Saturday 6th December - Makabongwe

Weekend Blurb

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

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

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



Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School had small beginnings with children sitting on cardboard in Grey Street, Durban. It was the initiative of a group of Christian women who felt that no child should be illiterate.

Today that initiative has grown into a bright, sunny pre-school with premises in Alice Street. Seventy children drawn primarily from the street vendors in the area now have a safe environment to learn play and grow as God intended. These disadvantaged children are given a good grade R education following the National Education Syllabus.

Makabongwe means “Let Him be praised” and we do praise Him for He has indeed blessed this little school.

You can help make a difference by sponsoring a child monthly or a once off donation, thus ensuring a brighter future for the children.

Contact:
Colleen 084209409.
Manning Road Methodist Church 031 202 8262.
Bank details:
Makabongwe Methodist Pre-School
FNB
Account - 50710017936
Branch - 223526

Friday 5th December - Challenges of Listening 2

DAILY BYTE

Today’s challenge of listening is perhaps foundational to all other acts of listening, and it is this:

Stop to listen to God, and through that act of listening you will find that life opens up to you in the most amazing ways.

On Monday, I mentioned how God is a speaking God, and that the Bible is about God’s words reaching out to us because love always seeks to communicate. Many of you may have wondered at that though.

Your experience may have been of a frustratingly silent God ... a God who does not really seem to hear our prayers and pleas. Now sometimes, as many great saints have experienced and taught, we do go through ‘long dark moments of the soul,’ moments where we don’t hear from God, but truth be told, MOST of the time we don’t hear from God for entirely different reasons.

Simply put, we don’t hear from God because we just do not take the time to actually listen!

Let’s do a snap questionnaire – over the last week, add up in your head the amount of time you spent praying or talking to God. Now, add up the amount of time you actually spent listening to God.

God is constantly speaking into this world, but we have just lost the art and discipline of listening.

Frederick Buechner reminds us that all moments in life are key moments, and that if we listen to our lives, if we really pay attention, we will recognise the presence of the holy speaking to us in the ordinary.

In her book ‘Travelling Mercies,’ Annie Lamott recalls an old story about a man sitting in a bar in Alaska getting drunk. He was telling the bartender that he had recently lost his faith in God after his twin engine plane crashed into the tundra.

“So,” he spat out bitterly, “I lay there in the wreckage praying with all my might and crying out to God to save me, but God didn’t raise a finger to help me. I’m through believing in a God who doesn’t care about what happens to me.”

“But you’re here talking to me,” said the surprised bartender, “obviously you were saved.”
“Yeah that’s right,” replied the man, “only because finally some old Eskimo came along.”

If you learn to listen to your life, and the people in your life, you will be surprised to find how much of God is in this world. You will discover how much grace there is in even the most ordinary things. You will begin to recognise how many of your own ‘Eskimos’ – answers to prayers and moments of grace – you do not even recognise for what they are.

So perhaps we should stop running after our particular Babel towers, and stop expecting to find our life’s significance through our achievements, gifts and talents – through what we can tell the world.

Surprising as this may be, perhaps the greatest difference you can make in your lifetime, and the most profound way you can open the ordinary up to the holy is to just stop and listen more.

So may you be still then ... and may you hear.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, teach me to listen to you – to hear your voice spoken into the very ordinary things of everyday life. Give me the strength and discipline I need to structure into my life moments of silence and moments of careful listening. Amen.

FOCUS READING

John 10:27-30

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.

Thursday 4th December - Challenges of Listening 1

DAILY BYTE

There are two specific challenges of listening that I would like to bring to you. The first is to intentionally practice the art and discipline of learning to listen to those around you.

Throughout my ministry, I have learnt that the act of listening, just listening and not offering any words of advice or guidance, in itself brings tremendous healing and hope. This is because the experience of feeling truly heard is an experience of being truly loved.

Acts 2 tells a story which in many ways is the inverse of the Tower of Babel. It is the story of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit anoints the disciples, and they began to speak in tongues. The result was that people of many different cultures and backgrounds heard and understood the Gospel being proclaimed in their own languages. It seems that a very important aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work is to teach us to learn to listen and understand one another, for it is through this listening and understanding that love can truly be expressed.

The prolific author and pastor Gordon MacDonald tells the story of having a friend over for supper one evening. This friend was a bus driver who had been mugged in a way that was both traumatic and humiliating. Gordon invited him to tell his story, which he did through gut wrenching sobs and tears.

Gordon listened to him carefully, and when he had finished, invited him to tell the story yet again. He did so again, and once more when he had finished, Gordon asked him to re-tell the story. By the end of the evening, the man had shared his traumatic experience three times, and it seemed that with each telling as if more and more of the event’s weight and pain dropped off his shoulders.

When the man left Gordon’s home at the end of the evening, he was free of his painful experience paralysing him in any way. He was free of hate and ready to begin the long process of forgiveness.

And Gordon had done absolutely nothing for him in the way of wise words ... all he had done was to listen carefully.

It was enough.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious Father, we ask that you would bring people into our lives who would listen carefully to us, for we know that the experience of being truly heard is also one of being profoundly loved. Bring listeners into our lives, but equally we ask you would open our minds and hearts to those for whom we may provide listening ears to in turn. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Proverbs 1:5 NRSV

Let the wise also hear and gain in listening, and the discerning acquire skill.

Wednesday 3rd December - The Gift of Listening

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday, I mentioned that the first 11 chapters of the Bible describe the effect of the Fall, a disintegration of relationships at all levels. This culminates in the story of the Tower of Babel which describes the dispersal of a community because they lost the ability to truly listen to one another.

Interestingly enough, straight after these 11 chapters is the call of Abram (Genesis 12). This is a call from God that Abram must listen to with the promise that his obedience will bless many people besides himself. Scripture shows us how God immediately begins a process of reconnecting people with himself and one another.

As the Biblical story progresses from here, we learn that the great hero’s of the faith – women and men – had stories marked not by any individual brilliance or talent, but by a willingness to become really good listeners. To hear God and to be obedient, and through that obedient listening their lives changed their worlds.

Because to listen, to truly hear, is one of the greatest gifts we can learn to give others.

I learnt this from a NG Kerk Dominee (minister) I met once. I remember him telling me that his call to ministry was wrapped up in his call to be a listener.

“Everyone wants to speak,” he would say, “but the most important thing God wants me to do with my life is to be a listener.”

The longer I journey in life, the more I think he was correct, and that he shaped and formed his life around a wonderful God-truth. And the longer I have been involved in ministry, the more I am convinced of the truth of the message of the Tower of Babel: that there is so much pain and heart ache in the world because we don’t truly listen to each other.

People disperse from one another and drift apart because of it. Relationships are broken, marriages break down, children and parents are estranged, Christians fight among themselves, countries go to war, humanity suffers and groans because we become too wrapped up in ourselves to hear the cry of others.

You may not feel very gifted or talented, you may not even believe God could use you in any great way, but let me assure you that if you strive to learn to listen to others and to God, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you will make a profound difference in this world.

This is why one of the greatest gifts we can learn to give each other is that of simple listening. To listen not only with our ears but our hearts and souls as well. This is what will build, sustain and draw people together.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Holy and Loving Lord, help me to offer to others the gift of listening. Teach me to listen to my family, friends, acquaintances and even my enemies with my ears and my heart. Bless this gift of listening so that it will serve to draw people together. Amen.

FOCUS READING

James 1:19 NRSV

You must understand this, my beloved, let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.

Tuesday 2nd December - A Lesson from Babel

DAILY BYTE

After the Fall of Adam and Eve, the first 11 chapters of Genesis describe a gradual disintegration of humanity through stories like that of Cain and Abel, and the Flood, all of which culminates in the story of the Tower of Babel.

The story begins in an age described as having only one language and a common speech. Humanity embarks on a rather ambitious building project saying in Gen 11. 4: “Let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the whole face of the earth.”

Archaelogists tell us that at least 5000 years ago rulers of the Eastern world began building ornate ziggurats – tall, pyramid-like towers with their ‘heads in the clouds.’ They were built on 7 levels to represent the 7 heavens and 7 planes of existence. Often the very top layer was clad in blue tiles so as to blend in with the sky.

These ziggurats were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods. Of course, the Israelites would look upon such buildings with theological outrage, so it is no wonder that their story would have God terminate this building project.

The interesting part is how God does it. Not through floods, storms, lightening and wind. Nothing nearly so dramatic. No, God simply ‘confuses’ their language!

The word that is translated as ‘understand’ in the sentence, ‘Let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another,’ is the word ‘shama’, and this is not about understanding as a cognitive function. No, the word ‘shama’ is about listening, but listening with head, heart and soul. It’s about paying careful attention to one another.

The story of the Tower of Babel is about what happens when people stop listening to one another, it’s about what happens when people get so self-centred that they cannot hear what others are really saying.

There is this constant ego-centric repetition of words and phrases throughout the story, most noticeably in vs 4: ‘Us ... ourselves ... we ... ourselves.’ The writer is obviously implying that the people are proud, egotistical and overly self-concerned. Ultimately, we learn that the more caught up in ourselves we are, the less we are able to truly listen to others.

A couple of years ago, my wife was sharing with me a problem she was having with a couple of people at work. I was only half-listening, because I said something like: “Oh well, that’s easy enough to sort out. Just do x and y and your problem will be solved!”

As I look back, my thinking was probably along the lines of ‘because you see I am a minister, I work with people all the time, so I know how to sort out the problem for you.’

What did I say about the more caught up in ourselves we are, the less we are able to truly listen!

My wife’s response was something along the lines of: ‘No you wool-headed lummox! I don’t want you to tell me how to sort out my problems because I am perfectly capable of doing that myself. In fact, the way I process my problems is to talk it out with you, that’s the first step of me sorting it out, I just need you to listen.’

The story of the Tower of Babel exposes a deep ache in the heart of humanity. We want to connect with God, yet we cannot even connect with each other! We build all sorts of churches, cathedrals, mosques and synagogues in the hope that we can find God there, but until we can connect – until we hear and understand each other – the building itself is actually a waste of space.

This story is about the failure of a community because it valued building projects and work over relationships, towers to false gods like success over community, and fame over friendship. The effect of this egocentrism was that their ears became close to one another, the community died and people became dispersed. They lost each other.

Funny how the people in that ancient story really weren’t so different from us today ...

PRAY AS YOU GO

Loving God, help me to learn to put aside my egocentric ways and constant self concern and to begin to truly listen to others – to listen with head, heart and soul. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Genesis 11:1-9 NRSV

Now the whole earth had one language and same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “ Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.