DAILY BYTE
With the kick-off to the long-awaited 2010 FIFA World Cup being just a few days away, the sense of excitement and anticipation is now reaching fever pitch here in South Africa. The teams that are competing have all arrived in the country, and visiting fans are also starting to stream in. Flags and vuvuzelas are in profuse evidence pretty much everywhere. As the tag-line for the marketing campaign puts it, ‘Feel it! It is here!’ And indeed it is – a hugely exciting and significant moment in our nation’s history.
One of the songs that’s been used in the build-up to the Soccer World Cup calls on all of us to “make the circle bigger.” Now, whatever you may think about the music and the rhythm of the song, those simple lyrics are truly profound – and are very good theology. Because “making the circle bigger” is precisely what the love and grace of God are all about.
In this final week before the World Cup kicks off, we’ll reflect on this important idea from a theological perspective. Because this World Cup is not just a sporting event – it holds the potential to shape our minds and our hearts if we choose to embrace the life-giving invitations that it extends for us to celebrate the gift of our common humanity.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, thank you for this amazing event that will be taking place within our country. We pray your blessing upon the Soccer World Cup, that it would indeed be an opportunity for us to ‘make the circle bigger’ in our attitudes and our actions, as we affirm that we are all part of one human family, sharing your image and likeness. Amen
SCRIPTURE READING
Acts 10:34-36 (The Message)
Peter fairly exploded with his good news: "It's God's own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you're from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he's doing it everywhere, among everyone.
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Friday, 4 June 2010
David - Part 10
DAILY BYTE
Following his debacle with Bathsheba which ended up with a man’s blood on his hands, David came to learn a painful but necessary lesson – God has written cause and effect into the life of the universe. In other words, if we choose to live life according to our own agenda, if we choose to go our own way and break God’s laws, the effects ripple through our lives and the lives of others, causing all kinds of heartache and pain.
Like all of us, David wanted to avoid the consequences of his selfish choices. Fortunately for David, there was a courageous and wise prophet in the land by the name of Nathan. He knew that a straight-forward accusation would be met with big-time royal defensiveness. So he told a story about a rich man who abused his power and privilege at the expense of a poor man. David’s sense of moral outrage was aroused. And then came the telling blow as Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Sam 12).
It’s always easier to see sin and shortcomings in other people’s lives. It’s not so easy to see these things in our own. But painful though it may be, what a gift it is when we are helped to see the truth of our selfish choices and the consequences that they trigger in ours and others’ lives.
It’s a gift because while the consequences of our selfish choices cannot be avoided, by God’s grace they can be redeemed. What this means is that even the mess we make of our lives can somehow be used by God to bring about God’s purpose for us, even if it means that God’s purpose must be worked out in the dysfunctional network of bruised and broken lives that are the product of our arrogant attempts to live without God.
Jim Harnish writes, “Although we are bound together in a tangled web of human relationships, we are not prisoners of fate within that web. We are influenced by our past, but we are not bound by it. Although we stand before the justice of God being worked out in human history, we can also receive the gifts of God’s unexpected mercy…. For God’s grace is not bounded by the limitations of human cause and effect.”
In the end, David learned his lesson. It made him a humbler person, better able to recognize that his own sense of self-sufficiency was just an illusion, and that he was wholly dependent upon the mercy and grace of God. He continued to live with the toxic effects of his actions for years to come with all kinds of dysfunctional dynamics in his family. And yet, through it all God’s steadfast love was known and the house of David continued to be a part of God’s liberating activity for the whole world.
This is the hope and encouragement we can take from David’s story for our own lives. God is not finished with us. No matter what we have done, a new chapter of grace in our lives waits to be written.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a pure heart O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Amen (Psalm 51:1-3,10)
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
Psalm 25:4-11, 15 (The Message)
A Psalm of David
Show me how you work, God;
School me in your ways.
Take me by the hand;
Lead me down the path of truth.
Forget that I sowed wild oats;
Mark me with your sign of love.
Plan only the best for me, God!
God is fair and just;
He corrects the misdirected,
Sends them in the right direction.
He gives the rejects his hand,
And leads them step-by-step.
From now on every road you travel
Will take you to God.
Follow the Covenant signs;
Read the charted directions.
Keep up your reputation, God;
Forgive my bad life;
It's been a very bad life.
But if I keep my eyes on God,
I won't trip over my own feet.
Following his debacle with Bathsheba which ended up with a man’s blood on his hands, David came to learn a painful but necessary lesson – God has written cause and effect into the life of the universe. In other words, if we choose to live life according to our own agenda, if we choose to go our own way and break God’s laws, the effects ripple through our lives and the lives of others, causing all kinds of heartache and pain.
Like all of us, David wanted to avoid the consequences of his selfish choices. Fortunately for David, there was a courageous and wise prophet in the land by the name of Nathan. He knew that a straight-forward accusation would be met with big-time royal defensiveness. So he told a story about a rich man who abused his power and privilege at the expense of a poor man. David’s sense of moral outrage was aroused. And then came the telling blow as Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Sam 12).
It’s always easier to see sin and shortcomings in other people’s lives. It’s not so easy to see these things in our own. But painful though it may be, what a gift it is when we are helped to see the truth of our selfish choices and the consequences that they trigger in ours and others’ lives.
It’s a gift because while the consequences of our selfish choices cannot be avoided, by God’s grace they can be redeemed. What this means is that even the mess we make of our lives can somehow be used by God to bring about God’s purpose for us, even if it means that God’s purpose must be worked out in the dysfunctional network of bruised and broken lives that are the product of our arrogant attempts to live without God.
Jim Harnish writes, “Although we are bound together in a tangled web of human relationships, we are not prisoners of fate within that web. We are influenced by our past, but we are not bound by it. Although we stand before the justice of God being worked out in human history, we can also receive the gifts of God’s unexpected mercy…. For God’s grace is not bounded by the limitations of human cause and effect.”
In the end, David learned his lesson. It made him a humbler person, better able to recognize that his own sense of self-sufficiency was just an illusion, and that he was wholly dependent upon the mercy and grace of God. He continued to live with the toxic effects of his actions for years to come with all kinds of dysfunctional dynamics in his family. And yet, through it all God’s steadfast love was known and the house of David continued to be a part of God’s liberating activity for the whole world.
This is the hope and encouragement we can take from David’s story for our own lives. God is not finished with us. No matter what we have done, a new chapter of grace in our lives waits to be written.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a pure heart O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Amen (Psalm 51:1-3,10)
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
Psalm 25:4-11, 15 (The Message)
A Psalm of David
Show me how you work, God;
School me in your ways.
Take me by the hand;
Lead me down the path of truth.
Forget that I sowed wild oats;
Mark me with your sign of love.
Plan only the best for me, God!
God is fair and just;
He corrects the misdirected,
Sends them in the right direction.
He gives the rejects his hand,
And leads them step-by-step.
From now on every road you travel
Will take you to God.
Follow the Covenant signs;
Read the charted directions.
Keep up your reputation, God;
Forgive my bad life;
It's been a very bad life.
But if I keep my eyes on God,
I won't trip over my own feet.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
David - Part 9
DAILY BYTE
The story of David and Bathsheba is not just a story about sex! It’s also a story about the tragic consequences that arise when self-destructive desires are indulged, when power is abused, when people (and especially women) are objectified, and when wrongdoing is covered over. It’s a story that reveals how small steps down the path of selfish behaviour can quickly lead to major consequences that can scar our lives forever.
For David it all began one sleepless night when he happened to see a beautiful woman bathing, and a deep sexual desire was aroused within him. If it had ended there, the shattering and devastation of many lives would have been avoided. But sadly, David allowed his desire to foment within him, and before he knows it he’s heading straight down the slippery slope into the abyss of immorality.
There’s an old country proverb that says that it’s one thing for the birds of temptation to fly over your head, but it’s another thing to let them build a nest in your hair. When tempting thoughts are entertained in our minds and nurtured in our hearts, they can grow until suddenly they acquire a driving force and power of their own. This is what happened to David.
Having seen Bathsheba’s beauty and wanting to have her, David abuses his kingly power in the worst possible way by having Bathsheba brought to him, and he sleeps with her. The next thing David hears is that Bathsheba is pregnant. Suddenly, one night of selfish sexual passion has become very complicated. Threatened with the possibility of his predatory sexual behaviour being exposed, David makes plans to cover his tracks. He tries to get Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to sleep with her so that his paternity would be concealed, but those plans backfire. Eventually, the easiest solution for the king is to arrange for Uriah to be killed in battle. As the story is recorded in the bible, David has moved from being an insomniac to a murderer, responsible for devastating the life of an entire family.
How exactly does this happen? Well, the interesting thing about this chapter in the Bible is that God is never mentioned at all. The only reference to God in the whole of 2 Samuel 11 is in the very last verse when we read that “the thing David had done displeased the LORD.”
Jim Harnish writes, “The story becomes our story when we realize that it is ultimately about the apparent absence of God as a living, active, controlling presence in human life. David’s actions uncover the depths to which we can fall when we become so confident in our own powers that we no longer live out of a soul-centering experience of the presence of the living God.”
We may not have kingly power like David to take whatever we want, but there is the capacity within all of us, like David, to be lured down devastating paths of chaos and mayhem by our base desires, if we are not consistently deferring to God as the organizing centre of our experience.
David’s story is a warning to us all of what we are capable of, and it’s an encouragement to us to persevere in the daily spiritual discipline of keeping God at the front and centre of our lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, without you at the centre of my life I can so easily go astray, seduced by tempting sights and situations that seem so exciting but end up delivering heartache and disaster. Help me to keep trusting you and your ways as the organizing centre of my life. Amen.
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 11:2-5
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
The story of David and Bathsheba is not just a story about sex! It’s also a story about the tragic consequences that arise when self-destructive desires are indulged, when power is abused, when people (and especially women) are objectified, and when wrongdoing is covered over. It’s a story that reveals how small steps down the path of selfish behaviour can quickly lead to major consequences that can scar our lives forever.
For David it all began one sleepless night when he happened to see a beautiful woman bathing, and a deep sexual desire was aroused within him. If it had ended there, the shattering and devastation of many lives would have been avoided. But sadly, David allowed his desire to foment within him, and before he knows it he’s heading straight down the slippery slope into the abyss of immorality.
There’s an old country proverb that says that it’s one thing for the birds of temptation to fly over your head, but it’s another thing to let them build a nest in your hair. When tempting thoughts are entertained in our minds and nurtured in our hearts, they can grow until suddenly they acquire a driving force and power of their own. This is what happened to David.
Having seen Bathsheba’s beauty and wanting to have her, David abuses his kingly power in the worst possible way by having Bathsheba brought to him, and he sleeps with her. The next thing David hears is that Bathsheba is pregnant. Suddenly, one night of selfish sexual passion has become very complicated. Threatened with the possibility of his predatory sexual behaviour being exposed, David makes plans to cover his tracks. He tries to get Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to sleep with her so that his paternity would be concealed, but those plans backfire. Eventually, the easiest solution for the king is to arrange for Uriah to be killed in battle. As the story is recorded in the bible, David has moved from being an insomniac to a murderer, responsible for devastating the life of an entire family.
How exactly does this happen? Well, the interesting thing about this chapter in the Bible is that God is never mentioned at all. The only reference to God in the whole of 2 Samuel 11 is in the very last verse when we read that “the thing David had done displeased the LORD.”
Jim Harnish writes, “The story becomes our story when we realize that it is ultimately about the apparent absence of God as a living, active, controlling presence in human life. David’s actions uncover the depths to which we can fall when we become so confident in our own powers that we no longer live out of a soul-centering experience of the presence of the living God.”
We may not have kingly power like David to take whatever we want, but there is the capacity within all of us, like David, to be lured down devastating paths of chaos and mayhem by our base desires, if we are not consistently deferring to God as the organizing centre of our experience.
David’s story is a warning to us all of what we are capable of, and it’s an encouragement to us to persevere in the daily spiritual discipline of keeping God at the front and centre of our lives.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, without you at the centre of my life I can so easily go astray, seduced by tempting sights and situations that seem so exciting but end up delivering heartache and disaster. Help me to keep trusting you and your ways as the organizing centre of my life. Amen.
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 11:2-5
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
David - Part 8
DAILY BYTE
In 2 Samuel 7:1 we read that David was well-settled in his kingship, well-settled in his royal palace, and well-settled in the land. His former struggle for the throne with the house of Saul is over, his struggle in establishing Jerusalem as his capital is over, and his struggle with his enemies around him is, for the time being, over. We would say that David’s star had risen, he was flying high, he was at the top of his game.
And so his thoughts turn to the Ark of the LORD, and the concern that there was no formal structure to house it, just a tent. It seemed to David that in the midst of all the signs of his success, there should be something more substantial for God, something more dignified, more fitting, a proper temple that would match up to the standards David had set for his own royal palace.
On the face of it, it appears as if David’s plan came from a noble desire to honour God. But God’s response was quite clear – He didn’t want a temple. For two reasons. Firstly, it’s the height of human arrogance to think that any man-made structure could contain the infinite God.
Jim Harnish writes, “The Almighty God cannot be confined, pinned down, or boxed by human efforts. The God we meet in the Bible is constantly on the move. This is the God whose very nature is freedom and who is always doing some new thing. Years later, when God finally gave a building permit for a temple and the project first proposed by David was completed by his son, King Solomon was wise enough to pray, ‘The highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!’ (1 Kings 8:27).”
Secondly, it is not external structures that indicate our religious devotion, but rather the inner disposition of our hearts. Authentic spirituality begins with the commitment to look at life from the inside out. This is what God is interested in – the space we create within us for the Spirit of God to be at work within the deep, inner core of our being to accomplish God’s purpose for our lives.
The word of re-assurance that came to David is a word that God speaks to us too: “I have been with you wherever you have gone…. And I will prepare a place for my people…so that they can have a home” (2 Sam 7:9-10).
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Remind us of who you are. Remind us that our lives depend upon you and not the other way around. Help us to make more space for you in our lives, that you might come and take up residency within us, and move us into the wide-open expanse of your loving purposes for all the world. Amen
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 7:1-2, 4-10
After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, "Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent."
That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying: "Go and tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" '
"Now then, tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the great ones of the earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.”
In 2 Samuel 7:1 we read that David was well-settled in his kingship, well-settled in his royal palace, and well-settled in the land. His former struggle for the throne with the house of Saul is over, his struggle in establishing Jerusalem as his capital is over, and his struggle with his enemies around him is, for the time being, over. We would say that David’s star had risen, he was flying high, he was at the top of his game.
And so his thoughts turn to the Ark of the LORD, and the concern that there was no formal structure to house it, just a tent. It seemed to David that in the midst of all the signs of his success, there should be something more substantial for God, something more dignified, more fitting, a proper temple that would match up to the standards David had set for his own royal palace.
On the face of it, it appears as if David’s plan came from a noble desire to honour God. But God’s response was quite clear – He didn’t want a temple. For two reasons. Firstly, it’s the height of human arrogance to think that any man-made structure could contain the infinite God.
Jim Harnish writes, “The Almighty God cannot be confined, pinned down, or boxed by human efforts. The God we meet in the Bible is constantly on the move. This is the God whose very nature is freedom and who is always doing some new thing. Years later, when God finally gave a building permit for a temple and the project first proposed by David was completed by his son, King Solomon was wise enough to pray, ‘The highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!’ (1 Kings 8:27).”
Secondly, it is not external structures that indicate our religious devotion, but rather the inner disposition of our hearts. Authentic spirituality begins with the commitment to look at life from the inside out. This is what God is interested in – the space we create within us for the Spirit of God to be at work within the deep, inner core of our being to accomplish God’s purpose for our lives.
The word of re-assurance that came to David is a word that God speaks to us too: “I have been with you wherever you have gone…. And I will prepare a place for my people…so that they can have a home” (2 Sam 7:9-10).
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Remind us of who you are. Remind us that our lives depend upon you and not the other way around. Help us to make more space for you in our lives, that you might come and take up residency within us, and move us into the wide-open expanse of your loving purposes for all the world. Amen
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 7:1-2, 4-10
After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, "Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent."
That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying: "Go and tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" '
"Now then, tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the great ones of the earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.”
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
David - Part 7
DAILY BYTE
Yesterday we looked at some of the history around David becoming king of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah, his establishment of Jerusalem as his new capital and his decision to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem to consolidate its place as the religious capital of the realm.
The event of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem was a spectacular affair. It was a grand procession involving 30 000 troops and a massive marching band. This promised to be a public relations coup that David’s “publicity agents” were hoping to get maximum mileage out of. But then, suddenly, things departed from the script as David’s carefully laid plans were disrupted by the unexpected, uncontrollable power of God.
We read that Uzzah, one of the men guiding the cart on which the Ark was being transported, reached out and touched the Ark when the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. And just like that, Zap, Uzzah fell down dead.
This is a tough episode for us to make sense of as it rails against our modern sensibilities of what is fair and just. But Uzzah’s shocking death is a vivid reminder to us of the power and holiness of God who was at work in David’s life but was way beyond David’s manipulation and control.
This is a reminder that we all need, as the increasing tendency today is for people to view God as some kind of cosmic Father Christmas whose primary purpose is to satisfy our desires, or a celestial cheerleader who exists to prop up our sense of self-worth and make us all happy.
Consider these two insightful quotes:
“Reverence and awe have often been replaced by a yawn of familiarity. The consuming fire has been domesticated into a candle flame, adding a bit of religious atmosphere, perhaps, but no heat, no blinding light, no power for purification.” (Donald McCullough)
“Most people see God as a benign deity who does little more than ‘bless’ people – a spiritual butler who waits to meet our needs. Most people want a deity who exists to serve our purposes rather than the one who calls us out of ourselves to serve a divine purpose in the world…. But the Almighty God is not primarily here to serve our needs, but to claim us as a part of the fulfillment of God’s redeeming purpose in human experience…. The God David met at the Ark is not safe, but the God whose holiness struck Uzzah to the ground is very good; good enough to give us just a touch of bone-shaking reverence for the power of God, breathless wonder at the mystery of God, and a soul-cleansing awareness of the holiness of God.” (Jim Harnish)
When last did you bow down in reverence before God and declare that God is holy?
PRAY-AS-YOU-GO
Most Holy God, your ways are beyond our ways. You move and act with complete freedom, unconstrained by the limitations we try to impose upon you. Remind us constantly of you who are, a God who cannot be manipulated or controlled. Surprise us with your majesty, dazzle us with your beauty, that we might kneel in humility and reverence before you and declare that you are Holy. Amen
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 6:1-7
David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all. He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark. They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.
Yesterday we looked at some of the history around David becoming king of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah, his establishment of Jerusalem as his new capital and his decision to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem to consolidate its place as the religious capital of the realm.
The event of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem was a spectacular affair. It was a grand procession involving 30 000 troops and a massive marching band. This promised to be a public relations coup that David’s “publicity agents” were hoping to get maximum mileage out of. But then, suddenly, things departed from the script as David’s carefully laid plans were disrupted by the unexpected, uncontrollable power of God.
We read that Uzzah, one of the men guiding the cart on which the Ark was being transported, reached out and touched the Ark when the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. And just like that, Zap, Uzzah fell down dead.
This is a tough episode for us to make sense of as it rails against our modern sensibilities of what is fair and just. But Uzzah’s shocking death is a vivid reminder to us of the power and holiness of God who was at work in David’s life but was way beyond David’s manipulation and control.
This is a reminder that we all need, as the increasing tendency today is for people to view God as some kind of cosmic Father Christmas whose primary purpose is to satisfy our desires, or a celestial cheerleader who exists to prop up our sense of self-worth and make us all happy.
Consider these two insightful quotes:
“Reverence and awe have often been replaced by a yawn of familiarity. The consuming fire has been domesticated into a candle flame, adding a bit of religious atmosphere, perhaps, but no heat, no blinding light, no power for purification.” (Donald McCullough)
“Most people see God as a benign deity who does little more than ‘bless’ people – a spiritual butler who waits to meet our needs. Most people want a deity who exists to serve our purposes rather than the one who calls us out of ourselves to serve a divine purpose in the world…. But the Almighty God is not primarily here to serve our needs, but to claim us as a part of the fulfillment of God’s redeeming purpose in human experience…. The God David met at the Ark is not safe, but the God whose holiness struck Uzzah to the ground is very good; good enough to give us just a touch of bone-shaking reverence for the power of God, breathless wonder at the mystery of God, and a soul-cleansing awareness of the holiness of God.” (Jim Harnish)
When last did you bow down in reverence before God and declare that God is holy?
PRAY-AS-YOU-GO
Most Holy God, your ways are beyond our ways. You move and act with complete freedom, unconstrained by the limitations we try to impose upon you. Remind us constantly of you who are, a God who cannot be manipulated or controlled. Surprise us with your majesty, dazzle us with your beauty, that we might kneel in humility and reverence before you and declare that you are Holy. Amen
FOCUS SCRIPTURE
2 Samuel 6:1-7
David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all. He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark. They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.
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