Monday 1st December - A God Who Speaks

DAILY BYTE

A Bishop was visiting a church where the worship service began with the age-old traditional greeting of ‘The Lord be with you.’ However, the sound system was playing up and so he lifted his hands in an attempt to get the attention of the sound desk and said:

“There’s something wrong with this silly microphone!”

To which the congregation, not having heard him properly, obediently replied, “And also with you.”

Listening, truly hearing what others have to say is a vital part of human life that very few of any generation take seriously enough. Did you know how much of the Bible is just trying to attract our attention, to get us to stop and listen to what we truly need to hear?

The brilliant theologian, with a classic theologian’s name, Dr. Klaus Bockmuehl, once said: “The entire Bible is a record of God’s speaking into human history.”

God has been constantly sending angels, messengers, prophets and even his own Son to effectively say: “Listen up! There is something important you really have to hear!”

As the ex Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan, wrote: “Christians believe in a God who speaks. Ours is not a silent God, a God who sits, sphinx-like, looking out unblinking on a world in agony ... He speaks because he loves. Love always seeks to communicate.”

This is Good News for us. God cares enough about each of us to be speaking into our lives his words of grace and hope. The only problem is, like the congregation who misheard their Bishop, we often don’t listen very carefully at all to what God might be saying.

This is why we will spend the rest of this week’s devotions focussing on the topic of listening. Listening, as we have already mentioned, is a vitally important spiritual discipline that we just don’t put enough focus on.

How much attention do you pay to the discipline of listening? Have you recently been sensing God trying to communicate something to you? Or are you of the opinion that God seems to speak clearly to everyone but you?

Whatever your feelings may be, bring them to God in the following prayer.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious Father, you are constantly sending messengers of hope and signs of your love. We confess to you how little attention we pay to learning how to listen, to discerning and understanding. We ask that you would use this week to develop this skill within us. In Jesus name. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Matthew 13.14 NRSV

With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:

‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive.’

Sunday 30th November - Sizanani

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Sizanani is the Zulu word for ‘help one another’. This project offers 22 weeks of basic sewing and pattern drafting training to people who are unskilled and unemployed, to enable them to become self employed. The growth of personal dignity, self esteem and spiritual well-being is also encouraged.

The basic course syllabus concentrates on skills like seams, gathering, putting in collars, sewing in zips, buttonholes and facings. The pattern drafting syllabus teaches students how to draft a basic skirt and shirt pattern; how to do variations like flares, pleats, puffed sleeves, etc. The students then design an outfit for themselves, which is modeled at their graduation.

Course costs R1 100.00 and students are provided with everything they need to complete the course. Training is in Zulu.

Sponsorship of a student or a group of students is welcomed.

Enquiries – sizanani@ptnmeth.org.za; Tel 031 7027357

Bank details:

Account Name: PMCMA – Sizanani
Account Number: 133 947 6681
Bank Name: Nedbank
Bank code: 133 926

Saturday 29th November - Sizanani

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Sizanani is the Zulu word for ‘help one another’. This project offers 22 weeks of basic sewing and pattern drafting training to people who are unskilled and unemployed, to enable them to become self employed. The growth of personal dignity, self esteem and spiritual well-being is also encouraged.

The basic course syllabus concentrates on skills like seams, gathering, putting in collars, sewing in zips, buttonholes and facings. The pattern drafting syllabus teaches students how to draft a basic skirt and shirt pattern; how to do variations like flares, pleats, puffed sleeves, etc. The students then design an outfit for themselves, which is modeled at their graduation.

Course costs R1 100.00 and students are provided with everything they need to complete the course. Training is in Zulu.

Sponsorship of a student or a group of students is welcomed.

Enquiries – sizanani@ptnmeth.org.za; Tel 031 7027357

Bank details:

Account Name: PMCMA – Sizanani
Account Number: 133 947 6681
Bank Name: Nedbank
Bank code: 133 926

Friday 28th November - History belongs to the intercessors

DAILY BYTE

This week we’ve reflected on the history-shaping nature of God, and the surprising but wonderfully good news that God comes to us in our ordinary, everyday lives and invites us to offer our lives to Him to be used in His great purposes for the world.

Kathleen Norris writes:
“It is in ordinary life that our stories unfold, tales of conceiving, bearing and giving birth, of trial and death and rising to new life out of the ashes of the old.... Christianity is inescapably down-to-earth and incarnational.... [For the] Christian faith asks us to place our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and who desires to be present to us in our everyday circumstances. And because we are human, it is in the realm of the daily and the mundane that we must find our way to God.”

So hear the challenge of the gospel. The challenge to look around at your life right now. Your ordinary, everyday life which locates you in this particular moment in history. Look at your life. See it as it is. The struggle. The pain. The promise. The shame. The hopes and dreams for something new. The deep sense that your life is not just about you.

It is in this messy, mundane yet miraculous existence that God finds you and me. And invites us to be a part of what God is doing. To put these miraculous lives of ours to magnificent purpose. To allow ourselves to be used in the making and moulding of human history.

Let me suggest one direct way in which we can give ourselves to the history-shaping work of God in our midst. It is quite simply through our intercessory prayer.

Walter Wink makes an outrageous claim. He suggest that history belongs to the intercessors. Listen to the reasons he gives for this audacious claim. He writes:

“Intercession breathes a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of present reality.

“Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces.

“Intercession is spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised.”

Maybe today you need to take stock of the prayers that you offer for others and the world. And if you don’t pray in this way, to ask yourself why. Do the prayers you pray, or fail to pray, reveal what you really believe about God’s presence in human history and God’s capacity to act? Will you dare to believe that through heartfelt, faithful intercession you can help to irrigate the community with hope, and that your life, located in this particular time and place in history, can have eternal significance?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious God, hear us as we offer our prayers of intercession on behalf of others and our world. We pray for every part of the world that is gripped by the tyrannies of war, oppression, poverty, violence and corruption. We pray for the strengthening of responsible, faithful leaders who will serve with integrity, creativity and devotion. We pray boldly for justice and peace throughout all the world.

We pray for all who suffer in any way – the beareaved, the sick, the destitute, the lonely, the abused, the victims of discrimination, the unemployed, the depressed, the marginalized and those forgotten. By your grace may healing, hope and peace enter their lives.

We pray for ourselves, that we would surrender our ordinary everyday lives to you more and more, that you might use us as the ones through whom you can continue your history-shaping work in the world. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Thursday 27th November - Christ-shaped hearts

DAILY BYTE
Yesterday I made reference to the beautiful insight that emerges out of the Russian Orthodox tradition, and that is that the incarnation of Christ represents the decisive moment in salvation history.

Today, I’d like to develop this thought further by trying to describe, as best I can, a magnificent art piece from that Orthodox tradition. It’s a 12th century icon I saw at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow called ‘The Annunciation’.

If you’d like to look at it online in higher resolution you can follow this link:


It shows, quite simply, the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary. But if you look at it more closely there is much more to see.

Firstly, Gabriel appears to be floating in the air, while Mary is standing on something solid. She’s grounded where she is, on a square object with four corners, which reminds me of the four corners of the earth. It points to the truth that Mary is human, a creature of the earth, standing where she is in her particular situation. And that is where Gabriel finds her.

It’s a reminder to all of us that God comes to us where we are, reaching out to us where we stand in our particular circumstances, grounded in our reality, rooted in our moment in history.

The second observation I’d like to make about this icon is that Gabriel’s right hand stretches into the space between him and Mary. It stretches out in blessing. But from the story we know that the blessing comes in the form of a risky invitation for Mary to be part of a bold plan of God.

And so it is with us. God reaches out to us in blessing, but only so far, for God will never dominate or coerce us. In reaching out to us, there is an invitation from God for us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. This is what God’s blessing means.

The third observation I’d like to make about this icon, is that Mary is holding her right hand to her heart, cradling as it were the Christ-child who has already taken form there.

How fascinating that in the very moment that Mary says ‘Yes’ to this risky, but blessed invitation, Christ takes form within her. Likewise when we, like Mary, say ‘Yes’ to God, there is in that moment an incarnation within us, as Christ takes form and shape once again. And with Christ-shaped hearts, there is literally nothing that God cannot do through us.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Help me, today Lord, to say ‘Yes’ to your risky invitation to be part of what you are doing in the world. Help me to see the blessing of having a Christ-shaped heart. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Luke 1:26-38 (The Message)

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:

Good morning!
You're beautiful with God's beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.

She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, "Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.

He will be great,
be called 'Son of the Highest.'
The Lord God will give him
the throne of his father David;
He will rule Jacob's house forever—
no end, ever, to his kingdom."

Mary said to the angel, "But how? I've never slept with a man."
The angel answered,

The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
the power of the Highest hover over you;
Therefore, the child you bring to birth
will be called Holy, Son of God.
"And did you know that your cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months pregnant! Nothing, you see, is impossible with God."

And Mary said,

Yes, I see it all now:
I'm the Lord's maid, ready to serve.
Let it be with me
just as you say.

Then the angel left her.

Wednesday 26th November - Incarnation

DAILY BYTE

The idea that we have been developing in these devotions this week is that God’s enduring love and presence is inextricably woven into human history and the story of our lives. This idea is not peripheral to our faith but lies at the very heart of what we believe as Christians.

For this is what the incarnation, the coming of Christ, is all about. God with us. God stepping into our human condition. God changing history by becoming a part of history. In just a few days’ time the season of Advent begins, which helps us to prepare for the celebration of Christmas. It’s a season for us to reflect deeply on what the coming of Christ really means.

The incarnation was the pivotal event in human history. It was the defining moment in the story of the world.

I came to understand this in a whole new way last year when I visited Moscow, and was exposed to the rich artwork of the Russian Orthodox tradition. As I entered church after church I was struck by the overwhelming emphasis on the incarnation that is reflected in the artwork there. The cross certainly is important, but it gets nowhere near the kind of exposure that Mary and the Christ-child and the relationship between the two receive.

This points to a beautiful insight in the Orthodox tradition, and that is that the decisive moment in salvation history occurs in the incarnation. In our Protestant tradition we’ve tended to emphasize the cross as the decisive moment in salvation history. For us that’s where it really happens. But for the Orthodox church, in the long story of humanity’s fallenness and struggle with sin, the tide turned the moment God entered the world in Christ.

Of course, each tradition focuses on a different dimension of the great mystery of salvation, and so both are true, and cannot be separated from each other. The incarnation and the cross are indispensable to each other, like two sides of the same coin. But there’s a rich and compelling insight that comes from the idea that Christ’s saving work began the moment he entered the world in human form. It’s a reminder of the redeeming, transforming power of Christ’s presence.

What part of your life do you need to open more to the saving presence of Christ?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Come Lord Jesus Christ. Come and roam the corridors of my heart. Come and wander freely within me. Come and cast your light on whatever darkened corners you may find. Come and breathe the fresh wind of your Spirit into whatever parts within me have grown musty and stale. Come and dismantle whatever barriers to grace you may encounter. Come and bind up my brokenness. Come and speak your words of comfort and peace to the sad and fearful parts within me. Come Lord Jesus, and be within me the Saviour and Redeemer that you are. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Matthew 1:18-23

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. His mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,"
which means, "God is with us."

Tuesday 25th November - His steadfast love endures forever

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday the point was made that God is present and active in the often-messy reality of our human existence. This has always been a cornerstone conviction of the Judeo-Christian faith – that God is not some esoteric spiritual principle, some airy-fairy notion, but is a personal, relational God who is fully engaged in the nitty-gritty particularities of human history.

This was the faith that Israel confessed as they remembered God’s presence and activity in their midst. In the Psalter there are a number of psalms that are referred to as ‘historical psalms’ – hymns of praise to God that recount the events of Israel’s history and the ways in which God has acted to shape that history.

One of these historical psalms is Psalm 136. The unique thing about this particular psalm is that it has a refrain that is repeated after every line. As the psalm tells the story of God’s mighty works of creation and redemption, after every line we are reminded that “His steadfast love endures forever.”

It’s as if the psalm is trying to show us that running through everything, woven into the very fabric of this earthly existence, interleaved through the pages of human history and punctuating the story of our lives, there is this enduring, loving presence that fills all things.

It’s as if the psalm is saying that history cannot be truly told or heard or understood without reference to the reality of God’s loving presence with us.

In the light of this beautiful insight that Psalm 136 offers, why don’t you think about your own personal history. Recount the events that stand out for you that have shaped your story, the good things and the bad. What would it mean for you to affirm, as you remember each of these pivotal events, that God’s steadfast love endures forever? How might this change the way in which your own story is told or understood?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Thank you, gracious God, that your steadfast love endures forever. Thank you that woven through every experience of my life, both the good times and the bad, is the enduring reality of your unfailing love. It is this simple but profound truth that changes the way that my life story can be understood. Help me to recognise the signs of your abiding love, that I might live with a new confidence as one who knows that my life is saturated with your presence. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Psalm 136:1, 6-16, 26

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
his steadfast love endures forever….
who spread out the earth on the waters,
his steadfast love endures forever;
who made the great lights,
his steadfast love endures forever;
the sun to rule over the day,
his steadfast love endures forever;
the moon and stars to rule over the night,
his steadfast love endures forever;
who struck Egypt through their firstborn,
his steadfast love endures forever;
and brought Israel out from among them,
his steadfast love endures forever;
with a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
his steadfast love endures forever;
who divided the Red Sea in two,
his steadfast love endures forever;
and made Israel pass through the midst of it,
his steadfast love endures forever;
but overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea,
his steadfast love endures forever;
who led his people through the wilderness,
his steadfast love endures forever….
O give thanks to the God of heaven,
his steadfast love endures forever.

Monday 24th November - The hope of history

DAILY BYTE

Every once in a while, in all of our lives, a day arrives that is quite different. Every once in a while a defining moment occurs that radiates a certain luminescence. And in those shimmering moments, history itself seems to be cast into a new light.

One such day happened a few weeks ago, on the morning of the 5th November, when the whole world, it seemed, witnessed the news of the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States of America. And with the exception perhaps of the 57 million Americans who voted for the other guy, it was news that was greeted around the world with unbridled joy.

Because something happened on that Wednesday morning. Something truly historic, that has stirred the imagination not just of the American people but of a world that has grown weary of the arrogance of power and greed, and longs for something authentically new.

The French philosopher and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “The world will belong tomorrow to those who brought it the greatest hope.” That is what we have witnessed in this American election as hope has been ignited again.

Friends, could it be that the Spirit of God has been at work? Could it be that God, with stunning imagination and spectacular creativity, has used the all-too-flawed and fallible American electoral system to do what God does best – make things new?

If that sounds like mushy preacher babble, I’d remind you of another election not that long ago that many of us experienced first hand, and recognized in it the grace of God making things new.

It happened, of course, on the 27th April 1994. South Africa’s first ever democratic election. I was a theology student in Grahamstown at the time. I remember standing in a queue for a couple of hours waiting to vote, in this hushed and holy stillness that was infused with grace. The two hours in that queue were amongst the best in my life. And then, just before I entered the voting hall an amazing thing happened that has been seared onto my mind forever.

An old gogo, a grandmother, was being helped out of the polling station. She was a small frail woman, bent over as she walked quite unsteadily with a stick. The deep lines etched into her face spoke not simply of her great age but also of the great suffering that must have been hers as an impoverished black woman living in Apartheid South Africa. But she had just cast her vote, for the first time in her life. Her voice had just been heard.

As I stood back to allow her to come past, she paused and looked straight at me, and I saw something in the face of this simple old woman that got me all choked up. There was this expression that is almost impossible to describe. It was a mixture of pride, and dignity restored, and courageous strength, and sadness perhaps that this had taken so long, but above all there was this radiant HOPE, and of course, great joy.

And in that luminescent moment I knew, with absolute clarity and conviction, that God was there and that God’s work was being done.

My point, very simply, is this. Ours is a history-shaping God, who consistently steps into the often messy business of our human affairs, like elections and politics and pretty much everything else that makes up our individual and collective existence, and stakes a passionate claim for the things that make for life and wholeness and peace. We witnessed it in South Africa’s day of grace in 1994. And we’ve witnessed it again in America’s day of grace a few weeks ago.

This is truly good news, because it reminds us that as history is laid down day by day, God is there, involved, present and active, doing what God does best. This is the hope for each of us today.

PRAY AS YOU GO

History-shaping God, you are here, with us in the midst of our often messy human existence. Thank you. Your presence brings hope and life. Amen.

SCRIPTURE

Isaiah 43:18-19

Stop dwelling on past events and brooding over days gone by.
I am about to do something new, this moment it will unfold.

Sunday 23rd November - Ethelbert Children's Home

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Ethelbert Children's Home cares for 60 abused, abandoned and neglected children from various backgrounds and cultures. They come to us frightened and hurting, not knowing who to trust or what security is. We gather them in and start the process of healing, helping them to trust again and to feel secure and cared for. Our aim is to nurture them so that one day they may leave here able to cope with society and become worthwhile citizens, capable of contributing to the world around them.

A donation can be sent to:
Ethelbert Children's Home, PO Box 28119, Malvern, Kwa-Zulu Natal, 4055.
www.ethelbert.co.za

Thank you for caring.

Saturday 22nd November - Ethelbert Children's Home

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Ethelbert Children's Home cares for 60 abused, abandoned and neglected children from various backgrounds and cultures. They come to us frightened and hurting, not knowing who to trust or what security is. We gather them in and start the process of healing, helping them to trust again and to feel secure and cared for. Our aim is to nurture them so that one day they may leave here able to cope with society and become worthwhile citizens, capable of contributing to the world around them.

A donation can be sent to:
Ethelbert Children's Home, PO Box 28119, Malvern, Kwa-Zulu Natal, 4055.
www.ethelbert.co.za

Thank you for caring.

Friday 21st November - Rather a Limp than a Strut

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday we concluded that this particular story of healing teaches us that we don’t have to be physically whole to be whole. That healing us within seems to be of primary importance to God.

Let’s not use that as a cop-out though. You may be sitting reading this just aching for physical healing – that’s all your heart really desires. We know that Jesus did heal people physically and that many people today would testify God’s healing touch upon them in some way.

Let me encourage you to take your desire for physical healing to God. At the very least you will find that God is more than prepared to lavish his love upon you, but you do also need to know that we don’t always get the exact answers we hope for in this regard.

Even Jesus is shown at times having his requests in prayer turned down (see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane or in Mark 6). Paul the Apostle himself prayed for healing from a ‘thorn in the flesh’ and each time God turned that request down.

It seemed that for Paul, in order for his spirit to be whole, God preferred him to walk with a limp rather than a strut. Paul testified how his thorn kept him from pride and ensured that he remained totally reliant on God. It was in this way, in his greatest weakness, that he found the sweet perfection of God’s strength.

The unpleasant truth is, for reasons most of us just cannot make sense of until much later, God sometimes says ‘no’ and he sometimes says ‘wait’ to our prayer requests.

But if there is one thing you should never doubt it is this: you don’t need to be physically whole to be whole, and to be truly well.

God loves you to the very core of your being, and what really matters to him is the wholeness of your spirit.

In a world where there is so much darkness and so many paralysed by their pain then know this – by the grace of God and in the love of God you can be whole. Your faith can make you well.

And may that be so for you.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, Paul learnt the reason for this thorn, so that he may walk with a limp rather than a strut. Bring to me understanding of why sometimes you don’t answer my prayers exactly the way I would like, and even if I don’t have understanding then give me faith, strength and perseverance. Amen.

FOCUS READING

2 Corinthians 12:7-12 NRSV

Paul’s Visions and Revelations

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak then I am strong.

Thursday 20th November - Everyone Can Be Made Whole

DAILY BYTE

The last reminder about healing that this story brings to us is pure Good News:
That in a world of brokenness and hurt, because of God’s grace and love, there can always, always, always be a triumph of the human spirit.

If you want it to be so, for EVERYONE CAN BE MADE WHOLE. Or as Jesus put it so often to the people he healed: “Your faith has made you well.”
The ancient world was big into physical perfection. To the point that at stages during their history, both the Greek’s and Romans encouraged the immediate killing of any deformed newborn babies. In the movie ‘300’ there is a harrowing scene of the Greek tribe of Sparta violently doing so.

Today, we often carry similar prejudices. Those with physical defects are sometimes treated as not quite capable as the rest of us, as being less than fully human. Jesus showed when he walked this earth, that on this issue God could not disagree with us more!

Although he often physically healed people, Jesus always seemed more interested in them becoming whole within. Within counts most to God not without!

We see that in this week’s Bible reading. The man on the mat was lowered through the roof, his four friends having gone to tremendous effort to get him there, and Jesus says what to him? What is the first thing Jesus says to him?
“My son, your sins are forgiven.” This particular line is the centrepiece of the whole passage, it is the hinge on which the rest of the story hangs: That for God wholeness is about souls more than bodies. Your body can be crippled and broken, blind and deaf but you can still soar higher than people who are physically perfect.

As Moltmann once wrote: “Our society arbitrarily defines health as the capacity for work and the capacity for enjoyment, but true health is something quite different. True health is the strength to live, the strength to suffer and the strength to die. Health is not a condition of my body, it is the power of the soul to cope with the varying condition of that body.”

Jesus is most interested in healing the pain within – because it is a wholeness of human spirit that makes us whole.

That is also why everyone, absolutely everyone, can be made whole.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious Father, as you heal our inner pain, may you open us up once more to real love and life and feeling and meaning. Begin us on our journey of wholeness, give our spirits the strength we need to triumph over any adversity. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Mark 2. 5 NRSV

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Wednesday 19th November - Everyone Needs Someone

DAILY BYTE

This story brings another very important point about healing home to us, and it is this:

EVERYONE NEEDS SOMEONE.

In Scripture, there are no examples of healing being isolated incidents, occurring outside the context of community and relationships.

In this case, the man on the mat had 4 friends who were quite literally willing to smash through all sorts of things – from ceilings to cultural and religious taboos in the quest for their friend to become whole.

So let me ask you a very personal question. Do you have those you would trust to carry your mat? No matter how shameful and embarrassing? Who do you share your weaknesses and struggles with? Who do you reveal your brokenness to? You can’t always be the strong one, at some point someone else will have to carry your mat for you.

At first this may be an unpleasant discovery for you, but it will be one that will certainly bring untold joy if you open your heart to it.

For when it comes to healing – everyone needs someone! That’s just the way God made it to be. It is within community that we find strength, courage and ultimately healing.

The psychologist Henry Cloud tells the remarkable story of his experiences of leading a group of inpatients at a hospital. One of the members of this group was a pastor named Joe. Joe’s ‘mat’ was a sexual addiction that he had wrestled with for years, yet despite numerous confessions and prayers for healing, he just never seemed to be able to break through it.

Finally his desperation and guilt were so much that he checked himself in to a hospital for help. Part of his recovery program was attending Henry’s group. One morning a nurse informed Henry that Joe would not be coming to the group that day. When Henry visited Joe he found out that it was because he had suffered a relapse the night before.

After some effort, Henry managed to convince Joe to come anyway. During previous sessions, Joe had barely spoken, seemingly content just to listen to the sharing of others. Clearly, he preferred carrying the mats of others to being carried himself. This particular morning however, Henry pushed him to share. Slowly, painfully, Joe began to allow others to see something of his sense of shame and failure.

He spoke to them about his years of guilt, of standing in the pulpit and being terrified that someone might have seen him the night before where he shouldn’t have been. He shared his immense shame of claiming to speak for God when he felt he was the biggest hypocrite in his congregation, and yet for all the pain his behaviour caused him he just couldn’t stop.
Joe could barely choke out his words and as he told his story, he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. “Look up at the group,” Henry urged him.
“I can’t, I’m too ashamed,” Joe sobbed.

But Henry kept insisting that Joe look up, until finally he did. A broken man raised his head and made a wonderful discovery. He looked around the circle and found that every pair of eyes looking back at him was filled with tears. Every heart ached with pain for his anguish. There was no shame or condemnation, just pure compassion.

It was a joyful discovery! For the first time in his life, Joe found that he was not alone with the brokenness that had paralysed his soul and crippled his spirit for so long. Finally, a few people had seen his deformity and yet still chose to be his friends.

At long last, a man who had preached grace in so many sermons tasted it for himself, and as he did so he heard the words spoken so long ago to another crippled man, “Child your sins are forgiven.”

Henry writes that Joe’s addiction was broken that day. He still had much work to do and a long way to go. There were confessions to make, new habits and spiritual disciplines to develop, but the cruel force of his affliction was broken in that moment of profound acceptance.

For the simple truth is that everybody does need somebody! We see that in this story, and indeed throughout the Bible. For better or worse, we are shaped by people more than any other force in life. In the same way, more than anything else, God uses people to heal people.

So I ask you again – who would you trust to carry your mat?

FOCUS READING

Mark 2:3b-5 NRSV

And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Tuesday 18th November - Everyone Has A Mat

DAILY BYTE

This week we are focussing on the story of the paralysed man being lowered down through the roof on his mat (read the story again – see below). Yesterday we made note of how this story teaches us some profound truths on the topic of healing.

Truths that may not exactly be welcome discoveries at first, but later as we wrestle with them we find they bring us untold joy and life.

The first truth is this:

EVERYONE HAS A MAT.

If the mat stands as a picture of human brokenness and hurt, then everyone has a mat.

Just as the man was trapped on his mat – a piece of material no more than 3 feet wide and 6 feet long - so many of us live paralysed by our mats.

Whether our mat is anger, fear or pride that constantly spills out from us onto others. Or maybe it is unresolved regrets or inadequacies. Or perhaps it is the inability to trust or emote on a deep level with other human beings. Or it may even be that our mat is an uncontrollable desire to be in control, or a crushing sense of failure, plainness or loneliness.

It may even be that our mat is a desperate desire for physical healing, to the point that we struggle to move past feeling bitter or let down by God. The point is that mats are places of paralysis, places where we end up living smaller than we should, in an area no more than 3 feet wide and 6 feet long.

As a parent of young children, I almost always get a sinking feeling when we receive a toy with the dreaded words ‘Some Assembly Required’ written across the box. I am DIY-challenged and so any toy that requires assembly brings tremendous stress into my life.

The last time we got just such a toy, it took 2 hours of intense sweaty struggling with one or two bad words thrown in for good measure, before I eventually looked over the top of my newspaper and asked my wife, “I suppose you want me to help you with that?”

The truth is that we all, at some point, need to face up to the fact that we are in need and that there is ‘Some Assembly Required’ on us – we need help.

We all have a mat - the problem is that we love to pretend we don’t.

We point fingers at others who have more obvious problems (much like the Scribes do in this story) but all the while we deny any and all mats, pains and problems within ourselves.

It is a moment of surprising joy when we first come to terms with how much we are in need of God’s healing touch. We would think that this should be a moment of hurt or shame, but we are surprised to find that it is a moment of incredible freedom.

Because the beginning of the end of our pain is just plain facing up to it. Acknowledging your mat. Something the Scribes – the professional, religious people – were unable to do, even by the end of the story.

The Bible is filled with incredible healing stories, but people did not get healed unless they first asked.

And to do that, we need to know what to ask for.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Healing God, I ask that you would clearly show me those areas of my life where I lies paralysed by my pain, trapped on my particular mat. I ask that you would bring healing, health and wholeness to those areas. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Mark 2:3-7 NRSV

Then some people came, bringing to Jesus a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.

Monday 17th November - Unpleasant Discoveries

DAILY BYTE

A couple of weeks back, we spoke about making unexpected yet pleasant discoveries. Such as putting on a pair of jeans you haven’t worn in a while and discovering money in the pocket. Throughout this week I want to talk about a different kind of unexpected discovery. The kind of discovery that is actually unpleasant when you first make it, but later turns out to be far more joyful and life-giving than you possibly could have first imagined.

Like in the ancient Roman fable of Androcles and the Lion. Androcles is a slave who runs away, and seeks refuge in a cave. There he makes the unpleasant discovery that the cave is actually a lion’s lair! He turns to run, but as he does so, he notices the lion is limping so he stops to pull a thorn out of its paw. In gratitude, the lion brings him a continual supply of fresh meat to eat whilst he hides out in the cave. An initial unpleasant discovery becomes a joyful one.

This becomes even truer when a little later in the fable, Androcles is captured and makes the rather unpleasant discovery that as punishment he has been condemned to die – to be eaten alive by the lions in the Roman circus. The half-starved lion that rushes out to consume him, however, is exactly the same one he helped before, and so yet again he is saved! An unpleasant discovery becomes life-giving.

I mention this because the bible reading we will base our devotions around this week teaches some important truths about healing. These truths may initially seem unpleasant, but as we grapple with them we will find that they are in fact, both joy-filled and life-giving.

The bible text in question is that of the paralysed man being lowered through the roof (see focus reading). Read the story carefully and you will notice how upset the religious leaders (scribes) got over Jesus’ interpretation on what it means to be healed.

Jesus perceived their hearts and challenged them to think in new ways. When it comes to the issue of healing, what lies in your heart – what might Jesus perceive within you?

Are you in need of some sort of healing, either physical, emotional or spiritual? What might prevent you from finding healing, or from acknowledging that you have a deep need of God’s healing touch on some area of your life?

Commit these thoughts to God in prayer.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious Father, you are the healer of both souls and bodies. I ask that your Spirit would probe my heart and perceive within me exactly what areas of my life are in need of your healing touch. In Jesus name. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Mark 2. 3-12 NRSV

Then some people came, bringing to Jesus a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” he said to the paralytic “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Friday 14th November - Suffering Psalms 2

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday, we prayed through Psalm 13, grabbing hold of the permission God gives us to be honest in our prayers, expressing suffering and grief. But today, we have the opportunity to look at something else perhaps even more remarkable than that kind of honesty in this psalm.

In her book, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, Ellen Davis writes that lament psalms like this one move from “complaint to confidence in God, from desperate petition to anticipatory praise…without ever telling us that the external situation has changed for the better.”

Pray through Psalm 13 again, keeping this in mind!

Psalm 13

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”’
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

Notice the shift from grief and frustration to trust and praise. It moves straight from one to the other even though we have no proof that the source of the sadness and frustration is gone!

What we do know, though, is that the more we make these prayers our own prayers, the more we are changed in the midst of situations of suffering, even if the suffering itself does not change.

These prayers lead us on a journey through tragedy toward hope, recognizing that life can be very hard, but if we join together with people in the past and people in our community of faith today, we have everything we need to engage with this struggle.

PRAY-AS-YOU-GO

Suffering God, we thank you for the sustenance of the psalms and other people of faith who walk with us on our life journeys. Help us to persevere, as we struggle together, drawing nearer to one another and nearer to you. Amen.

Thursday 13th November - Suffering Psalms 1

DAILY BYTE

Our favorite way to be in church – and in life it seems – is to be happy. I wouldn’t dare try to count the number of magazines and songs that focus on this never-ending goal. We teach our children songs like “ The Happy Song” by Martin Smith, part of which goes: “Everybody’s singing now, ‘cause we’re so happy! Everybody’s dancing now, ‘cause we’re so happy!”

It would be nice if that were actually true. I concede that there is absolutely a place for this kind of praise and exclamation of overt joy in our lives. I also affirm that there are times when we must learn to exclaim joy as a proclamation of hope for what we desire for ourselves and the world around us in the future.

However, the reality is that most of us are not overtly happy most of the time. In fact, most of us are struggling with some pretty serious issues most of the time, and as the devotions have discussed this week, to be true community, we must learn to be honest with one another about our struggles and suffering, not simply plaster on a happy face and avoid reality.

As it turns out, many people who have come before us also struggled, and some of them preserved their struggle for us, profoundly naming it The Word of God. We find particularly powerful permission from God to express both our joy and our grief in the stunning beauty and often gruesome honesty of the Psalms.

We tend to quote the psalms of praise and hallelujah quite frequently. But, the overwhelming majority of the psalms actually focus on expressing anger, grief, and confusion!

As you pray through such a psalm of lament today, it is important to note, that these prayers and songs were written by a community and for a community. It is important that we read them together, as we learn to struggle together through our individual and communal suffering.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Psalm 13

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”’
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

IF YOU ARE FEELING BRAVE…

Re-write this Psalm in your own words, as you reflect upon the challenging circumstances in your own life or in the life of someone you love.

Wednesday 12th November - All Saints

DAILY BYTE

This past Sunday, the church all around the world celebrated one of my favorite holidays – or Holy Days. All Saints Sunday. This is the day in the Christian year when we recognize that we are part of a community encompassing both the earthly and heavenly realms. It is a community that is alive in the way that it prays and teaches us how to live. We recognize that living in this world is not easy, and as we look at the lives of people who have gone before us, we acknowledge that suffering has happened and that it continues to happen. We also, however, see that the way people who have gone before us have lived, suffered, and died has something to teach us today about how to live together as a life-giving community.

What does it really mean for our lives that we are part of a community that includes both people who are alive on earth and people who have physically died? Does this not sound a bit crazy?

Perhaps, but today, I offer to you to the words of one well-known man who suffered greatly in his life. This voice that speaks out from the communion of saints is St. Francis of Assisi. Although he wrote this prayer in the 13th Century, it still yields truth today, as we acknowledge our world as it is and strive to imagine a world that can be different – one in which all of us help to bear one another’s pain:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sew love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Proclaim today the Apostles’ Creed, as a prayer. This is an authoritative statement about what we believe, as followers of Christ that was compiled a long time ago in the 8th century, and yet, it still rings true today:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth:
I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
And born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
And is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
The holy catholic Church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
The resurrection of the body,
And the life everlasting. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Ephesians 2:19-22

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Tuesday 11 November - Holding the Cup

DAILY BYTE

While I’m not a parent, I have spent a lot of time caring for other peoples’ children in my life. And one of the many things you learn when caring for small children is that they don’t know naturally that they must hold a cup with two hands. It only takes watching one grubby, little hand attempt to grab a cup and promptly spill it all down the front of her shirt to realize that some gentle instruction (and a clean shirt) may be necessary.

We’re talking this week about the surprises of God in the midst of suffering, and let me suggest today that one of the beautiful surprises we gain in confronting suffering is that we live in community that bears suffering with us. We learn to bear the cup of suffering in a similar way that a child learns to carry a cup with two hands. We don’t learn on our own how to endure tragedy and grief. Instead, when we are learning to carry a load that is particularly heavy or difficult to balance, others who have endured suffering before can teach us how to bear it carefully and tenderly.

When my mother died a few years ago, I was inconsolable for a long time and was often sent into even deeper grief by well meant but ultimately unhelpful comments about the ways that people who really didn’t understand exactly what I was going through claimed that they did. It took me a while to realize that those who had gone before me and had experienced similar tragedy, including my own mother, as part of the communion of saints, could actually help me to wade slowly through my pain. People who had endured similar life experiences did have some helpful wisdom. They had strategies and patience, and they were the only ones I was able to listen to.

When Jesus cried out to God in the Garden of Gethsemane with the prayer that God might take away his cup of suffering, Jesus showed us the need for even God in human form to draw other human beings alongside of him and allow them to be present with him in his suffering.

Who are you helping currently to carry their cup of suffering? Who are you allowing to draw alongside of you, teaching you to endure your own struggle?

FOCUS READING

Mark 14:32-36

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch." Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

PRAY-AS-YOU-GO

Caring God, you are a god who exemplifies community in your very self. You are one God and yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With everything that you are, you teach us to rely on others and on you. You teach us to reach out to others and reach out to you. Encourage us in our journeys of helping others and ourselves bear the cup of suffering in this life with care and tenderness. Amen.

Monday 10th November - A Wake-up Call

DAILY BYTE

[This week our devotions have been written by the Rev Anna Layman, a minister from the United States who is working in South Africa for a couple of years.]

Which is easier? Avoiding certain people, issues, and places that cause us to confront suffering? Or, opening our eyes to the suffering within ourselves and all around us? The answer seems obvious…but, in our frequent blindness, are we actually being harmful, preventing ourselves and those around us from seeing the world and God as they truly are? Are we preventing ourselves from being surprised by God’s presence in the midst of our own suffering and the suffering of others?

I was just nine years old when my family visited Yad Vashem, which literally means, A Memorial Place and a Name. And it was a place and a name that changed the way I’ve looked at humanity and God for the rest of my life. Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel. It is a place of commemoration and study that focuses on the extermination of people during the Holocaust in World War II. Now, remember that I was nine years old. I grew up in American farm country. I had no concept of a Holocaust – a mass slaughter, a reckless destruction of life. In my personal experience, it had never occurred to me that such suffering was remotely possible.

But, I vividly remember that when we got off the tour bus that day, not everyone got off the bus, and I wanted to know why. I asked my mom why I had to go, if other people chose not to see. She responded firmly that we had to learn about these things because they’re real. We had to learn so we could change the world and prevent them from happening again. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

But it didn’t take me very long to figure out because we entered the museum, and all over the walls were plastered images of every imaginable and unimaginable form of suffering. Young women and children who were skeletal and naked stared back at me with their hollow eyes until I could no longer bear to look. So, I closed my eyes and felt my way along the walls, bumping into people and corners until finally, my dad caught sight of me, blind and crying, snatched me up in his arms, and carried me out. That night, my mom found me wandering the halls of our hotel, weeping. I don’t understand, I said. Why are people doing that to one another? What if this happens to all the Christians next?

Little did I know that human suffering is not confined to any one group or people of certain beliefs. Little did I know when I was nine, that when you become a Christian, you do not grow a protective bubble around you so that nothing can ever harm you. As we grow up, we all face this shocking realization, and we re-face it every morning when we look in the mirror still to find ourselves human. We are vulnerable, and suffering is, undeniably, all around us and within us. I simply hadn’t cultivated eyes to see it yet. I was not appreciative when I was little that my mother had the wisdom to make me get off the bus, but seventeen years later, I am so grateful that she made me see and confront life, as it really is.

Seeing images of the Holocaust was a wake-up call in my journey of confronting suffering. It’s quite a drastic example, and I hesitate to use it for fear that it could prevent us from focusing on forms of suffering that may be less dramatic or obvious but are equally challenging in our daily lives. Suffering from addiction. Homelessness. A life-zapping job. Exams. An abusive relationship. Depression. A sick child. A parent who is facing imminent death.

These things are real. Where do you see suffering in your own life or in lives around you? How might this suffering surprise you in the way it teaches you about who we are, as human beings, and who God is? Do you need a wake-up call to see life the way it really is, for better or worse? Has your vision been blurred so that instead of the reality of yourself and others, you merely have seen “trees walking”?

FOCUS READING

Mark 8:22-25

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Sunday 9th November - Greyville Inner City Mission

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Greyville Inner City Mission

Greyville inner city mission (GICM) is an organisation which reaches out to the poor, homeless, destitute and broken people living in Durban’s inner city. GICM’s main activity is to provide these people with restoration, rehabilitation, shelter, food, and clothing and help them develop a real and life giving relationship with Jesus. GICM does this by providing 6 people off the street with shelter, food and assistance to improve their lives. GICM also gives a daily meal to all those in need at lunch and a dinner on Thursday evening which is usually accompanied by worship and a Christian message. The 6 people living at GICM assist in preparing and serving these meals and providing clothing to those in need, as well as maintaining the property. GICM is based in Greyville (a suburb of Durban) opposite Game City Centre and next to the KwaSuka Theatre.

If you would like to make a donation to or if you’d like to get involved please call Cecil on 082 444 8133.

Saturday 8th November - Greyville Inner City Mission

Weekend Blurb

The BDC is a weekday devotional aimed at anyone and everyone who struggles to keep up with the stressful demands of daily life.

This is why there are no weekend devotions prepared; however look out for your next update which will be this Monday.

Every weekend we will use this space to focus on a different mission project. This is an excellent opportunity to see how many people are striving to make a real difference in this country, and also how you might become involved.



Greyville Inner City Mission

Greyville inner city mission (GICM) is an organisation which reaches out to the poor, homeless, destitute and broken people living in Durban’s inner city. GICM’s main activity is to provide these people with restoration, rehabilitation, shelter, food, and clothing and help them develop a real and life giving relationship with Jesus. GICM does this by providing 6 people off the street with shelter, food and assistance to improve their lives. GICM also gives a daily meal to all those in need at lunch and a dinner on Thursday evening which is usually accompanied by worship and a Christian message. The 6 people living at GICM assist in preparing and serving these meals and providing clothing to those in need, as well as maintaining the property. GICM is based in Greyville (a suburb of Durban) opposite Game City Centre and next to the KwaSuka Theatre.

If you would like to make a donation to or if you’d like to get involved please call Cecil on 082 444 8133.

Friday 7th November - Heaven and Earth

DAILY BYTE

There is one final joyful discovery about calling this story teaches us. Lonely little Jacob, now exiled from his family and homeland, is given an amazing promise. That God would bless him to be a blessing, and that he would leave behind an amazing legacy through his descendants.

“Your descendants will be like the DUST of the earth.” The word used for dust actually means ‘rich topsoil.’ Jacob is promised that those who come after him will be like this fertile topsoil that much life and beauty would spring out of.

Know this then: CALLINGS DON’T RELY ON US BEING GREAT, JUST ON US RELYING GREATLY ON A GREAT GOD!

Tony Campolo tells the story of visiting some schools in Haiti that his organisation runs. On the way to back to his hotel, he was intercepted by 3 young girls, the oldest of whom was no more than 15. She said to him:
“Mister, for $10 I do anything you want me to do. I’ll do it all night long. Do you know what I mean?”

Yes, he knew what she meant. Campolo turned to the next one and said, “What about you, can I have you for $10 as well?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He turned to the last one and asked the same thing. She tried to mask her contempt of him with a smile, but its hard to look sexy when you are only 15 and hungry. Campolo said to them, “I’m in room 210. You be there in just 10 minutes. I have $30 and I am going to pay for all 3 of you to be with me all night long.”

Campolo rushed up to his room, and called down to the front desk to order every Walt Disney video they had. Then he called the restaurant and ordered 4 banana splits with extra ice-cream. The little girls arrived at his room, as did the ice cream and the videos, and they all sat on the edge of the bed and they watched and laughed until about 1am. That is when the last of the 3 girls fell asleep.

Campolo relates that as he saw these 3 young girls stretched out across his bed, he thought to himself:
“But nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Tomorrow they will be back on the streets selling their little bodies to dirty, filthy johns because there will always be dirty, filthy johns who for a few dollars will destroy little girls. Nothing’s changed. And I don’t even know enough Creole to tell them the salvation story.”
But then the word of the Spirit spoke into Campolo’s heart and said:
“But for one night Tony, for one night you let them be little girls again.”

God has this wonderful way of taking our tiny, little offerings and efforts and dreams and hopes and making them more, making them enough. Every time we perform an act of love in God’s name, no matter how small and senseless it seems against the great tide of evil, every time we do so, we capture God’s dream and vision for us, we live out our calling and we do the work of Jesus.

Jacob’s vision of angels descending and ascending the ladder between heaven and earth is a powerful reminder to open our eyes to the numerous heavenly possibilities in life. That when we dream God’s dreams, obey his callings, and take on even the smallest of Jesus’ characteristics then we bring something of what is up there to down here.

Heaven descends into our lives, and we in turn are lifted up into something higher, something more. By following your life’s calling you are bringing little bits of heaven to earth!

So may this story of Jacob be a joyous and surprising reminder that your life IS meant to mean something quite wonderful, and that as unlikely as it sounds, within you lies the potential to change entire lives and worlds.

As God has called you to be, may it be so.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, thank you for the wonderful way you take the small, ordinary offering of our lives and you imbue them with heavenly wonders. Help us to be faithful to our life’s calling, and in this way to bring something of heaven here to earth. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Genesis 28. 14-16 NRSV

Jacob dreamed that there was a ladder set up on earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.

Thursday 6th November - Your Greatest Thrill

DAILY BYTE

There is another wonderful discovery about calling that I would like to bring to your attention. When reading the story did you notice how Jacob woke up from his dream filled with holy awe, bubbling with exuberant joy, and alive with hope-filled possibility? From this we learn that:

CALLINGS ARE BEST EXPRESSED IN THE PLACE WHERE OUR GREATEST JOY AND THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEED COINCIDE.

We rob ourselves of potential joy around our callings by obsessing that God sends us only to do things and go places that would make us miserable. This begs the question of what kind of father do you think God really is? Sure, there will be times when we have to self-sacrifice or take a leap of faith, but most of the time our callings will involve those parts of life that we really enjoy.

I remember a couple of years back, doing a spiritual gifts questionnaire with some youth. One of the gifts listed on that questionnaire was that of chastity. During the course of the evening, I had 3 or 4 teenagers surreptitiously approach me, all with haunted, worried expressions, and who whispered to me: “Show me how to answer this thing so that I don’t land up with the gift of chastity! What a bummer that would be.”

But did you ever think that if you were called to chastity, you might be overjoyed? You might find it hard and sacrificial but also deeply fulfilling at the same time. As Frederick Buechner once wrote: “Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
In fact, Frederick Buechner twice spent periods of his life working as a school chaplain, and would often encourage his pupils to work deeply on their inner sources of joy as being places of great potential for their callings to develop and be expressed.
Spend some time thinking about what you most enjoy doing in life, the places you feel ‘God’s pleasure’ resonating within you, and then think about how you can use that to make a difference in reaching out to others. Write down some of your reflections and begin to centre your prayers on them as you continue to search God’s purpose for your life.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Holy God, you created me with the ability to have joy for a reason. Bless me with the imagination I need to see how I can use the things I love to do in ways that will serve and further your Kingdom. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Genesis 28. 16-17 NRSV

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, surely the Lord is in this place- and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

Wednesday 5th November - Why Were You Not More Like You?

DAILY BYTE

Jacob’s story has another wonderful discovery for us to make in connection with calling, and it is this:

CALLINGS ARE BEST EMBRACED WHEN WE EMBRACE WHO WE REALLY ARE.

I wonder how many times, while he was growing up, that Jacob might have wished he was a little more like Esau? A vibrant, sporting personality that might more easily earn his father’s love and respect.

Sometimes we make the very great mistake of thinking that to fulfil a calling, we need to be more like someone else. More similar to a certain person that we look up to and admire.

But the ultimate core of embracing our calling is learning to embrace ourselves as we really are.

In a Hasidic tale, Rabbi Zusya, an old and wise man, muses about how much of his life he has wasted trying to be someone else. He says, “In the coming world, they will not ask me ‘why were you not more like Moses?’ Rather they will ask me, ‘Why were you not more like Zusya?’”

There is probably nothing more joyful, more freeing, than becoming content to just be who God made us to be, and finding out that in God’s eyes that is unbelievably pleasing to him and exactly what this world most needs us to do.

At the height of his fame, Henri Nouwen, the famed Catholic priest and author, left behind his work at a prestigious university and his global speaking ministry in response to a call from God.

He believed God was calling him to join a small community which existed to serve a number of severally handicapped people. He was given the task of looking after a young man named Adam. Henri provided 24 hour care for this young man – bathing, dressing and feeding him.

Nouwen later wrote that he considered this period the most significant of his life. He shared how he believed that Adam had a tremendous purpose for his life in terms of bringing humanity and joy to others, and he repeatedly testified that he learnt more from Adam about living a God-honouring life and fulfilling a calling than he had from anyone else.

Perhaps when we wrestle over the issue of ‘what is God calling me to DO with my life,’ we are actually asking the wrong question. Maybe we should rather be asking, ‘WHO is it that God wants me to BE?’

Calling seems far more concerned with who we are than what we do. Calling is intrinsically about identity – the identity that flows out of relationship.

Remember what God said to Jacob in his dream: “I am the Lord your God, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.”

Just like Jacob, you are a precious child of God, beloved by your Father in heaven, and created to be like God in every way.

Embrace that.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Loving God, help us to have the courage to embrace who we really are. To build our life and work around who you created us to be. Help us to remain faithful to you in this always. Amen.

Tuesday 4th November - Ordinary

DAILY BYTE

You have been created to dream of being significant because you are meant to be significant.

God designed you that way.

Your life is meant to make a difference in this world and to leave it somehow a better place. Deeper than our need for food or air or water is our need for meaning, for our lives to count for something.

Now that need could be distorted by our egos. It can get sidetracked into narcissism or egotism. It can be hijacked by our insecurities and fears.

That’s exactly what happened to Jacob. He was born second in a set of twins, and if you read his story carefully you’ll find out that’s exactly how he felt about himself ... second! Jacob was the brother who preferred the company of his mother and enjoyed indoor activities, while the older Esau was a real go–getter. Esau was a big, hairy athlete who loved hunting, a real man’s man.

Esau was also their dad’s favourite. He was the first-born meaning he would inherit a double portion of their father’s wealth. It is no wonder Jacob felt so secondary in comparison. For goodness sake, we learn from their birth story that Jacob was born clutching onto Esau’s heel, already desperately trying to catch up to and compete with him.

Perhaps this is why Jacob felt the need to cheat to cheat his brother out of his first born rights, and then later out of their father’s final blessing. Cunningly Jacob dressed up in skins so that he could fool his blind father into believing he was the more hirsute Esau. He managed to trick his dad to the extent that when Isaac smelled his clothes he said: “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of the field.” Now that’s something I truly hope my father has never said about me!

Esau was so angered at being robbed of this blessing, and of being deceived by Jacob yet again, that Jacob was forced to flee for his life. That’s when he had his dream and heard God’s call. So the first lesson about calling that we learn from Jacob’s story is this:

CALLINGS ARE FOUND IN THE MOST ORDINARY AND EVERY PLACES AND IN THE MOST ORDINARY AND EVERY DAY PEOPLE!

In the middle of a backwater wasteland of a place; a lying, cheating, thieving, jealousy-riddled younger sibling is found and called by God. We don’t have to be world-leaders, world-beaters, extroverted, lavishly gifted and famous for God to call or use us!

If you have ever looked within, and found only weaknesses, fears, deceits, and sins leaving you feeling very ordinary, then let me tell you that you are in excellent company! The Bible is full of ordinary people in ordinary places who end up doing God’s work because they are willing to listen and be obedient and not because they are extravagantly talented.

Sadly, these days the church seems to only use ‘called’ language in conjunction with ministers and preachers. Funnily enough, there are very few priest or minister stories in the Bible – rather the stories are about how God called and used shepherds and kings and wine stewards and goat herders and administrators and tax collectors and mothers and fishermen.

What a wonderful, joyful discovery it is for us to learn that God calls ALL of us, that he created us to want to make a difference and that no matter how weak or inadequate, vain or sinful we may be, God is still more than willing and able to use us.

PRAY AS YOU GO

O Great God, throughout the Bible you used very ordinary people in ordinary places in quite amazing ways. It is an incredible joy to find out that you are willing to use me in some wonderful way as well. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Genesis 25. 24-27 NIV

When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The fist to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment, so they named him Esau. After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel, so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. The boys grew up, and Esau became a skilful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.