration than I should have, I once asked her, “Do you really want to be healed?”
She gave me a strange look, thought for awhile, and then replied: “Actually I don’t think so. My anorexia is my thing, it brings me the attention I crave from my parents and friends. I can’t imagine my life without it.”
Sometimes we live in circles of dysfunction. It is like our little boat becomes stuck in a whirlpool and perpetually travels round and round the same old issues, never truly embracing the possibility of God-offered healing, wholeness and freedom.
There is no way of making this easier for us, and God does not even try. Notice that Jesus did not calm the waves for Peter. He just said ‘come,’ and within that call is a sense of ‘trust me, I’ll be here if you need me BUT if you want to walk on water, if you want to follow me, YOU HAVE TO GET OUT YOUR BOAT.
You have to leave behind your comfort zones and places of false security. It’s never going to be easy, but it just has to be done. Believing in God can give you wonderful life dreams, but following God will give you blisters. Or at the very least it will give you wet feet!
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus called his disciples to become fishers of people, but about half way through comes this change, where Jesus began to say ‘well, now I need to teach you to carry a cross.’
To be healed, comforted, loved and encouraged is only part of the bigger salvation story that we get to step out into. A story that seeks to move us beyond us, if that makes any sense.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, help me to obey your call to step more fully out into wherever you are calling me. Help me to get out of whatever boat I may be in, and to courageously follow you wherever you may lead. Amen
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14 : 28-33
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
God’s Presence in the Midst of Storms
DAILY BYTE
We are told that this story of the disciples caught in a storm occurred during the fourth watch of the night, between 3am and 6am. Have you ever lain awake until 3am in the morning fretting about something?
I don’t know if you have noticed, but ‘3 o’ Clock in the morning faith’ is always the hardest faith to come by.
This story hastens to comfort and encourage all who ever find themselves caught up in one of those inevitable life storms, by reminding us just how much we can trust God TO BE THERE in the midst of them with us.
If you read the whole story carefully, you will find that we are told three separate times that Jesus immediately does something. In the beginning of the story Jesus immediately sends his disciples out on a boat to cross to the other side. In the middle of the story Jesus immediately reassures them by saying it is he, and at the end of the story Jesus immediately reaches out to grab Peter’s hand.
There is an immediate sense of the divine in this story. Even while it crackles with lightening-strikes of tension, and has these thunder-rumbling undercurrents of fear, throughout there is this sense of the closeness of God.
If the centre of Matthew’s Gospel is this story, then the centre of the story itself are Jesus’ words of comfort to his fearful disciples which if we translated exactly word for word from the Greek would read: “take courage, I am, not be feared.” The ‘I am’ of course should be recognised as a divine affirmation.
This story affirms that your life can never get so dark and stormy that God cannot find you!
Yet notice that at this point in the story, Jesus does not take away the threat of the storm. This story is not about being spectacularly saved from our troubles but rather it is an affirmation that the presence of a loving God can bring us through times even when our very worst fears rage unchecked around us.
And so at the fourth watch of the night, at about 3am when faith is hardest to come by and when the chaos of the storm is at the peak of its powers, we need to know that God IS with us.
In the middle of our darkest nights, Jesus is always near.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, you are Lord of all life, and I give thanks to you that your loving presence surrounds and sustains me even during the very worst of my life’s storms. Help me to hold onto you always. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14: 22-27 NRSV
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
We are told that this story of the disciples caught in a storm occurred during the fourth watch of the night, between 3am and 6am. Have you ever lain awake until 3am in the morning fretting about something?
I don’t know if you have noticed, but ‘3 o’ Clock in the morning faith’ is always the hardest faith to come by.
This story hastens to comfort and encourage all who ever find themselves caught up in one of those inevitable life storms, by reminding us just how much we can trust God TO BE THERE in the midst of them with us.
If you read the whole story carefully, you will find that we are told three separate times that Jesus immediately does something. In the beginning of the story Jesus immediately sends his disciples out on a boat to cross to the other side. In the middle of the story Jesus immediately reassures them by saying it is he, and at the end of the story Jesus immediately reaches out to grab Peter’s hand.
There is an immediate sense of the divine in this story. Even while it crackles with lightening-strikes of tension, and has these thunder-rumbling undercurrents of fear, throughout there is this sense of the closeness of God.
If the centre of Matthew’s Gospel is this story, then the centre of the story itself are Jesus’ words of comfort to his fearful disciples which if we translated exactly word for word from the Greek would read: “take courage, I am, not be feared.” The ‘I am’ of course should be recognised as a divine affirmation.
This story affirms that your life can never get so dark and stormy that God cannot find you!
Yet notice that at this point in the story, Jesus does not take away the threat of the storm. This story is not about being spectacularly saved from our troubles but rather it is an affirmation that the presence of a loving God can bring us through times even when our very worst fears rage unchecked around us.
And so at the fourth watch of the night, at about 3am when faith is hardest to come by and when the chaos of the storm is at the peak of its powers, we need to know that God IS with us.
In the middle of our darkest nights, Jesus is always near.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, you are Lord of all life, and I give thanks to you that your loving presence surrounds and sustains me even during the very worst of my life’s storms. Help me to hold onto you always. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 14: 22-27 NRSV
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
Storms Happen!
DAILY BYTE
The community that Matthew’s Gospel was written for were brutally persecuted for their faith. Many of them had lost an eye or limb, parent or child, friend or sibling because of religious violence. That must really take it out of a community leaving disillusionment and fear in its wake.
Right in the middle of Matthew’s Gospel, (Matthew 14. 22-33), comes the story of the disciples caught in the storm and Jesus walking on water. One scholar argues that the words and images of this story actually form part of the very heart of Matthew’s Gospel because this story was Matthew’s attempt as a pastor to bring hope and encouragement to his bruised and broken people.
Perhaps this is why a story that is so vividly permeated by danger, and which reeks with human fear, resonates with us as powerfully as it does, because we ALL know this, that:
In everyone’s life, storms inevitably occur.
Matthew 14.24 reads: “by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.”
The Greek word translated as “batter” here is basanizo, which means to torture and torment. The Greek adjective to describe the wind is enantios which suggests active opposition or hostility.
Obviously knowing that Matthew’s community was suffering persecution helps us understand why he used images and words like this. In its larger context, this is the story of Matthew’s church, fearful and confused, looking for something to grasp onto in the midst of their suffering.
In its largest context, this is the story of every human being, because life seems inevitably full of storms beyond our control, and sometimes we move between doubt and faith; between focussing on storms or focussing on Jesus; between huddling down in fear in the boat or courageously risking all to walk on water.
Gordon MacDonald tells the story of a massive storm which hit his property and destroyed his driveway. MacDonald called out a builder to repair it but while he was there, the builder’s truck got stuck in some mud. So he fetched his bulldozer to pull it out, attached a chain to the truck, and then revved up the bulldozer. The chain took the strain and ... snapped! The mud won!
MacDonald makes the point that the fault didn’t lie with the bulldozer for it was more than powerful enough to do the job. No, the fault lay with the chain for as soon as the builder fetched a stronger, thicker chain he managed to pull his truck out the mud.
So here’s a question worth wrestling with: Is the faith connection that enables us to trundle merrily along on sunny, warm, happy days, is that strong enough to keep us connected to God without breaking when these inevitable stormy and muddy life moments occur?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, in the midst of my own life storms, may you strengthen my faith so that I will never let go of you and your promises to me. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Matthew 14: 22-33 NRSV
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
The community that Matthew’s Gospel was written for were brutally persecuted for their faith. Many of them had lost an eye or limb, parent or child, friend or sibling because of religious violence. That must really take it out of a community leaving disillusionment and fear in its wake.
Right in the middle of Matthew’s Gospel, (Matthew 14. 22-33), comes the story of the disciples caught in the storm and Jesus walking on water. One scholar argues that the words and images of this story actually form part of the very heart of Matthew’s Gospel because this story was Matthew’s attempt as a pastor to bring hope and encouragement to his bruised and broken people.
Perhaps this is why a story that is so vividly permeated by danger, and which reeks with human fear, resonates with us as powerfully as it does, because we ALL know this, that:
In everyone’s life, storms inevitably occur.
Matthew 14.24 reads: “by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.”
The Greek word translated as “batter” here is basanizo, which means to torture and torment. The Greek adjective to describe the wind is enantios which suggests active opposition or hostility.
Obviously knowing that Matthew’s community was suffering persecution helps us understand why he used images and words like this. In its larger context, this is the story of Matthew’s church, fearful and confused, looking for something to grasp onto in the midst of their suffering.
In its largest context, this is the story of every human being, because life seems inevitably full of storms beyond our control, and sometimes we move between doubt and faith; between focussing on storms or focussing on Jesus; between huddling down in fear in the boat or courageously risking all to walk on water.
Gordon MacDonald tells the story of a massive storm which hit his property and destroyed his driveway. MacDonald called out a builder to repair it but while he was there, the builder’s truck got stuck in some mud. So he fetched his bulldozer to pull it out, attached a chain to the truck, and then revved up the bulldozer. The chain took the strain and ... snapped! The mud won!
MacDonald makes the point that the fault didn’t lie with the bulldozer for it was more than powerful enough to do the job. No, the fault lay with the chain for as soon as the builder fetched a stronger, thicker chain he managed to pull his truck out the mud.
So here’s a question worth wrestling with: Is the faith connection that enables us to trundle merrily along on sunny, warm, happy days, is that strong enough to keep us connected to God without breaking when these inevitable stormy and muddy life moments occur?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, in the midst of my own life storms, may you strengthen my faith so that I will never let go of you and your promises to me. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Matthew 14: 22-33 NRSV
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. "He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."
Monday 23 November 2009
Wind
DAILY BYTE
There is one further lesson about calling that the story of Abraham teaches us, and this is going to sound a little strange initially. But it is that following our calling is like walking with the wind at our backs.
Did you notice that the original poem of Abraham’s call ends on somewhat of a jarring note? It says in Genesis 12.3 that “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.”
What are we to understand by this? In the midst of promised blessing, why is it ok to include a curse? Is that not just mean and petty and vengeful?
Well, Brian McLaren helps us to understand this part of the call better by reminding us of the old Irish blessing of the wind being at your back, and saying that the idea of cursing on this poem suggests that any who oppose Abraham’s descendants in their co-operation with God would find the wind of God’s displeasure in their faces.
Abraham’s call extends to all who are descended from him. Biblically that means all of us who have chosen to follow his God. We are ALL part of Abraham’s faith family and we are all being enrolled as God’s helpers or collaborators ... and THE WIND will be at our backs as we co-operate with God in the ongoing creation of goodness in this world.
Yet, equally it is true that any who opposes the general direction of this good would be working against God, they would be fighting the wind of God’s presence in this world, they would be walking into the wind!
I remember recently running down Curry Road in Durban and feeling great. I was just flying along! It was only when I moved up to Musgrave Road (parallel to Curry) and began running in the opposite direction that I found I had previously been running with the wind at my back. I found that running into the wind was nowhere near as easy or pleasant.
In essence then, hearing and obeying our calling is to walk with the wind of God’s spirit at our backs.
So then, may you stop to listen to that hard-to-hear voice that is carried along on the wind. May you hear and see how God is continually working his goodness and love, and continually recreating grace and mercy into this broken, hurting world. God has started a resistance movement against all evil in this world and so God desires all of us who have descended from Abraham in faith to begin walking in a direction with this wind at our backs.
May this be you and me ... may we hear the call and may we walk with the wind of God’s spirit at our backs.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, help me to listen constantly for your voice, and help me to walk with the wind of your Spirit at my back. I commit myself to being a part of your ongoing creation of goodness in this world. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-4
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
There is one further lesson about calling that the story of Abraham teaches us, and this is going to sound a little strange initially. But it is that following our calling is like walking with the wind at our backs.
Did you notice that the original poem of Abraham’s call ends on somewhat of a jarring note? It says in Genesis 12.3 that “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.”
What are we to understand by this? In the midst of promised blessing, why is it ok to include a curse? Is that not just mean and petty and vengeful?
Well, Brian McLaren helps us to understand this part of the call better by reminding us of the old Irish blessing of the wind being at your back, and saying that the idea of cursing on this poem suggests that any who oppose Abraham’s descendants in their co-operation with God would find the wind of God’s displeasure in their faces.
Abraham’s call extends to all who are descended from him. Biblically that means all of us who have chosen to follow his God. We are ALL part of Abraham’s faith family and we are all being enrolled as God’s helpers or collaborators ... and THE WIND will be at our backs as we co-operate with God in the ongoing creation of goodness in this world.
Yet, equally it is true that any who opposes the general direction of this good would be working against God, they would be fighting the wind of God’s presence in this world, they would be walking into the wind!
I remember recently running down Curry Road in Durban and feeling great. I was just flying along! It was only when I moved up to Musgrave Road (parallel to Curry) and began running in the opposite direction that I found I had previously been running with the wind at my back. I found that running into the wind was nowhere near as easy or pleasant.
In essence then, hearing and obeying our calling is to walk with the wind of God’s spirit at our backs.
So then, may you stop to listen to that hard-to-hear voice that is carried along on the wind. May you hear and see how God is continually working his goodness and love, and continually recreating grace and mercy into this broken, hurting world. God has started a resistance movement against all evil in this world and so God desires all of us who have descended from Abraham in faith to begin walking in a direction with this wind at our backs.
May this be you and me ... may we hear the call and may we walk with the wind of God’s spirit at our backs.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, help me to listen constantly for your voice, and help me to walk with the wind of your Spirit at my back. I commit myself to being a part of your ongoing creation of goodness in this world. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-4
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Enough?
DAILY BYTE
When it comes to sharing our blessings, greed is not the only thing we wrestle with, for there is also fear. When we look at what we have, we fear that we don’t really have much worth offering others. We hang back and hesitate in the act of giving ourselves because we are anxious that that we don’t have anything of real value to offer.
A wonderful story is told of Pope John Paul II. Now as a pope he did many wonderful things – he healed divides, wrote books and brought peace. But three little girls will remember that the greatest thing he ever did was kiss them on the head.
What happened was that the pope was very late in attending a certain function, and that many had queued for hours outside the function venue in the hope of just catching a glimpse of him as he entered.
When the pope arrived he was being hurried along by his harassed retinue, when suddenly he stopped in his tracks, drawn by the sight of three energised and youthful faces in the crowd alongside him. Smiling, the pope waved away those who were trying to hurry him along, and he stopped and blessed each one of these little girls by touching them on the forehead and then kissing them.
Their mother burst into tears of joy, whilst others in the crowd were overcome with emotion as they recognised a holy and sacred moment. A busy, overstretched man, a leader on the world stage, found the time to stop and share of himself in a relatively small way with three little girls.
As William Wordsworth once wrote: “That best portion of a good person’s life, those little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
You may not feel that you have much worth offering others, but know that the tiniest, most unremembered acts of kindness and love are immeasurably worth-filled in God’s economy.
Simply because you are blessed to be a blessing, whatever you are blessed with WILL BE ENOUGH to bring tremendous blessing to others as well.
As you wrestle with your blessings, never forget that.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, whatever I have to offer this world will be enough when it has been blessed by you. Thank you for this comforting truth. Help me to courageously offer myself in your service both in big and small ways knowing that every action in your name really means something. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Isaiah 52: 7
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
When it comes to sharing our blessings, greed is not the only thing we wrestle with, for there is also fear. When we look at what we have, we fear that we don’t really have much worth offering others. We hang back and hesitate in the act of giving ourselves because we are anxious that that we don’t have anything of real value to offer.
A wonderful story is told of Pope John Paul II. Now as a pope he did many wonderful things – he healed divides, wrote books and brought peace. But three little girls will remember that the greatest thing he ever did was kiss them on the head.
What happened was that the pope was very late in attending a certain function, and that many had queued for hours outside the function venue in the hope of just catching a glimpse of him as he entered.
When the pope arrived he was being hurried along by his harassed retinue, when suddenly he stopped in his tracks, drawn by the sight of three energised and youthful faces in the crowd alongside him. Smiling, the pope waved away those who were trying to hurry him along, and he stopped and blessed each one of these little girls by touching them on the forehead and then kissing them.
Their mother burst into tears of joy, whilst others in the crowd were overcome with emotion as they recognised a holy and sacred moment. A busy, overstretched man, a leader on the world stage, found the time to stop and share of himself in a relatively small way with three little girls.
As William Wordsworth once wrote: “That best portion of a good person’s life, those little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
You may not feel that you have much worth offering others, but know that the tiniest, most unremembered acts of kindness and love are immeasurably worth-filled in God’s economy.
Simply because you are blessed to be a blessing, whatever you are blessed with WILL BE ENOUGH to bring tremendous blessing to others as well.
As you wrestle with your blessings, never forget that.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, whatever I have to offer this world will be enough when it has been blessed by you. Thank you for this comforting truth. Help me to courageously offer myself in your service both in big and small ways knowing that every action in your name really means something. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Isaiah 52: 7
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Blessing
DAILY BYTE
The next aspect of calling that Abraham’s story helps us understand more clearly can be summarised in the following way:
Calling is wrestling with your blessing.
In Genesis 12. 2, Abraham is told that, “I will bless you, and make your name great, SO THAT YOU WILL BE A BLESSING.”
What we religious people do is continually make the mistake of living as if we have been chosen by God only so that we may personally be blessed. Yet when we do this, when we forget that we are blessed TO BE a blessing, we distort our truest identity and we drift from God’s calling for us.
When we assume that we have been blessed exclusively rather than instrumentally; and when we see ourselves as blessed to the exclusion of others rather than for the benefit of others, then we become part of the problem instead of the solution.
Follow a calling almost always involves wrestling with blessing. If I have been blessed with millions of rands, is it really so that I can have a big house and lots of cars. Is that why? Really?
Or if I have been blessed with incredibly singing or artistic talent, is it really so that I can fulfill my need to be the centre of attention. Is that why? Really?
We are always going to need to actively wrestle with our blessing, because our tendency is to want to take whatever we may be blessed with and make it all about us. To hoard it and keep it only for ourselves.
But God’s calling will never let us forget that we are blessed so that we might become a blessing to others.
How might God want you to begin using your blessings for the benefit of others?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, thank you for pouring your blessings upon me. Help me to truly appreciate all that I have, and to creatively use these blessings to benefit others. Amen
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Isaiah 52: 7
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
The next aspect of calling that Abraham’s story helps us understand more clearly can be summarised in the following way:
Calling is wrestling with your blessing.
In Genesis 12. 2, Abraham is told that, “I will bless you, and make your name great, SO THAT YOU WILL BE A BLESSING.”
What we religious people do is continually make the mistake of living as if we have been chosen by God only so that we may personally be blessed. Yet when we do this, when we forget that we are blessed TO BE a blessing, we distort our truest identity and we drift from God’s calling for us.
When we assume that we have been blessed exclusively rather than instrumentally; and when we see ourselves as blessed to the exclusion of others rather than for the benefit of others, then we become part of the problem instead of the solution.
Follow a calling almost always involves wrestling with blessing. If I have been blessed with millions of rands, is it really so that I can have a big house and lots of cars. Is that why? Really?
Or if I have been blessed with incredibly singing or artistic talent, is it really so that I can fulfill my need to be the centre of attention. Is that why? Really?
We are always going to need to actively wrestle with our blessing, because our tendency is to want to take whatever we may be blessed with and make it all about us. To hoard it and keep it only for ourselves.
But God’s calling will never let us forget that we are blessed so that we might become a blessing to others.
How might God want you to begin using your blessings for the benefit of others?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, thank you for pouring your blessings upon me. Help me to truly appreciate all that I have, and to creatively use these blessings to benefit others. Amen
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Isaiah 52: 7
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Becoming
DAILY BYTE
If the beginning of all calling is listening (see yesterday), then the story of Abram teaches us another wonderful truth about calling: It is that calling is about becoming. Abram is told to leave behind all his securities (land and family), and to go out dressed only in the promises of God.
Calling always addresses issues of identity – those places we gain security, meaning, definition and purpose. We later learn that there is some irony behind God’s promise to bless Abram and make of him a great nation, because he and Sarai are barren, they have been unable to conceive for all their roughly 75 years of life.
As Abram’s story unfold, it seems that this barrenness is deeply wrapped up in who he was and how he perceived himself. It was as if God was challenging him by saying: “Abram, you may think you and Sarai are empty inside and don’t have much to offer the world in the way of life, but this is not my plan for you. When I look at you, I don’t just see the person you are right now, but the person I made you to be!”
When we think about call, we often make the mistake of starting with what we are supposed to do, but a far deeper dimension of God’s calling is to become. Your calling is intrinsically wrapped up in your identity – the person God had in mind when he first thought you up!
You cannot succeed in what you do and fail in who you are!
Recently, a good friend of mine was tragically killed when surf ski paddling just outside Port Elizabeth. I flew down to his funeral, and let me tell you he was a very talented person. He could DO lots of things! He was intelligent, musical and a natural leader. But at his funeral what people spoke about and cried about was not to do with any of those things – it was to do with WHO he was.
They spoke of his passion, faith and integrity. As he followed his call, it was his character and core identity that most marked others.
A couple of chapters after this call, Abram is given a new name – Abraham. While Abram means ‘father,’ Abraham steps up the irony a notch further because it means ‘father of nations.’ When he was given his new name, Abraham was 99 and still without children … God’s promise had not come through for him yet.
Can you imagine how he felt standing up at parties, aged 99 and with no children, and yet introducing himself as ‘Father of nations’?
But that’s exactly the point.
It takes faith to feel naked, empty, even barren and yet still trust that God will bring new life into this world through us not so much by what we can do but by WHO WE BECOME.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, may you graciously work your life into me as I gradually become who you originally created me to be. In this way, I ask that you would use me to bring life and hope to others. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
If the beginning of all calling is listening (see yesterday), then the story of Abram teaches us another wonderful truth about calling: It is that calling is about becoming. Abram is told to leave behind all his securities (land and family), and to go out dressed only in the promises of God.
Calling always addresses issues of identity – those places we gain security, meaning, definition and purpose. We later learn that there is some irony behind God’s promise to bless Abram and make of him a great nation, because he and Sarai are barren, they have been unable to conceive for all their roughly 75 years of life.
As Abram’s story unfold, it seems that this barrenness is deeply wrapped up in who he was and how he perceived himself. It was as if God was challenging him by saying: “Abram, you may think you and Sarai are empty inside and don’t have much to offer the world in the way of life, but this is not my plan for you. When I look at you, I don’t just see the person you are right now, but the person I made you to be!”
When we think about call, we often make the mistake of starting with what we are supposed to do, but a far deeper dimension of God’s calling is to become. Your calling is intrinsically wrapped up in your identity – the person God had in mind when he first thought you up!
You cannot succeed in what you do and fail in who you are!
Recently, a good friend of mine was tragically killed when surf ski paddling just outside Port Elizabeth. I flew down to his funeral, and let me tell you he was a very talented person. He could DO lots of things! He was intelligent, musical and a natural leader. But at his funeral what people spoke about and cried about was not to do with any of those things – it was to do with WHO he was.
They spoke of his passion, faith and integrity. As he followed his call, it was his character and core identity that most marked others.
A couple of chapters after this call, Abram is given a new name – Abraham. While Abram means ‘father,’ Abraham steps up the irony a notch further because it means ‘father of nations.’ When he was given his new name, Abraham was 99 and still without children … God’s promise had not come through for him yet.
Can you imagine how he felt standing up at parties, aged 99 and with no children, and yet introducing himself as ‘Father of nations’?
But that’s exactly the point.
It takes faith to feel naked, empty, even barren and yet still trust that God will bring new life into this world through us not so much by what we can do but by WHO WE BECOME.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, may you graciously work your life into me as I gradually become who you originally created me to be. In this way, I ask that you would use me to bring life and hope to others. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Symphony
DAILY BYTE
If you had to compose a symphony based on the salvation story (as it is recorded in Scripture), you probably would have to begin with the most beautiful, soul-stirring and life-giving notes that you could find. This would describe God’s act of creation ... God singing, harmonising and bringing everything into being.
However, after the Fall of Adam and Eve described in Genesis 3, there would have been a sudden change in our symphony to discordant, jarring notes – something almost heavy-metal in tone. This would well symbolise the chaos that ensued as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
The third part of the symphony would have brought another drastic change. This time there would have been silence. Not outright silence but something so soft that it would have been on the edge of hearing that you would have to strain to hear it.
This is because the third part of the salvation story represents calling, and at its very heart, calling is about listening. We have many misconceptions and misunderstandings about calling and what it means for us, so if you are going to remember anything – let it be this – that calling is about listening.
In fact, if you look at the stories of chaos found in the book of Genesis between chapters 3-11 (the heavy metal part of our symphony), you will find that central to them is the failure to listen and the result is a falling out of harmony with God’s creative and redemptive music.
Adam and Eve did not really listen to what God had to say about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Cain killed Abel because he failed to truly listen to what God had to say about his worship offerings. In Noah’s time, a flood wiped out humanity because they stopped listening to God and instead were doing evil.
Even the Tower of Babel story is about a people who once shared a common language, but then lost the ability to hear and understand each other because of their pride, arrogance and selfishness.
It is then our salvation symphony takes its shift. Genesis 12 is about the first time God called people to begin doing something about the chaos. It is a faint song that you will really have to stop and listen for carefully before you will be able to hear it at all.
Calling is listening! This monumental shift in the symphony, the salvation story, begins with, “the Lord said to Abram” (Genesis 12. 1), but it would also have ended right there if Abram had not stopped to listen.
Calling is listening – without that none of us will have a beginning in God.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, help me to hear you today – give me the strength and discipline I need to put aside everything that weighs me down and dominates my thoughts, and allow me to simply listen for your voice. Not only today, but may this become a constant discipline of my life. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
If you had to compose a symphony based on the salvation story (as it is recorded in Scripture), you probably would have to begin with the most beautiful, soul-stirring and life-giving notes that you could find. This would describe God’s act of creation ... God singing, harmonising and bringing everything into being.
However, after the Fall of Adam and Eve described in Genesis 3, there would have been a sudden change in our symphony to discordant, jarring notes – something almost heavy-metal in tone. This would well symbolise the chaos that ensued as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
The third part of the symphony would have brought another drastic change. This time there would have been silence. Not outright silence but something so soft that it would have been on the edge of hearing that you would have to strain to hear it.
This is because the third part of the salvation story represents calling, and at its very heart, calling is about listening. We have many misconceptions and misunderstandings about calling and what it means for us, so if you are going to remember anything – let it be this – that calling is about listening.
In fact, if you look at the stories of chaos found in the book of Genesis between chapters 3-11 (the heavy metal part of our symphony), you will find that central to them is the failure to listen and the result is a falling out of harmony with God’s creative and redemptive music.
Adam and Eve did not really listen to what God had to say about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Cain killed Abel because he failed to truly listen to what God had to say about his worship offerings. In Noah’s time, a flood wiped out humanity because they stopped listening to God and instead were doing evil.
Even the Tower of Babel story is about a people who once shared a common language, but then lost the ability to hear and understand each other because of their pride, arrogance and selfishness.
It is then our salvation symphony takes its shift. Genesis 12 is about the first time God called people to begin doing something about the chaos. It is a faint song that you will really have to stop and listen for carefully before you will be able to hear it at all.
Calling is listening! This monumental shift in the symphony, the salvation story, begins with, “the Lord said to Abram” (Genesis 12. 1), but it would also have ended right there if Abram had not stopped to listen.
Calling is listening – without that none of us will have a beginning in God.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, help me to hear you today – give me the strength and discipline I need to put aside everything that weighs me down and dominates my thoughts, and allow me to simply listen for your voice. Not only today, but may this become a constant discipline of my life. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Genesis 12: 1-2
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Building the Temple
DAILY BYTE
When I was in primary school, my older brother and I were friends with another boy and girl the same ages. We used to play outside for hours on end until one day, we decided we needed a clubhouse. So, we hauled things and built shelves and made desks, and moved out the old, smelly port-a-loo, making that shack our castle. And to accomplish these tasks my brother gave us all roles. We even had official, laminated business cards. He – was the president. His friend was the Vice-president. My friend was the Treasurer. And I, was the Janitor...
We’ve been talking about building and working this week, so I hope you’ve been thinking about the jobs you have been given and have chosen both inside and outside the church – some of them more glamorous than others. But we’re not just talking about the specific occupation that we get paid for. We’re talking about the purpose behind all our actions. Haggai didn’t just want the people to build a temple building – he called them to build the place where God dwelled – a place that embodied hope, life, prosperity and peace.
Our chief aim in life is not to become workaholics. Our chief aim in church is not to become busybodies, involved in every activity, but we can’t remember why. Our chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So, if you are an accountant, a stay-at-home-mom, a domestic worker, a politician, a builder - every occupation and life has at its heart the torn down rubble and the building up of a temple. And you can choose whether or not you want to build it. The challenges of building each temple are slightly different.
Your occupation may require you to act in ways that you feel are ungodly. Perhaps part of building the temple of God within and around you is acknowledging unethical behavior, actively fighting against it and the powers that enable it.
Or, if you do work that seems mundane or without meaning, maybe God is asking you to open your eyes to his presence around you so that jobs like spray-painting lemons and cleaning toilets become less about their initial lack of glamour and more about the lives of the people you work with and the lives of those who eat the lemons and use the loos.
Perhaps neither of those situations apply, and your job brings great joy to you and glory to God! If so, give thanks for that today!
Perhaps you don’t have a job at all, and maybe, for all of us, the dirt and rubble in our life does not have to do with a job, but it comes from feeling like life lacks spiritual depth or growth. So, perhaps for us, building God’s temple means taking up a spiritual discipline – like writing in a prayer journal, fasting something you feel like you can’t live without, planting vegetables, spending more quality time with your family, reconciling with someone, taking time out to serve others and help build their temples, too, or joining a fellowship group that can keep you accountable to such disciplines.
These are not the occupational curses of being human. They are the deep blessings of God for our lives because when we work to build God’s temple within ourselves and in the world, God says he will “shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land – shake all the nations so that the treasure of all nations shall come.” And that doesn’t necessarily mean he will make you very rich – which is what most people and many churches seem to think is the meaning of God’s prosperity and the proper reward for hard work. When God shakes the nations and shakes up our lives, we may not get showered with gold, but nothing ever remains the same. Nothing can remain the status quo when we acknowledge that every part of our lives and the temples we build belong to God. And through God’s true work, all are given prosperity and peace. The word that the scriptures use at the end of this passage is Shalom – which means a thriving for the whole community.
Haggai is considered by many to be the only successful prophet because the people actually listened to him! They heard his message of hope, and they rebuilt the temple into a hub of administrative, economic, and religious life, empowering the work of God in the world at that time. And so, be unafraid to build God’s temple within your own life and work. Take what you pray about here today and work to act on it.
FOCUS TEXT
Haggai 2:6-2:9
For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give SHALOM, says the Lord of hosts.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Rebuilding God, remind us again of your presence, but also shake us up so that we will be unafraid and empowered to do the things you ask us to. Help us to be doers of Your word and not hearers only, working in ways that bring life to ourselves and to Your whole world. Amen.
When I was in primary school, my older brother and I were friends with another boy and girl the same ages. We used to play outside for hours on end until one day, we decided we needed a clubhouse. So, we hauled things and built shelves and made desks, and moved out the old, smelly port-a-loo, making that shack our castle. And to accomplish these tasks my brother gave us all roles. We even had official, laminated business cards. He – was the president. His friend was the Vice-president. My friend was the Treasurer. And I, was the Janitor...
We’ve been talking about building and working this week, so I hope you’ve been thinking about the jobs you have been given and have chosen both inside and outside the church – some of them more glamorous than others. But we’re not just talking about the specific occupation that we get paid for. We’re talking about the purpose behind all our actions. Haggai didn’t just want the people to build a temple building – he called them to build the place where God dwelled – a place that embodied hope, life, prosperity and peace.
Our chief aim in life is not to become workaholics. Our chief aim in church is not to become busybodies, involved in every activity, but we can’t remember why. Our chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So, if you are an accountant, a stay-at-home-mom, a domestic worker, a politician, a builder - every occupation and life has at its heart the torn down rubble and the building up of a temple. And you can choose whether or not you want to build it. The challenges of building each temple are slightly different.
Your occupation may require you to act in ways that you feel are ungodly. Perhaps part of building the temple of God within and around you is acknowledging unethical behavior, actively fighting against it and the powers that enable it.
Or, if you do work that seems mundane or without meaning, maybe God is asking you to open your eyes to his presence around you so that jobs like spray-painting lemons and cleaning toilets become less about their initial lack of glamour and more about the lives of the people you work with and the lives of those who eat the lemons and use the loos.
Perhaps neither of those situations apply, and your job brings great joy to you and glory to God! If so, give thanks for that today!
Perhaps you don’t have a job at all, and maybe, for all of us, the dirt and rubble in our life does not have to do with a job, but it comes from feeling like life lacks spiritual depth or growth. So, perhaps for us, building God’s temple means taking up a spiritual discipline – like writing in a prayer journal, fasting something you feel like you can’t live without, planting vegetables, spending more quality time with your family, reconciling with someone, taking time out to serve others and help build their temples, too, or joining a fellowship group that can keep you accountable to such disciplines.
These are not the occupational curses of being human. They are the deep blessings of God for our lives because when we work to build God’s temple within ourselves and in the world, God says he will “shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land – shake all the nations so that the treasure of all nations shall come.” And that doesn’t necessarily mean he will make you very rich – which is what most people and many churches seem to think is the meaning of God’s prosperity and the proper reward for hard work. When God shakes the nations and shakes up our lives, we may not get showered with gold, but nothing ever remains the same. Nothing can remain the status quo when we acknowledge that every part of our lives and the temples we build belong to God. And through God’s true work, all are given prosperity and peace. The word that the scriptures use at the end of this passage is Shalom – which means a thriving for the whole community.
Haggai is considered by many to be the only successful prophet because the people actually listened to him! They heard his message of hope, and they rebuilt the temple into a hub of administrative, economic, and religious life, empowering the work of God in the world at that time. And so, be unafraid to build God’s temple within your own life and work. Take what you pray about here today and work to act on it.
FOCUS TEXT
Haggai 2:6-2:9
For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give SHALOM, says the Lord of hosts.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Rebuilding God, remind us again of your presence, but also shake us up so that we will be unafraid and empowered to do the things you ask us to. Help us to be doers of Your word and not hearers only, working in ways that bring life to ourselves and to Your whole world. Amen.
Take courage!
DAILY BYTE
If your life feels like a heap of rubble, and the future doesn’t seem any brighter than the past... If you’ve gone through life feeling like you’ve worked hard but have failed to achieve what you hoped – what is the impetus for working more?
Well, we looked yesterday at the prophet Haggai, and it's important for us to recognize that the prophecy is set "In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month." It is set in what would have been The Feast of Booths - Sukkot - sometimes called the Festival of Tabernacles. This was the time when Israelites commemorated the dedication of the Temple to God as well as the way God freed them from bondage in Egypt to live in temporary shacks - or booths - as they wandered in the wilderness. Still today, people celebrate Sukkot, setting up temporary tent-like structures in their gardens to remember God's faithfulness and presence with them and to celebrate god’s provision in their lives.
When we feel as though our work and efforts lack meaning, we are reminded by traditions like these that God is with us, whether we’re building a shack or a temple. In fact, as 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and so everything that we build with them and within them is a dwelling place for God - the holiest of holies.
So, when we meet Haggai in scripture, the people of God are supposed to be celebrating God's faithfulness and telling of God’s glory in the temple, but instead we find them grumbling that the remains of the old temple and the beginning efforts to rebuild are not nearly as good as what they had before!
Haggai knows the work of building is daunting. He knows it can be backbreaking and seem pointless for the people who are drawing the plans as well as the labourers hauling the marble. So, he speaks to everyone. He speaks to Zerubbabel, which means "one sewn of Babylon." Son of Shealtiel - which means, "I have asked God." He's speaking to everyone who was exiled, feeling far from God. He's speaking to those who have stayed and cried out to God, asking him to answer their prayers. He's speaking to Joshua, the religious leader of the people. Son of Jehozadak, the high priest of Israel, whose name means, Jehovah is Righteous.
He’s claiming everyone as Jehovah’s – the religious and political leaders and all the day labourers of the land together. Those who wanted to rebuild the temple and people who actively opposed the idea are all included in the prophecy that came through Haggai from God. It was a prophecy that acknowledged that the temple was a mess - that it looked like nothing - that it couldn't compare to what had existed before in the "good old days."
But Haggai doesn't let anyone get away with tossing up their hands and saying, "There's nothing we can do." There's no point rebuilding in this mess. He says instead, God is still speaking, and is saying, "Take courage."
Take courage, Zerubbabel, says the Lord. Take courage, Joshua. Take courage, all you people of the land - insert your name here ____________.
Don't just be courageous and strong but take courage from God. It is being handed to you through the mouth of a prophet. Take that courage and use it for the glory of God to work. "Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts." Through Haggai, God says, I made a promise to you when you came out of Egypt – and I continue to keep it and be faithful. God says, “My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” Even though the building of the temple structure is not yet complete, God says, I live in you.
So that whatever you build, wherever you build it, I am there.
FOCUS TEXT
Haggai 2:4-5 (NRSV)
Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, Oh Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Faithful God, you have been present with your people in all times and places. Help us to acknowledge your presence with us today. Empower us with your Spirit so that we can work and live for your glory. Amen.
If your life feels like a heap of rubble, and the future doesn’t seem any brighter than the past... If you’ve gone through life feeling like you’ve worked hard but have failed to achieve what you hoped – what is the impetus for working more?
Well, we looked yesterday at the prophet Haggai, and it's important for us to recognize that the prophecy is set "In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month." It is set in what would have been The Feast of Booths - Sukkot - sometimes called the Festival of Tabernacles. This was the time when Israelites commemorated the dedication of the Temple to God as well as the way God freed them from bondage in Egypt to live in temporary shacks - or booths - as they wandered in the wilderness. Still today, people celebrate Sukkot, setting up temporary tent-like structures in their gardens to remember God's faithfulness and presence with them and to celebrate god’s provision in their lives.
When we feel as though our work and efforts lack meaning, we are reminded by traditions like these that God is with us, whether we’re building a shack or a temple. In fact, as 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and so everything that we build with them and within them is a dwelling place for God - the holiest of holies.
So, when we meet Haggai in scripture, the people of God are supposed to be celebrating God's faithfulness and telling of God’s glory in the temple, but instead we find them grumbling that the remains of the old temple and the beginning efforts to rebuild are not nearly as good as what they had before!
Haggai knows the work of building is daunting. He knows it can be backbreaking and seem pointless for the people who are drawing the plans as well as the labourers hauling the marble. So, he speaks to everyone. He speaks to Zerubbabel, which means "one sewn of Babylon." Son of Shealtiel - which means, "I have asked God." He's speaking to everyone who was exiled, feeling far from God. He's speaking to those who have stayed and cried out to God, asking him to answer their prayers. He's speaking to Joshua, the religious leader of the people. Son of Jehozadak, the high priest of Israel, whose name means, Jehovah is Righteous.
He’s claiming everyone as Jehovah’s – the religious and political leaders and all the day labourers of the land together. Those who wanted to rebuild the temple and people who actively opposed the idea are all included in the prophecy that came through Haggai from God. It was a prophecy that acknowledged that the temple was a mess - that it looked like nothing - that it couldn't compare to what had existed before in the "good old days."
But Haggai doesn't let anyone get away with tossing up their hands and saying, "There's nothing we can do." There's no point rebuilding in this mess. He says instead, God is still speaking, and is saying, "Take courage."
Take courage, Zerubbabel, says the Lord. Take courage, Joshua. Take courage, all you people of the land - insert your name here ____________.
Don't just be courageous and strong but take courage from God. It is being handed to you through the mouth of a prophet. Take that courage and use it for the glory of God to work. "Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts." Through Haggai, God says, I made a promise to you when you came out of Egypt – and I continue to keep it and be faithful. God says, “My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” Even though the building of the temple structure is not yet complete, God says, I live in you.
So that whatever you build, wherever you build it, I am there.
FOCUS TEXT
Haggai 2:4-5 (NRSV)
Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, Oh Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Faithful God, you have been present with your people in all times and places. Help us to acknowledge your presence with us today. Empower us with your Spirit so that we can work and live for your glory. Amen.
The Temple
DAILY BYTE
In the Biblical story of Haggai, we find a prophet telling people that they must work. Now, this might not be the message you were hoping for today. Perhaps you're thinking - but I don't work - I'm retired. Or, I work too much. Or, I want to keep work at work and church at church. Or, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!
Well, Haggai is not just telling the people to work for the sake of working, to work themselves into a grave, or to work for the sake of achieving for their own glory – to make themselves like gods. That is what workaholics do.
He is calling them to a specific task - and that task is rebuilding the temple.
Now to understand the importance of this, we need to know a few things about the time Haggai lived - He was a prophet to the people of God who were coming out of exile. The Babylonians had conquered Israel years before, forcing the people either to live in the rubble or to leave their homes, as well as the temple, behind in Jerusalem, moving to Babylon, which is where Iraq is today.
We may associate temples mostly with modern-day Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism, but to the ancient Israelites, the temple was also the place where God had dwelled in their land. The inner room of the temple was called the Holiest of Holies - the place where God lived. There were no windows, and it was shrouded with a veil because the presence of God was considered so powerful there that it was dangerous.
You can understand that the place God was supposed to inhabit would be considered the holiest place in the land – and the place that by its very presence, made everything else holy and sacred. But Israel's conquerers destroyed the temple - the place where God dwelled, and God's people were scattered, seemingly outside his presence.
Think about the feeling of alienation that you sense when it seems like you're away from the presence of God. It can be lonely and paralyzing and scary. It's what we often call a wilderness time - when we feel like we don't a have a home - like when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness before God led them to the promised land.
So, Haggai enters the picture not long after the ending of that wilderness time for the people of God. The Persians had conquered the Babylonians, and they decided to liberate the Israelites, allowing them to go back to Jerusalem – back to the promised land.
Thank God - they must have said - we can finally go back to the way things were before! But we all know that you can never go back to exactly the way things were in the past, and they returned home to find economic crisis, conflict with the people who had stayed behind, and a temple in ruins.
It must have been an intimidating time that may sound a bit familiar to us. It was a time when the people were faced with a choice. Do they continue to live in an attitude of wilderness and exile, refusing to rebuild the temple and recognize the presence of God in their midst? Or, do they work and rebuild?
We might ask ourselves the same questions. When we feel far away from God and when our life feels like a heap of rubble, we have a choice. We can continue to wander, or we can ask God how to rebuild. What does God desire to rebuild in your life?
FOCUS READING
Haggai 1:15b-2:4 (NRSV)
In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: “Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, Oh Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts....
In the Biblical story of Haggai, we find a prophet telling people that they must work. Now, this might not be the message you were hoping for today. Perhaps you're thinking - but I don't work - I'm retired. Or, I work too much. Or, I want to keep work at work and church at church. Or, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!
Well, Haggai is not just telling the people to work for the sake of working, to work themselves into a grave, or to work for the sake of achieving for their own glory – to make themselves like gods. That is what workaholics do.
He is calling them to a specific task - and that task is rebuilding the temple.
Now to understand the importance of this, we need to know a few things about the time Haggai lived - He was a prophet to the people of God who were coming out of exile. The Babylonians had conquered Israel years before, forcing the people either to live in the rubble or to leave their homes, as well as the temple, behind in Jerusalem, moving to Babylon, which is where Iraq is today.
We may associate temples mostly with modern-day Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism, but to the ancient Israelites, the temple was also the place where God had dwelled in their land. The inner room of the temple was called the Holiest of Holies - the place where God lived. There were no windows, and it was shrouded with a veil because the presence of God was considered so powerful there that it was dangerous.
You can understand that the place God was supposed to inhabit would be considered the holiest place in the land – and the place that by its very presence, made everything else holy and sacred. But Israel's conquerers destroyed the temple - the place where God dwelled, and God's people were scattered, seemingly outside his presence.
Think about the feeling of alienation that you sense when it seems like you're away from the presence of God. It can be lonely and paralyzing and scary. It's what we often call a wilderness time - when we feel like we don't a have a home - like when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness before God led them to the promised land.
So, Haggai enters the picture not long after the ending of that wilderness time for the people of God. The Persians had conquered the Babylonians, and they decided to liberate the Israelites, allowing them to go back to Jerusalem – back to the promised land.
Thank God - they must have said - we can finally go back to the way things were before! But we all know that you can never go back to exactly the way things were in the past, and they returned home to find economic crisis, conflict with the people who had stayed behind, and a temple in ruins.
It must have been an intimidating time that may sound a bit familiar to us. It was a time when the people were faced with a choice. Do they continue to live in an attitude of wilderness and exile, refusing to rebuild the temple and recognize the presence of God in their midst? Or, do they work and rebuild?
We might ask ourselves the same questions. When we feel far away from God and when our life feels like a heap of rubble, we have a choice. We can continue to wander, or we can ask God how to rebuild. What does God desire to rebuild in your life?
FOCUS READING
Haggai 1:15b-2:4 (NRSV)
In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: “Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, Oh Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts....
Tuesday 17 November 2009
An Architect and Some Bricklayers
DAILY BYTE
Christians can be a tad squeamish about discussing the value of "work." We emphasize the value of grace, which is, of course, the way that God saves us - loving us not because of the work that we do but because of an extravagant, irrational desire to love his creation - the works of God’s own hands.
But, as the social activist and minister, Anna Garlin Spencer, once said, "We get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else."
In other words, our work matters. To us and to God.
From the very beginning of creation, God tasked humankind with work to do. We often make the mistake of thinking that people were only given work once they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden - that work was a curse. But, in the creation story, we are told that even in the garden, we were tasked with the glorious and backbreaking work of tilling the same earth from which we were created.
We say we are what we eat, but, also true, according to the scriptures, is that we are how we work. Even if we’re not actually tilling the earth, we are shaped by what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.
We may like to keep our work separate from our church – work is what we do during the week, church is what we do on the weekend. We drown in paperwork during the day and pray to God at night. But, if we look at our lives and the way scripture speaks into them, we see that the two cannot be separate. We cannot help but admit that James 2:17 speaks truth when it says, our "faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action - works - , is dead" (NIV).
No goal in the world is achieved without someone making an effort to work toward it. Think about your own life - even the smallest tasks - as small as washing the dishes or learning for an exam or praying for someone who is struggling - all of these are examples of faith! Faith that the world can become clean and pure. Faith that wisdom can be gained. Faith that God hears us in prayer.
But, each moment of faith is attached to a tangible action. Nothing in the world is built without someone laying bricks and mortar. Colleen Barrett, one of the most successful businesswomen in America says that “When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.”
That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the profession of an architect... But it is to say, that as people of faith, our architect has already been named. We have been exquisitely designed and created by the unparalleled architectural genius of God for one purpose - to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
So, if that is the faith statement we live by, the one we have been created for, then God must be empowering us with the ability to work toward that. What kind of work do you think God created you for? How is God empowering you to do that work?
FOCUS READING
James 2:26 (NASB)
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
Christians can be a tad squeamish about discussing the value of "work." We emphasize the value of grace, which is, of course, the way that God saves us - loving us not because of the work that we do but because of an extravagant, irrational desire to love his creation - the works of God’s own hands.
But, as the social activist and minister, Anna Garlin Spencer, once said, "We get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else."
In other words, our work matters. To us and to God.
From the very beginning of creation, God tasked humankind with work to do. We often make the mistake of thinking that people were only given work once they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden - that work was a curse. But, in the creation story, we are told that even in the garden, we were tasked with the glorious and backbreaking work of tilling the same earth from which we were created.
We say we are what we eat, but, also true, according to the scriptures, is that we are how we work. Even if we’re not actually tilling the earth, we are shaped by what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.
We may like to keep our work separate from our church – work is what we do during the week, church is what we do on the weekend. We drown in paperwork during the day and pray to God at night. But, if we look at our lives and the way scripture speaks into them, we see that the two cannot be separate. We cannot help but admit that James 2:17 speaks truth when it says, our "faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action - works - , is dead" (NIV).
No goal in the world is achieved without someone making an effort to work toward it. Think about your own life - even the smallest tasks - as small as washing the dishes or learning for an exam or praying for someone who is struggling - all of these are examples of faith! Faith that the world can become clean and pure. Faith that wisdom can be gained. Faith that God hears us in prayer.
But, each moment of faith is attached to a tangible action. Nothing in the world is built without someone laying bricks and mortar. Colleen Barrett, one of the most successful businesswomen in America says that “When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.”
That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the profession of an architect... But it is to say, that as people of faith, our architect has already been named. We have been exquisitely designed and created by the unparalleled architectural genius of God for one purpose - to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
So, if that is the faith statement we live by, the one we have been created for, then God must be empowering us with the ability to work toward that. What kind of work do you think God created you for? How is God empowering you to do that work?
FOCUS READING
James 2:26 (NASB)
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
Friday 13 November 2009
Work
DAILY BYTE
A few years ago when my father, who is a self-proclaimed work-a-holic, started to consider going into retirement, for Christmas I got him the National Geographic Coffee Table Book called Work. It's a collection of photographs from all around the world of people doing different jobs - some, perhaps, more enviable than others...
My dad was coming to a point in his life where he was getting quite pensive in thinking back on the work he had done, wondering if it had been done well and life lived to the fullest, and he was considering making some changes in the future kinds of work he planned to do.
I think I was hoping that the pictures would inspire him to view his past and future work through a new lens - perhaps one of gratitude that he had not been required to spend his life doing something like dying lemons yellow so that they would look riper than they actually are - which, I have learned from the article, "37 strange jobs that you can actually make a living at" is actually a real job that people do, as are testing deodorant odors, writing fortune cookie messages, and harvesting venom from snakes.
I suppose the old mantra is true, “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
But, more than just feeling thankful or prideful, I hoped my dad would spend some time wondering if the life of the lemon-sprayer had been less or more fulfilling and prosperous than his own, based on how those lives had been lived and how that work had been done beneath the surface of a job.
What is it about the work that we do that makes it worthwhile and makes us prosperous – whether we are fortune-cookie writers by trade, or preachers, car-guards or builders?
This week, we will spend time exploring the nature of work. What kind of work do you do? Your work might be inside or outside the context of a full time job. It might be inside or outside the walls of a church.
Whatever it may be, do you find the work you have to do fulfilling? Do you think it makes you prosperous?
Particularly as we explore some thoughts from the prophet, Haggai, take some time this week to wonder and ask what God might desire from you in the work you do.
FOCUS READING
2 Thessalonians 2:15-17 (NRSV)
So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
A few years ago when my father, who is a self-proclaimed work-a-holic, started to consider going into retirement, for Christmas I got him the National Geographic Coffee Table Book called Work. It's a collection of photographs from all around the world of people doing different jobs - some, perhaps, more enviable than others...
My dad was coming to a point in his life where he was getting quite pensive in thinking back on the work he had done, wondering if it had been done well and life lived to the fullest, and he was considering making some changes in the future kinds of work he planned to do.
I think I was hoping that the pictures would inspire him to view his past and future work through a new lens - perhaps one of gratitude that he had not been required to spend his life doing something like dying lemons yellow so that they would look riper than they actually are - which, I have learned from the article, "37 strange jobs that you can actually make a living at" is actually a real job that people do, as are testing deodorant odors, writing fortune cookie messages, and harvesting venom from snakes.
I suppose the old mantra is true, “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
But, more than just feeling thankful or prideful, I hoped my dad would spend some time wondering if the life of the lemon-sprayer had been less or more fulfilling and prosperous than his own, based on how those lives had been lived and how that work had been done beneath the surface of a job.
What is it about the work that we do that makes it worthwhile and makes us prosperous – whether we are fortune-cookie writers by trade, or preachers, car-guards or builders?
This week, we will spend time exploring the nature of work. What kind of work do you do? Your work might be inside or outside the context of a full time job. It might be inside or outside the walls of a church.
Whatever it may be, do you find the work you have to do fulfilling? Do you think it makes you prosperous?
Particularly as we explore some thoughts from the prophet, Haggai, take some time this week to wonder and ask what God might desire from you in the work you do.
FOCUS READING
2 Thessalonians 2:15-17 (NRSV)
So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Friday 6 November 2009
A Rogue in the System
DAILY BYTE
So to sum up what we have learnt from the parable of the Dishonest Manager so far: Firstly, the parable begins by giving us strange comfort in affirming that life can be messy, and that even if we find ourselves a little confused and beat up, God can somehow make sense of it all. Secondly, we are then emphatically challenged not to waste our lives, but rather to found ourselves upon what God most values in life.
The third message of this parable is the hinge upon which everything else hangs: it is to forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive for any reason you want, or for no reason at all.
The Dishonest Manager was a rogue who had no authorisation to go around cancelling or cutting people’s debts, even though the system that denied him this authority was corrupt and unjust. The powers that be would have seen his behaviour as outrageous (although the peasants who suffered under the system would have applauded him).
It was quite simply outrageous behaviour to forgive those debts. But Luke’s Gospel has been telling us that Jesus’ behaviour was similarly outrageous. Remember, how I told you that the three parables of being lost in Luke 15, and this final one in Luke 16, were told by Jesus in response to his opponents (who similarly represented the official line), and who constantly told him he had no right to go about welcoming sinners and declaring God’s forgiveness to them.
So really, Jesus was a rogue in their system, because he taught that religion had no right to push out ‘others’, those people who didn’t quite fit into their rigid rules of right and wrong. Jesus taught that nothing was more valuable that relationships ... that all people matter! Jesus taught that God builds his kingdom upon the completely thin ice of his grace – it is reckless mercy and utterly undeserved forgiveness.
And Jesus asks us to buy into this message in such a way that we begin doing it ourselves, even if our motives are somewhat messy and selfish. Really, it all boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.
Extending to others the kind of grace God shows us can only put us more deeply in touch with that grace.
Did you notice how just like the parable of the Prodigal Son, there is no proper ending to this story? In the Prodigal Son, the father makes an offer of grace to his older son at a party, and we are left hanging wondering what his response will be. In the same way, in this parable, the landowner commends the manager for his shrewdness but we are left wondering what his fate is.
Perhaps, Jesus left it like that because he wanted us to fill in the ending for ourselves – to live out the ending through the making of good choices. We are challenged to remember that as much as we may squander, as much as we can be selfishly absorbed, as much as we may be confused or hurt and left at rock-bottom by life’s murky unfairness, well, God CAN ALWAYS find us.
Always.
PRAYER AND READING
Pray the following prayer, based upon Psalm 113.
Let us praise the name of the Lord, for God is wonderful! Yesterday, today and forever! The Lord our God has done marvellous things and we are more bless then we could ever imagine. For all the amazing gifts we have been given, we praise the name of the Lord! Amen!
So to sum up what we have learnt from the parable of the Dishonest Manager so far: Firstly, the parable begins by giving us strange comfort in affirming that life can be messy, and that even if we find ourselves a little confused and beat up, God can somehow make sense of it all. Secondly, we are then emphatically challenged not to waste our lives, but rather to found ourselves upon what God most values in life.
The third message of this parable is the hinge upon which everything else hangs: it is to forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive for any reason you want, or for no reason at all.
The Dishonest Manager was a rogue who had no authorisation to go around cancelling or cutting people’s debts, even though the system that denied him this authority was corrupt and unjust. The powers that be would have seen his behaviour as outrageous (although the peasants who suffered under the system would have applauded him).
It was quite simply outrageous behaviour to forgive those debts. But Luke’s Gospel has been telling us that Jesus’ behaviour was similarly outrageous. Remember, how I told you that the three parables of being lost in Luke 15, and this final one in Luke 16, were told by Jesus in response to his opponents (who similarly represented the official line), and who constantly told him he had no right to go about welcoming sinners and declaring God’s forgiveness to them.
So really, Jesus was a rogue in their system, because he taught that religion had no right to push out ‘others’, those people who didn’t quite fit into their rigid rules of right and wrong. Jesus taught that nothing was more valuable that relationships ... that all people matter! Jesus taught that God builds his kingdom upon the completely thin ice of his grace – it is reckless mercy and utterly undeserved forgiveness.
And Jesus asks us to buy into this message in such a way that we begin doing it ourselves, even if our motives are somewhat messy and selfish. Really, it all boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.
Extending to others the kind of grace God shows us can only put us more deeply in touch with that grace.
Did you notice how just like the parable of the Prodigal Son, there is no proper ending to this story? In the Prodigal Son, the father makes an offer of grace to his older son at a party, and we are left hanging wondering what his response will be. In the same way, in this parable, the landowner commends the manager for his shrewdness but we are left wondering what his fate is.
Perhaps, Jesus left it like that because he wanted us to fill in the ending for ourselves – to live out the ending through the making of good choices. We are challenged to remember that as much as we may squander, as much as we can be selfishly absorbed, as much as we may be confused or hurt and left at rock-bottom by life’s murky unfairness, well, God CAN ALWAYS find us.
Always.
PRAYER AND READING
Pray the following prayer, based upon Psalm 113.
Let us praise the name of the Lord, for God is wonderful! Yesterday, today and forever! The Lord our God has done marvellous things and we are more bless then we could ever imagine. For all the amazing gifts we have been given, we praise the name of the Lord! Amen!
Hinging on Forgiveness
DAILY BYTE
There is something in the parable of the Dishonest Manager that is both striking and powerful. It is a key, or a hinge, upon which the parable hangs and by which it offers to transform and redeem all the mess and squandering that the story mirrors back to us.
This hinge is forgiveness. It is amazing grace. It is reckless and undeserved mercy.
Now this may surprise you, but have you yet considered exactly what it is the manager does (that later earns him praise), albeit without authorisation and with deception? Well, simply put, the manager forgives debt.
He forgives even though there is no purity in this act, no clean lines and sharp angles. He forgives things he has no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, such as personal gain and to compensate for past misconduct.
Yet, despite all this, this act of forgiveness seems to bring meaning, purpose, balance and sense to even the very worst messiness of this story.
And herein lies the Gospel hope of being found for you and me.
Here is the core message of the parable to us. Here it cuts through our rubbish and pretences, all our false pieties.
For you see, it doesn’t matter if forgiveness begins through purely selfish motives. Do it anyway! Get involved in God’s abundant generosity programs of crazy grace and undeserved forgiveness.
This is because doing this, whether from pure reasons or not, will actually be a fundamental part of finding you.
The act of forgiveness transforms us. We can have no love for our enemy, and the only reason we forgive is to set ourselves free from our own prisons, and really, that’s ok, because we find it somehow lightens our load, eases our pain and soothes our hate.
It ends up making us less selfish really. Now, surely, that is Gospel work in action.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, you have recklessly lavished your grace upon me. Much of the forgiveness I have received from you is totally undeserved. Help me to extend to others the same grace I have received from you. Amen.
FOCUS READING
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
There is something in the parable of the Dishonest Manager that is both striking and powerful. It is a key, or a hinge, upon which the parable hangs and by which it offers to transform and redeem all the mess and squandering that the story mirrors back to us.
This hinge is forgiveness. It is amazing grace. It is reckless and undeserved mercy.
Now this may surprise you, but have you yet considered exactly what it is the manager does (that later earns him praise), albeit without authorisation and with deception? Well, simply put, the manager forgives debt.
He forgives even though there is no purity in this act, no clean lines and sharp angles. He forgives things he has no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, such as personal gain and to compensate for past misconduct.
Yet, despite all this, this act of forgiveness seems to bring meaning, purpose, balance and sense to even the very worst messiness of this story.
And herein lies the Gospel hope of being found for you and me.
Here is the core message of the parable to us. Here it cuts through our rubbish and pretences, all our false pieties.
For you see, it doesn’t matter if forgiveness begins through purely selfish motives. Do it anyway! Get involved in God’s abundant generosity programs of crazy grace and undeserved forgiveness.
This is because doing this, whether from pure reasons or not, will actually be a fundamental part of finding you.
The act of forgiveness transforms us. We can have no love for our enemy, and the only reason we forgive is to set ourselves free from our own prisons, and really, that’s ok, because we find it somehow lightens our load, eases our pain and soothes our hate.
It ends up making us less selfish really. Now, surely, that is Gospel work in action.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, you have recklessly lavished your grace upon me. Much of the forgiveness I have received from you is totally undeserved. Help me to extend to others the same grace I have received from you. Amen.
FOCUS READING
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
The Act of Squandering
DAILY BYTE
In telling the story of the Dishonest Manager, Jesus used an interesting word to describe how the landowner’s assets were mismanaged. Jesus used the word ‘dieskorpisen’ which means to squander, to scatter, to waste.
What makes this word usage so fascinating is that it is the exact same word used in the much-loved parable just before this one – The Prodigal Son – who we are told also ‘dieskorpisen’ his inheritance and his life. He squandered it and that’s how he became lost.
The point is that both the Prodigal Son and the Dishonest Manager are portrayed as wasting life when they really had it good. There is a sense of failure in both stories, of messing up, of not fully appreciating and meaningfully engaging with the true potential of their lives.
They ‘dieskorpisen’ – they squandered - and in so doing they wasted themselves. And perhaps most importantly, within the context of both stories, they wasted by losing out on people ... on relationships.
The Prodigal Son did not properly appreciate his father, and he only noticed that loss when his life hit rock bottom. In the same way, it was only when the Dishonest Manager got into trouble that he realised he had been wasting more than his master’s money, but that he had developed no relational network to save him.
There was no response of ‘oh well, I will just move in with mom for a while,’ or ‘I am sure one of my mates will put me up.’ Nothing like that at all. His sneaky plans to save himself revolved around the realisation that he was all he had left.
This parable questions and challenges us all in this regard: Be careful that you do not waste what is truly good in life! Nothing, it seems, is as important in life as others – people, neighbours, friends, family – and if we live in a way that wastes that then we ourselves will be wasted. We will be truly ‘dieskorpisen.’
This story reminds us that in God’s value system there is no commodity worth more than community. We know that all three lost and found parables in Luke 15, and this one in Luke 16 come directly after people grumble at Jesus for doing what? Well, for eating with sinners and in so doing for valuing the undervalued.
This story questions each of us in this regard. Does the way you live properly reflect God’s value system? Or are you wasting yourself because you are founded more upon money, success, appearance or whatever?
That’s a good question.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, I ask that you would help me not to squander what is truly valuable in my life. Help me to live in a way that is founded upon what you value. Amen
FOCUS READING
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
In telling the story of the Dishonest Manager, Jesus used an interesting word to describe how the landowner’s assets were mismanaged. Jesus used the word ‘dieskorpisen’ which means to squander, to scatter, to waste.
What makes this word usage so fascinating is that it is the exact same word used in the much-loved parable just before this one – The Prodigal Son – who we are told also ‘dieskorpisen’ his inheritance and his life. He squandered it and that’s how he became lost.
The point is that both the Prodigal Son and the Dishonest Manager are portrayed as wasting life when they really had it good. There is a sense of failure in both stories, of messing up, of not fully appreciating and meaningfully engaging with the true potential of their lives.
They ‘dieskorpisen’ – they squandered - and in so doing they wasted themselves. And perhaps most importantly, within the context of both stories, they wasted by losing out on people ... on relationships.
The Prodigal Son did not properly appreciate his father, and he only noticed that loss when his life hit rock bottom. In the same way, it was only when the Dishonest Manager got into trouble that he realised he had been wasting more than his master’s money, but that he had developed no relational network to save him.
There was no response of ‘oh well, I will just move in with mom for a while,’ or ‘I am sure one of my mates will put me up.’ Nothing like that at all. His sneaky plans to save himself revolved around the realisation that he was all he had left.
This parable questions and challenges us all in this regard: Be careful that you do not waste what is truly good in life! Nothing, it seems, is as important in life as others – people, neighbours, friends, family – and if we live in a way that wastes that then we ourselves will be wasted. We will be truly ‘dieskorpisen.’
This story reminds us that in God’s value system there is no commodity worth more than community. We know that all three lost and found parables in Luke 15, and this one in Luke 16 come directly after people grumble at Jesus for doing what? Well, for eating with sinners and in so doing for valuing the undervalued.
This story questions each of us in this regard. Does the way you live properly reflect God’s value system? Or are you wasting yourself because you are founded more upon money, success, appearance or whatever?
That’s a good question.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, I ask that you would help me not to squander what is truly valuable in my life. Help me to live in a way that is founded upon what you value. Amen
FOCUS READING
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
Life is Messy
DAILY BYTE
Jesus told a parable and it went a little like this:
A very rich man lived in a big city (like Jerusalem) with a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income generated from property he owned in the countryside. The rich man hired a manager to attend to his property while he partied away in Jerusalem. Most of the labour was done by peasants who might originally have owned this land but then lost it because of debt.
However, this rich man decided to fire his manager because of rumours he was embezzling. Now the manager was left in the lurch because he knew he wasn’t capable of any other work and up to this point he had been an ally of the landowner and thus complicit in an unjust system. The point is that his working history would hardly have endeared him to his community.
So what does he do? Well, something extraordinary clever, something sneaky and dishonest. He gathers together all those who owe the landowner money, and tells them their debt have been reduced from the rough equivalent of a ‘heck of a lot’ to something that is well within their ability to repay.
Now these debtors think that the manager is still acting with his boss’s authority. They believe the landowner is more generous that just about anyone else in his position would be. The landowner becomes a hero in the people’s eyes, and by association the manager also. People love the bringer of good news!
The landowner stops by the area for his customary visit to pick up the wealth his manager has collected on his behalf, and receives a surprise that is both exhilarating and challenging: For miles around his praises are being sung, he is greeted with affection rather than resentment, people are slapping his back and genuinely laughing at all his jokes. Somehow his reputation has instantly morphed from being a greedy, bloodsucking landlord to an all round good guy.
When he finds out the reason for his sudden popularity, he recognizes that he is now in somewhat of a pickle. He has a hard choice to make. He can go outside to the assembled crowd – the people who are calling God’s blessings upon him – and tell them it was all a terrible mistake, that the steward’s generosity was actually an act of crookedness and thus won’t hold water legally. But of course then the people’s goodwill would rapidly turn to bitterness, their cheers would turn to jeers … and who would to be the landowner then?
Alternatively, the landowner could just relax and take in the acclaim of the crowd. He could take credit for the manager’s actions and continue to enjoy being Mr. Popularity, but (and here’s the tricky part), and if he wants to keep the crowd’s favour, he cannot really be seen to now mistreat the manager. He can no longer fire him with impunity knowing the people care about the manager’s fate.
This is the bind the manager has put the landowner in. We don’t know what landowner does, whether he carries through his threat of firing the manager, but we do know the last thing he does is praise his manager for acting so shrewdly. And the difficulty the church has always had with this parable is that Jesus seemingly shares in this endorsement.
So this story Jesus told us is tricky, uncertain and difficult to tie up, but that is precisely because it mirrors life back to us. It mirrors US back to ourselves, because, well, truth to be told that is how we are. Like it or not, most of us can find huge parts of ourselves in characters like the dishonest manager – we have a little too much self-concern, or dishonesty, or loneliness.
This parable reminds us that life can be very messy indeed for it reflects that truth back to us. And funnily enough, it is exactly in the amoral messiness and grey-hued uncertainty of this parable that we find its message reaching us, finding us.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, I confess to you those parts of me that are both messy and deceitful. May your forgiveness wash through me and through the course of every day bring me more and more fully into your wholeness and healing. Amen.
Jesus told a parable and it went a little like this:
A very rich man lived in a big city (like Jerusalem) with a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income generated from property he owned in the countryside. The rich man hired a manager to attend to his property while he partied away in Jerusalem. Most of the labour was done by peasants who might originally have owned this land but then lost it because of debt.
However, this rich man decided to fire his manager because of rumours he was embezzling. Now the manager was left in the lurch because he knew he wasn’t capable of any other work and up to this point he had been an ally of the landowner and thus complicit in an unjust system. The point is that his working history would hardly have endeared him to his community.
So what does he do? Well, something extraordinary clever, something sneaky and dishonest. He gathers together all those who owe the landowner money, and tells them their debt have been reduced from the rough equivalent of a ‘heck of a lot’ to something that is well within their ability to repay.
Now these debtors think that the manager is still acting with his boss’s authority. They believe the landowner is more generous that just about anyone else in his position would be. The landowner becomes a hero in the people’s eyes, and by association the manager also. People love the bringer of good news!
The landowner stops by the area for his customary visit to pick up the wealth his manager has collected on his behalf, and receives a surprise that is both exhilarating and challenging: For miles around his praises are being sung, he is greeted with affection rather than resentment, people are slapping his back and genuinely laughing at all his jokes. Somehow his reputation has instantly morphed from being a greedy, bloodsucking landlord to an all round good guy.
When he finds out the reason for his sudden popularity, he recognizes that he is now in somewhat of a pickle. He has a hard choice to make. He can go outside to the assembled crowd – the people who are calling God’s blessings upon him – and tell them it was all a terrible mistake, that the steward’s generosity was actually an act of crookedness and thus won’t hold water legally. But of course then the people’s goodwill would rapidly turn to bitterness, their cheers would turn to jeers … and who would to be the landowner then?
Alternatively, the landowner could just relax and take in the acclaim of the crowd. He could take credit for the manager’s actions and continue to enjoy being Mr. Popularity, but (and here’s the tricky part), and if he wants to keep the crowd’s favour, he cannot really be seen to now mistreat the manager. He can no longer fire him with impunity knowing the people care about the manager’s fate.
This is the bind the manager has put the landowner in. We don’t know what landowner does, whether he carries through his threat of firing the manager, but we do know the last thing he does is praise his manager for acting so shrewdly. And the difficulty the church has always had with this parable is that Jesus seemingly shares in this endorsement.
So this story Jesus told us is tricky, uncertain and difficult to tie up, but that is precisely because it mirrors life back to us. It mirrors US back to ourselves, because, well, truth to be told that is how we are. Like it or not, most of us can find huge parts of ourselves in characters like the dishonest manager – we have a little too much self-concern, or dishonesty, or loneliness.
This parable reminds us that life can be very messy indeed for it reflects that truth back to us. And funnily enough, it is exactly in the amoral messiness and grey-hued uncertainty of this parable that we find its message reaching us, finding us.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, I confess to you those parts of me that are both messy and deceitful. May your forgiveness wash through me and through the course of every day bring me more and more fully into your wholeness and healing. Amen.
The Dishonest Manager
DAILY BYTE
Luke chapter 15 is famous for telling 3 well loved parables of being lost and found. A sheep was lost and then found. A coin was lost and then found. The prodigal son was lost to his father and then found amidst much rejoicing. Then, without so much as a please or thank you, we find ourselves in Luke chapter 16 where Jesus tells us a parable that just loses us. No found.
We read this story (see below) and wonder just what the heck is going on! Is this story even in the Bible? And we question it with good reason, because the story describes a man who embezzles money and yet is commended for it. Strangely enough, he is held up within the context of this story as a positive example.
So we find ourselves a little lost to be honest, and as we all know, being lost can leave us feeling uncertain and maybe even a little fearful. We feel that because this story is confusing, messy and almost amoral, that it is perhaps better to ignore it. It loses us so we will lose it kind of thing.
Yet, perhaps this is a mistake that we will find our faith slightly poorer for: For if there is one great and certain Gospel truth, it is that God can find us. Even in life’s murkiest, messiest, most amoral moments, when all hope and sense is lose, God CAN find us!
Ultimately, this story reminds us of that.
When I first encountered this parable I felt much like you might right now. I didn’t like it at all. There is good reason, I reckoned, that this parable is not read or discussed much within church circles. It’s like that cousin or uncle who embarrasses everyone with their loud and brash behaviour, it seems better just to pretend they aren’t there.
But after spending some time wrestling with this parable, I have grown strangely affectionate towards it. In fact, just like that embarrassing cousin or uncle, if you take the time and trouble to get to know this story better, you will find that there are previously undiscovered layers of depth that will enrich you in a wonderful way.
Which is exactly why it would be well worth our time to spend the next few days in the company of this story. Read through it again, and note down any thoughts or questions that spring to your mind, and then pray about them.
PRAY AS YOU GO
I give thanks to you, Almighty God, for being a God who delights in finding the lost. Thank you for the way you have always worked in my life to bring me closer to you. May I walk always in your paths. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
Luke chapter 15 is famous for telling 3 well loved parables of being lost and found. A sheep was lost and then found. A coin was lost and then found. The prodigal son was lost to his father and then found amidst much rejoicing. Then, without so much as a please or thank you, we find ourselves in Luke chapter 16 where Jesus tells us a parable that just loses us. No found.
We read this story (see below) and wonder just what the heck is going on! Is this story even in the Bible? And we question it with good reason, because the story describes a man who embezzles money and yet is commended for it. Strangely enough, he is held up within the context of this story as a positive example.
So we find ourselves a little lost to be honest, and as we all know, being lost can leave us feeling uncertain and maybe even a little fearful. We feel that because this story is confusing, messy and almost amoral, that it is perhaps better to ignore it. It loses us so we will lose it kind of thing.
Yet, perhaps this is a mistake that we will find our faith slightly poorer for: For if there is one great and certain Gospel truth, it is that God can find us. Even in life’s murkiest, messiest, most amoral moments, when all hope and sense is lose, God CAN find us!
Ultimately, this story reminds us of that.
When I first encountered this parable I felt much like you might right now. I didn’t like it at all. There is good reason, I reckoned, that this parable is not read or discussed much within church circles. It’s like that cousin or uncle who embarrasses everyone with their loud and brash behaviour, it seems better just to pretend they aren’t there.
But after spending some time wrestling with this parable, I have grown strangely affectionate towards it. In fact, just like that embarrassing cousin or uncle, if you take the time and trouble to get to know this story better, you will find that there are previously undiscovered layers of depth that will enrich you in a wonderful way.
Which is exactly why it would be well worth our time to spend the next few days in the company of this story. Read through it again, and note down any thoughts or questions that spring to your mind, and then pray about them.
PRAY AS YOU GO
I give thanks to you, Almighty God, for being a God who delights in finding the lost. Thank you for the way you have always worked in my life to bring me closer to you. May I walk always in your paths. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;
Wednesday 4 November 2009
Calling – Part 2
DAILY BYTE
Yesterday we started looking at God’s call as a source of hope and life for our world. The surprising but very good news is that when God’s call is heard and obeyed, when women and men give their lives to what God asks of them, there is truly a whole new creation that unfolds. The call of God taking root within ordinary people has the power to make all things new.
Tragically, God’s call is not always heard or obeyed. The pages of history and scripture are littered with the stories of those who have tried to turn aside from God’s call.
We think of people like Moses, Gideon, Jonah and Jeremiah who tried to duck and dive from God’s call staking a claim over their lives. The reasons that they gave for their reluctance and resistance sound strangely familiar. For they are the reasons we also use – I’m not equipped, I’m not sufficiently resourced, I’m not worthy, I’m too young, I’m too old, I don’t have the time, I don’t want to go.
Sometimes the resistance is expressed not all at once, but bit by bit, gradually over time, as people allow themselves to drift from God’s call until they find themselves living not out of the fiery passion of divine purpose, but out of the cold ash heap of mediocrity and irrelevance.
But I ask you, why would we settle for anything less than our highest calling?
Why would we not want to put these miraculous lives to magnificent purpose?
Why would we not risk everything to let our one chance at life be put to great and glorious good by an infinitely gracious God?
Maybe, like Jeremiah, we are just too aware of our own inadequacy. When he heard that God had appointed him a prophet to the nations, Jeremiah offers this somewhat panicked response, “But I don’t know how to speak, for I’m just a boy.”
Interestingly, God doesn’t even argue the point for it seems that Jeremiah is telling the truth. All that God says is, “Don’t SAY you’re just a boy. Because true though that may be, it is utterly irrelevant. It is irrelevant because you’ll go where I send you. You’ll speak whatever I command. So do not be afraid, for I am with you.
And then God touches Jeremiah’s mouth and declares that God’s very words, filled with endless creative and life-giving power, are now in him.
And so it is with us. In response to God’s call we offer our reasoned explanations as to why this is a bad idea, as if God is unaware of who we are in the first place and doesn’t really know what God’s doing. And many of our reasons are indeed accurate. But for one thing: in the eyes of God they are utterly irrelevant.
Let me say it as plainly as I can. If you’re seized by the call of God, of course you’ll feel inadequate, ill-equipped, unworthy. Get over it. Dare to believe that God is not limited by your limitations, and so neither should you. And remember that God’s call always always always comes with God’s gracious promise, “I will be with you.”
This is reason for great hope indeed.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, we thank you for the lives of the countless women and men over the ages who have faithfully served you and poured out their lives to the glory of your name. May their example inspire us to heed your call and commit ourselves to your eternal purposes, for the sake of hope and healing for our world. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Jeremiah 1:4-8
Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."
But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."
Yesterday we started looking at God’s call as a source of hope and life for our world. The surprising but very good news is that when God’s call is heard and obeyed, when women and men give their lives to what God asks of them, there is truly a whole new creation that unfolds. The call of God taking root within ordinary people has the power to make all things new.
Tragically, God’s call is not always heard or obeyed. The pages of history and scripture are littered with the stories of those who have tried to turn aside from God’s call.
We think of people like Moses, Gideon, Jonah and Jeremiah who tried to duck and dive from God’s call staking a claim over their lives. The reasons that they gave for their reluctance and resistance sound strangely familiar. For they are the reasons we also use – I’m not equipped, I’m not sufficiently resourced, I’m not worthy, I’m too young, I’m too old, I don’t have the time, I don’t want to go.
Sometimes the resistance is expressed not all at once, but bit by bit, gradually over time, as people allow themselves to drift from God’s call until they find themselves living not out of the fiery passion of divine purpose, but out of the cold ash heap of mediocrity and irrelevance.
But I ask you, why would we settle for anything less than our highest calling?
Why would we not want to put these miraculous lives to magnificent purpose?
Why would we not risk everything to let our one chance at life be put to great and glorious good by an infinitely gracious God?
Maybe, like Jeremiah, we are just too aware of our own inadequacy. When he heard that God had appointed him a prophet to the nations, Jeremiah offers this somewhat panicked response, “But I don’t know how to speak, for I’m just a boy.”
Interestingly, God doesn’t even argue the point for it seems that Jeremiah is telling the truth. All that God says is, “Don’t SAY you’re just a boy. Because true though that may be, it is utterly irrelevant. It is irrelevant because you’ll go where I send you. You’ll speak whatever I command. So do not be afraid, for I am with you.
And then God touches Jeremiah’s mouth and declares that God’s very words, filled with endless creative and life-giving power, are now in him.
And so it is with us. In response to God’s call we offer our reasoned explanations as to why this is a bad idea, as if God is unaware of who we are in the first place and doesn’t really know what God’s doing. And many of our reasons are indeed accurate. But for one thing: in the eyes of God they are utterly irrelevant.
Let me say it as plainly as I can. If you’re seized by the call of God, of course you’ll feel inadequate, ill-equipped, unworthy. Get over it. Dare to believe that God is not limited by your limitations, and so neither should you. And remember that God’s call always always always comes with God’s gracious promise, “I will be with you.”
This is reason for great hope indeed.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, we thank you for the lives of the countless women and men over the ages who have faithfully served you and poured out their lives to the glory of your name. May their example inspire us to heed your call and commit ourselves to your eternal purposes, for the sake of hope and healing for our world. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Jeremiah 1:4-8
Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."
But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."
Monday 2 November 2009
Calling – Part 1
DAILY BYTE
In the beginning, the Bible tells us, God SPOKE everything into existence. All God had to do was say the word, and the heavens and the earth burst into being. How incredible, that the words that come from the mouth of God are filled with the most awesome creative and life-giving power.
God spoke the words, and it was so. And God looked upon everything that God had made and saw that it was very good.
But we are all painfully aware that God’s good creation, spoken into existence, has gone sadly awry. We live in a world that is all too familiar with the realities of war, poverty, global warming, violence, rape, abuse, AIDS and greed. Ours is a world in chains longing for liberation. Ours is a world crying out to be made new.
So I ask you, “Don’t you think it’s past time for God to speak once again? To utter words of recreating and redeeming power over this broken world?” God did so in the beginning, and look what happened. Surely God could do it again. Surely it’s not too hard for God to say, “Let there be peace in the Middle East, and throughout the world for that matter,” and for it to be so.
Surely it’s not too hard for God to say, “Let there be an end to poverty and hunger and the indignities of human deprivation,” and for it to be so.
For God to say, “Let there be the resolving of all conflicts, the healing of all hurts, the binding up of all brokenness,” and for it to be so.
If only the voice of God could sound once again over the chaos all around us, as it did in the beginning, bringing order and harmony and light and life. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be reason for hope and rejoicing?
The good news is that God is speaking, right now. God’s voice is sounding over the chaos of our fallen human condition, right now. Words that are filled with creative and life-giving power, that come from the very mouth of God, are being uttered right now, bringing great hope to our world.
But here’s the thing: they take shape in a most surprising and unexpected way. Sometimes barely more than a whisper, the words that can bring hope alive for our world come to us in the form of a call.
“Come, and follow me.”
“Go into all the world in my name.”
“Live the life of purpose and significance I have prepared for you.”
“Embrace the work I have ordained for you.”
“Fulfil the destiny I have dreamed for you.”
“Be the hope for this world that I have created you to be.”
That’s God’s plan. It’s a simple strategy – to call women and men to be a part of a great purpose of bringing hope to the world.
We see this plan unfolding from the very beginning. No sooner were human beings created than God was enlisting them to share in the care of creation. We see this plan unfolding as God calls Israel to be God’s people, a light unto the nations. We see it in the life and ministry of Jesus. No sooner had he begun his work of announcing the coming of the kingdom, than Jesus starts calling disciples to join him in this great mission of love to the world.
Do you see the pattern? Do you get God’s plan? To call people like you and me to be a part of what God is doing. In fact, to depend upon people like you and me to be a part of what God is doing. This is completely unexpected. Altogether surprising It’s not the plan that we would have made. But this is what God has chosen.
And when God’s call is heard and obeyed. When we place our very lives under the authority of God’s life-giving word, then quite wondrously and miraculously we become channels of hope and healing for a needy world.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God you have a plan and purpose for my life that will bring hope to this world. Thank you. Help me to hear and obey whatever it is that you are calling me to do today. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Mark 1:16-18
Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
In the beginning, the Bible tells us, God SPOKE everything into existence. All God had to do was say the word, and the heavens and the earth burst into being. How incredible, that the words that come from the mouth of God are filled with the most awesome creative and life-giving power.
God spoke the words, and it was so. And God looked upon everything that God had made and saw that it was very good.
But we are all painfully aware that God’s good creation, spoken into existence, has gone sadly awry. We live in a world that is all too familiar with the realities of war, poverty, global warming, violence, rape, abuse, AIDS and greed. Ours is a world in chains longing for liberation. Ours is a world crying out to be made new.
So I ask you, “Don’t you think it’s past time for God to speak once again? To utter words of recreating and redeeming power over this broken world?” God did so in the beginning, and look what happened. Surely God could do it again. Surely it’s not too hard for God to say, “Let there be peace in the Middle East, and throughout the world for that matter,” and for it to be so.
Surely it’s not too hard for God to say, “Let there be an end to poverty and hunger and the indignities of human deprivation,” and for it to be so.
For God to say, “Let there be the resolving of all conflicts, the healing of all hurts, the binding up of all brokenness,” and for it to be so.
If only the voice of God could sound once again over the chaos all around us, as it did in the beginning, bringing order and harmony and light and life. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be reason for hope and rejoicing?
The good news is that God is speaking, right now. God’s voice is sounding over the chaos of our fallen human condition, right now. Words that are filled with creative and life-giving power, that come from the very mouth of God, are being uttered right now, bringing great hope to our world.
But here’s the thing: they take shape in a most surprising and unexpected way. Sometimes barely more than a whisper, the words that can bring hope alive for our world come to us in the form of a call.
“Come, and follow me.”
“Go into all the world in my name.”
“Live the life of purpose and significance I have prepared for you.”
“Embrace the work I have ordained for you.”
“Fulfil the destiny I have dreamed for you.”
“Be the hope for this world that I have created you to be.”
That’s God’s plan. It’s a simple strategy – to call women and men to be a part of a great purpose of bringing hope to the world.
We see this plan unfolding from the very beginning. No sooner were human beings created than God was enlisting them to share in the care of creation. We see this plan unfolding as God calls Israel to be God’s people, a light unto the nations. We see it in the life and ministry of Jesus. No sooner had he begun his work of announcing the coming of the kingdom, than Jesus starts calling disciples to join him in this great mission of love to the world.
Do you see the pattern? Do you get God’s plan? To call people like you and me to be a part of what God is doing. In fact, to depend upon people like you and me to be a part of what God is doing. This is completely unexpected. Altogether surprising It’s not the plan that we would have made. But this is what God has chosen.
And when God’s call is heard and obeyed. When we place our very lives under the authority of God’s life-giving word, then quite wondrously and miraculously we become channels of hope and healing for a needy world.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God you have a plan and purpose for my life that will bring hope to this world. Thank you. Help me to hear and obey whatever it is that you are calling me to do today. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Mark 1:16-18
Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Community
DAILY BYTE
Yesterday we reflected on our own families as a place where God’s glory and grace can be seen. Today, we expand that thought by thinking about the wider family of faith, and how the formation of diverse and inclusive community is a source of such rich hope for our world.
Of course, not all communities are hope-filled. Many communities offer very little that is truly life-giving and transformational. This usually happens when they become little more than closed groupings of people that have an inward rather than outward focus.
Interestingly, the early church in Acts struggled with this very same thing. They were a new community of faith grappling with what it meant to be faithful and obedient followers of Christ. This new faith movement had emerged out of their Jewish heritage, and so for some believers their Jewishness was an essential part of their identity.
But God had much bigger and broader intentions for the church, and there was a seismic shift that happened in the church’s self-identity when those intentions were expressed. The Spirit was poured out on Gentiles, and Peter immediately recognized that the old criterion of Jewishness that the church had been holding onto was redundant. And so these Gentiles were baptized and incorporated into the church.
In explaining his actions to the Jewish Christians back in Jerusalem, Peter describes a vision he had of a sheet descending from heaven, laden with all sorts of food that any self-respecting Jew would never touch. Strict dietary observance was, of course, one of the essential aspects of the Jewish way. But in the vision Peter is commanded to eat. He protests. He says it will make him impure and will diminish who he is. God says, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get up and eat.’
I’d like to think that in the vision, before the sheet was pulled back to heaven, Peter got to sink his teeth into a succulent pork chop for the first time in his life, or maybe a crayfish tail, and realized, ‘God’s right. This is good. This is not diminishing, but enriching.’
Do you get the picture of what this is saying about our understanding of community? The common fear is that in opening up the doors in radical hospitality and inclusive embrace we will lose our identity and be diminished as a result. But according to God, exactly the opposite is true. And whenever you see communities growing more diverse, be it in your neighborhood, at work, your child’s school, or your church, give thanks to God. Because hope is being born again.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Our prayer today is taken from a contemporary hymn:
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
You leave us free to seek you or reject you
You give us room to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
We long for freedom where our truest being
Is given hope and courage to unfold
We seek in freedom space and scope for dreaming
And look for ground where trees and plants can grow
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
But there are walls that keep us all divided
We fence each other in with hate and war
Fear is the bricks and mortar of our prison
Our pride of self the prison coat we wear
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
SCRIPTURE READING
Acts 10:44
While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Yesterday we reflected on our own families as a place where God’s glory and grace can be seen. Today, we expand that thought by thinking about the wider family of faith, and how the formation of diverse and inclusive community is a source of such rich hope for our world.
Of course, not all communities are hope-filled. Many communities offer very little that is truly life-giving and transformational. This usually happens when they become little more than closed groupings of people that have an inward rather than outward focus.
Interestingly, the early church in Acts struggled with this very same thing. They were a new community of faith grappling with what it meant to be faithful and obedient followers of Christ. This new faith movement had emerged out of their Jewish heritage, and so for some believers their Jewishness was an essential part of their identity.
But God had much bigger and broader intentions for the church, and there was a seismic shift that happened in the church’s self-identity when those intentions were expressed. The Spirit was poured out on Gentiles, and Peter immediately recognized that the old criterion of Jewishness that the church had been holding onto was redundant. And so these Gentiles were baptized and incorporated into the church.
In explaining his actions to the Jewish Christians back in Jerusalem, Peter describes a vision he had of a sheet descending from heaven, laden with all sorts of food that any self-respecting Jew would never touch. Strict dietary observance was, of course, one of the essential aspects of the Jewish way. But in the vision Peter is commanded to eat. He protests. He says it will make him impure and will diminish who he is. God says, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get up and eat.’
I’d like to think that in the vision, before the sheet was pulled back to heaven, Peter got to sink his teeth into a succulent pork chop for the first time in his life, or maybe a crayfish tail, and realized, ‘God’s right. This is good. This is not diminishing, but enriching.’
Do you get the picture of what this is saying about our understanding of community? The common fear is that in opening up the doors in radical hospitality and inclusive embrace we will lose our identity and be diminished as a result. But according to God, exactly the opposite is true. And whenever you see communities growing more diverse, be it in your neighborhood, at work, your child’s school, or your church, give thanks to God. Because hope is being born again.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Our prayer today is taken from a contemporary hymn:
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
You leave us free to seek you or reject you
You give us room to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
We long for freedom where our truest being
Is given hope and courage to unfold
We seek in freedom space and scope for dreaming
And look for ground where trees and plants can grow
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
But there are walls that keep us all divided
We fence each other in with hate and war
Fear is the bricks and mortar of our prison
Our pride of self the prison coat we wear
Your love O God is broad like beach and meadow
Wide as the wind and our eternal home
SCRIPTURE READING
Acts 10:44
While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Family
DAILY BYTE
This week we’re considering the ways in which the presence and activity of a loving and gracious God can be seen in the ordinary, everyday circumstances and experiences of our lives. Because the great truth is that the irrepressible hope of God springs up right before our eyes, but often in surprising and unexpected ways.
Sometimes we overcomplicate things. We assume that God is a difficult concept to grasp, and that it’s hard to find God. When, in fact, all that is needed is to look in a new way.
There’s a great story that illustrates this about a group of travelers on a scientific expedition who stop at a remote rural village. They see a boy sitting in the shade of a tree with a copy of one of the Gospels in his hand. The leader of the expedition, somewhat cynically, said to the boy that he would give him an orange if he could tell them where God could be found. The boy stood up and said, “And I’ll give you two oranges if you can tell me where God is not to be found.”
And of course the boy was right. That’s the hope that is ours in what often feels like a hopeless world. God is here, with us, present and active in our midst. All that is needed is for us to open our eyes in a new way to recognise the beauty of the Lord all around us. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it so famously, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
As we seek to do just that, today I’d invite you to think about the different people that are a part of your family. Think about your parents and grandparents, whether they are still alive or dead, and what they share(d) in common and the ways in which they are / were wholly unique individuals. Think about your siblings. Think about your spouse, your children and your grandchildren. Think about uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces, and any other relatives that come to mind.
If your family is anything like mine there will be an immense cross-section of different personalities, beliefs, preferences, personal circumstances, socio-economic situations, political convictions, career paths and life experience represented within your own family. And yet, through all this diversity there is something that connects you to one another, a connection that is more than just the blood coursing through your veins and the DNA in your cells. A connection that touches us at the deeper level of our souls.
Could it be that in the very experience of being part of a family, which I know can be messy and complicated and painfully conflicted at times, the grandeur of God can be seen? And in spite of the hurts and disappointments that we inflict on loved ones or are inflicted on us by them, there is nevertheless something else that can be seen in our families if we choose to see it. Something that can bring us great hope and joy, and a deep sense of gratitude that the family to which we belong is indeed ours.
Take a moment to thank God for the evidence of grace in the midst of your family, and the gift of belonging, and the hope that this speaks into your life.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Thank you gracious God for the often surprising ways in which your grace is known in the midst of the messiness of family. Help me today to cherish all my loved ones, to commit them to you in trust, and to be the kind of person who would enable family members around me to be rooted and grounded in love. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Ephesians 3:14-17
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
This week we’re considering the ways in which the presence and activity of a loving and gracious God can be seen in the ordinary, everyday circumstances and experiences of our lives. Because the great truth is that the irrepressible hope of God springs up right before our eyes, but often in surprising and unexpected ways.
Sometimes we overcomplicate things. We assume that God is a difficult concept to grasp, and that it’s hard to find God. When, in fact, all that is needed is to look in a new way.
There’s a great story that illustrates this about a group of travelers on a scientific expedition who stop at a remote rural village. They see a boy sitting in the shade of a tree with a copy of one of the Gospels in his hand. The leader of the expedition, somewhat cynically, said to the boy that he would give him an orange if he could tell them where God could be found. The boy stood up and said, “And I’ll give you two oranges if you can tell me where God is not to be found.”
And of course the boy was right. That’s the hope that is ours in what often feels like a hopeless world. God is here, with us, present and active in our midst. All that is needed is for us to open our eyes in a new way to recognise the beauty of the Lord all around us. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it so famously, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
As we seek to do just that, today I’d invite you to think about the different people that are a part of your family. Think about your parents and grandparents, whether they are still alive or dead, and what they share(d) in common and the ways in which they are / were wholly unique individuals. Think about your siblings. Think about your spouse, your children and your grandchildren. Think about uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces, and any other relatives that come to mind.
If your family is anything like mine there will be an immense cross-section of different personalities, beliefs, preferences, personal circumstances, socio-economic situations, political convictions, career paths and life experience represented within your own family. And yet, through all this diversity there is something that connects you to one another, a connection that is more than just the blood coursing through your veins and the DNA in your cells. A connection that touches us at the deeper level of our souls.
Could it be that in the very experience of being part of a family, which I know can be messy and complicated and painfully conflicted at times, the grandeur of God can be seen? And in spite of the hurts and disappointments that we inflict on loved ones or are inflicted on us by them, there is nevertheless something else that can be seen in our families if we choose to see it. Something that can bring us great hope and joy, and a deep sense of gratitude that the family to which we belong is indeed ours.
Take a moment to thank God for the evidence of grace in the midst of your family, and the gift of belonging, and the hope that this speaks into your life.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Thank you gracious God for the often surprising ways in which your grace is known in the midst of the messiness of family. Help me today to cherish all my loved ones, to commit them to you in trust, and to be the kind of person who would enable family members around me to be rooted and grounded in love. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Ephesians 3:14-17
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
God’s Surprising Presence
DAILY BYTE
Years back, a mate and I did a 6 week backpacking trip through Europe. About 4 weeks into the trip we had a classic travellers’ tiff that actually turned quite nasty, and so we spent a 10 hour train trip to Berlin giving each other the hairy eyeball silent treatment.
Upon arriving we checked into a youth hostel, and then took a tube into East Berlin to see what it was like. We emerged from the subway and found ourselves right outside this magnificent old concert hall.
Just then a chap right in front of us held up two tickets for a performance that was about to start. My mate and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders as if to say, ‘What the heck?’ and bought the tickets, even though we had absolutely no idea what kind of concert it was. For all we knew it could have been alpine yodeling that we were about to hear.
It was only when we got inside and got hold of a programme that we discovered that we’d bought tickets for a performance of Handel’s Messiah in German. And we soon realized that this wasn’t a Mickey Mouse event either, but that some of the finest soloists in Europe were singing, including the critically acclaimed bass, Thomas Quasthoff.
The fact that the singing was all in a language we didn’t understand didn’t matter in the slightest. For one thing we were both familiar with most of the English words. But more importantly, something happened that night that was beyond language. Because as we listened to magnificent music about a magnificent Messiah, so the majesty and mystery and mercy of this Messiah touched us in a profound way. The fight we were having evaporated into thin air, and as we listened together, my friend and I were wondrously reconciled.
That evening remains one of the most cherished memories of my life, of the altogether surprising and totally unexpected activity of a loving and gracious God. It was an experience of serendipity – making an unexpected, surprising and joyous discovery of something that is really really good.
In one sense my example is quite dramatic. Overseas trip. East Berlin. Handel’s Messiah. These aren’t ordinary, everyday experiences. But don’t let that confuse the issue, because the truth is that experiences of serendipity happen all the time in the ordinary, everyday things of life. Or maybe, to be more accurate I should say that the potential for serendipitous experiences is all around us all the time.
That may seem like a strange claim to make in a world where there is so much bad news pressing in from every side, where the chaos and mayhem of fractured lives and shattered dreams is so easy to see. But I make this claim with conviction, because there is a good and gracious God at large within our midst, who continues doing the things that God does, like bringing life and hope and healing and wholeness to our world.
A woman by the name of Pearl Bailey put it like this: “People see God everyday, they just don’t recognize him.” I think that’s true. We’ve somehow developed blind spots in our vision when it comes to recognizing the presence and activity of God in our midst. Our ability to see what’s really going on has somehow been compromised. Our capacity for deeper insight has somehow been lost. Our faith imaginations have somehow been dulled. And we think that God is somehow absent.
But of course God is not absent. In our devotions this week we’ll be looking at some of the surprising and unexpected places and circumstances where God’s presence can be seen, a presence that brings great hope to our lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, thank you for the constancy of your presence in our lives. Open our eyes that we might come to see you more and more, and so draw strength, comfort and immense joy from knowing that we are not alone. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Psalm 139:7-8
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
Years back, a mate and I did a 6 week backpacking trip through Europe. About 4 weeks into the trip we had a classic travellers’ tiff that actually turned quite nasty, and so we spent a 10 hour train trip to Berlin giving each other the hairy eyeball silent treatment.
Upon arriving we checked into a youth hostel, and then took a tube into East Berlin to see what it was like. We emerged from the subway and found ourselves right outside this magnificent old concert hall.
Just then a chap right in front of us held up two tickets for a performance that was about to start. My mate and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders as if to say, ‘What the heck?’ and bought the tickets, even though we had absolutely no idea what kind of concert it was. For all we knew it could have been alpine yodeling that we were about to hear.
It was only when we got inside and got hold of a programme that we discovered that we’d bought tickets for a performance of Handel’s Messiah in German. And we soon realized that this wasn’t a Mickey Mouse event either, but that some of the finest soloists in Europe were singing, including the critically acclaimed bass, Thomas Quasthoff.
The fact that the singing was all in a language we didn’t understand didn’t matter in the slightest. For one thing we were both familiar with most of the English words. But more importantly, something happened that night that was beyond language. Because as we listened to magnificent music about a magnificent Messiah, so the majesty and mystery and mercy of this Messiah touched us in a profound way. The fight we were having evaporated into thin air, and as we listened together, my friend and I were wondrously reconciled.
That evening remains one of the most cherished memories of my life, of the altogether surprising and totally unexpected activity of a loving and gracious God. It was an experience of serendipity – making an unexpected, surprising and joyous discovery of something that is really really good.
In one sense my example is quite dramatic. Overseas trip. East Berlin. Handel’s Messiah. These aren’t ordinary, everyday experiences. But don’t let that confuse the issue, because the truth is that experiences of serendipity happen all the time in the ordinary, everyday things of life. Or maybe, to be more accurate I should say that the potential for serendipitous experiences is all around us all the time.
That may seem like a strange claim to make in a world where there is so much bad news pressing in from every side, where the chaos and mayhem of fractured lives and shattered dreams is so easy to see. But I make this claim with conviction, because there is a good and gracious God at large within our midst, who continues doing the things that God does, like bringing life and hope and healing and wholeness to our world.
A woman by the name of Pearl Bailey put it like this: “People see God everyday, they just don’t recognize him.” I think that’s true. We’ve somehow developed blind spots in our vision when it comes to recognizing the presence and activity of God in our midst. Our ability to see what’s really going on has somehow been compromised. Our capacity for deeper insight has somehow been lost. Our faith imaginations have somehow been dulled. And we think that God is somehow absent.
But of course God is not absent. In our devotions this week we’ll be looking at some of the surprising and unexpected places and circumstances where God’s presence can be seen, a presence that brings great hope to our lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, thank you for the constancy of your presence in our lives. Open our eyes that we might come to see you more and more, and so draw strength, comfort and immense joy from knowing that we are not alone. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Psalm 139:7-8
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
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