tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200445085039006282024-03-13T08:28:39.896-07:00Words of Spirit and LifeA personal journey through the pages of the New TestamentHoward Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-50504348458591379862012-08-07T12:04:00.000-07:002012-08-07T12:04:45.476-07:00Matthew 16 – Sons of Jonah<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">16:17 And Jesus
answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona...</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Simon Barjona – there’s something about the man you just
can’t help but like.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe it’s the way he wears his heart on both sleeves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it’s the way he opens his mouth first,
and worries about putting his foot in it later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe it’s the way he’s always ready to start something, but never
around long enough to finish it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Maybe it’s the hopeless transparency of the guy, all bluster
and bravado on the outside, but all too obviously nothing but mush underneath.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe it’s the look in his eyes, when he tells you about the
things he loves the best, the wind, the waves, the ever-changing skies, and the
fish – oh yes, the fish: when he tells you one of his “fisherman’s tales” about
the greatest catch he ever took, probably the greatest catch in the history of
the world, a catch so big that it all but tore his nets to shreds, and came
within a whisker of capsizing, not one, but two of the best darned boats on the
water.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course what he doesn’t tell you is that afterwards on the
quayside he completely went to pieces and embarrassed himself in front of everyone
by prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet and imploring the Master to depart from
his unworthy, and admittedly rather fishy, presence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Luke 5:1-11]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that’s just typical Simon; that’s just Simon all over: you
can love him or hate him, but you have to admit there’s never a dull moment
when Simon Barjona’s around.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the Master appears to find him amusing at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take the nickname he has for him: Peter, “The
Rock” – solid, dependable, steady, reliable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Talk about tongue-in-cheek!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
could hardly be anyone less solid and dependable, more impulsive and unstable,
than good old Simon, “The Impetuous”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, if it’s a nickname you’re after, then I daresay a
better moniker for the Simon Barjona I know and love might be something along
the lines of Gusto, “The Wind”: always huffing and puffing, always blustering
about, never there when you need him, completely overpowering when you don’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which in a way is what makes the events of that day all the
more stranger.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were visiting Caesarea Philippi with Jesus, when he asked
us, “Who do people say that I am?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[Matthew 16:13-23]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There didn’t seem to be any harm in telling him some of the
weird and wonderful things people have been saying about him, so we decided to
give it to him straight: “Some people are saying you’re John the Baptist
returned from the dead, of all things!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some people are saying you’re Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the other
old-time prophets, come back to deliver us from the Romans.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But what about you?” he asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Who do you say I am?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that’s when Simon came out with it: “You are the Christ,
the Son of the living God!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now of course there’s nothing particularly unusual about Simon
making a melodramatic, off-the-wall remark – it would probably be more unusual
if he didn’t! – but what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> unusual
were Jesus’ next words: “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for this was not
revealed to you by man, but by God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
I tell you, you are indeed Peter, and upon this ‘rock’ I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You could have heard a pin drop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In that moment, “Peter” wasn’t an amusing nickname anymore; “Peter”
wasn’t just a private in-joke amongst The Twelve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly, Peter was the rock that everything
we’d been hoping for would be built on; Peter was the stone God would use to crush
our enemies; Peter was the platform upon which we’d build our dreams.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then he had to go and spoil it all by telling us that he
was shortly to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Simon was typically forthright in his opinions on the
matter: “No, Lord!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t let them do
this to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t let you do this to
yourself!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And Jesus’ views on the subject were equally unambiguous:
“Get thee behind me, Satan!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are an
offence to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your heart is set on the
things of man, not on the things of God.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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So which was it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was
Simon a rock, the recipient of insights that could only have come from
God?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or was Simon an offence, with his
heart set firmly on the things of man?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the days that have followed the events of Caesarea
Philippi, I’ve done a lot of thinking about that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that
the answer to both questions is, yes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Simon is basically just a simple fisherman, the son of a
fisherman, who was the son of a fisherman before him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simon isn’t called Barjona for nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simon is every inch “the son of Jonah”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, wasn’t Jonah swallowed by the
biggest darned fish of all?!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But at Caesarea Philippi, it seems to me that the “son of
Jonah” was swallowed by something bigger still.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It seems to me that at Caesarea Philippi a certain “simple fisherman”
caught a little more than he bargained for – a catch to rival any of his most
extravagant fisherman’s tales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems
to me, a fisherman’s eye was needed that day, to catch a glimpse of what was
hidden beneath the surface, to catch a glimpse of something extraordinary,
something that was right there in front of us that every one of us had failed
to see.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On more than one occasion, Jesus has been asked to prove his
credentials by means of a “sign from heaven”; but whenever they ask him for a
sign, he always tells them the same thing: he tells them the only sign they’ll
ever get from him is the “sign of the prophet Jonah”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Matthew 12:38-39, 16:1-4]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Even now, as we follow him on the journey up to Jerusalem he
spoke of, I don’t think any of us are really sure just what exactly this “sign
of Jonah” is; but maybe, just maybe, that’s where it takes a “son of Jonah”
like Simon, to grasp seemingly by instinct, what so many of us have consistently
failed to comprehend.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You see, when Simon recognised the tell-tale signs of divinity
in a man many of us had simply taken for a prophet and teacher, that was the
moment when everything changed for me; that was the moment when everything
changed for us all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was the moment when I finally understood – that a man
like Simon, impulsive, unstable, impetuous Simon, could at the same time be
solid, dependable, rock-steady Peter; not through teaching or training, not
through effort, discipline or determination; but through that one glimpse he
caught in Caesarea Philippi of God in the person of his Son.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, one glimpse was all he caught that day, but that one
glimpse turned out to be the greatest catch he ever took, probably the greatest
catch in the history of the world, a catch so big that it all but tore his defences
to shreds, and turned his life upside down forever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What has all this to do with me anyhow, you ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s my interest in Simon Barjona?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do I seem to know so much about him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And where did all my crazy theories about
Jesus come from?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I might not be a Simon, and I’m certainly no Peter,
but like him, I’ll always be my father’s son; like my brother, I’ll always be a
son of Jonah.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-28834503890473270552012-05-25T11:50:00.000-07:002012-05-25T11:50:28.890-07:00Matthew 15 – Little dogs<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you were to say to me, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matthew 15</i>” my immediate response would almost certainly be, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little dogs!</i>”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How did such diverse topics manage to become so inextricably
linked in my mind?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought you’d never ask…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
-----|-----</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a Parsons Drive evening, and I was parked in my usual
spot under a conveniently-located lamppost, half-listening to the muffled
sounds of my daughter’s music lesson coming from the house across the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the years I’ve learnt the hard way that
you can’t sit reading with the interior lights on for two hours solid without
risking a flat battery, an “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oh Dad!</i>”,
and a long wait for the breakdown van at the end of an already long evening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But tonight I was fully prepared for my weekly
stakeout, strategically parked under a handy streetlight, with flask in one
hand and Pocket New Testament in the other, and looking forward to spending
another typical evening in the life of Dad’s Ace Taxi Services.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As it happened, this evening was our first at Parsons Drive
since the clocks, if not the weather, had decided it was now British Summer
Time, so I wouldn’t be reading by the insipid orange glow of streetlight for a
little while yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as I turned to
Matthew 15 and began to read, I noticed that at the far end of the street – the
end which would normally be sitting in darkness by this time of day – there
were a couple of lads playing football with a little dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say the dog was playing football, but it
was more like a game of “piggy in the middle”, with the dog very much in the
role of “piggy”, and from what I could see, not likely to lay a paw on the ball
anytime this side of Christmas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what the little dog lacked in natural ball skills, it more
than made up for in enthusiasm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though
it stood no more than six or seven inches high, it tirelessly scampered back
and forth on its comical little legs, doggedly determined (no pun intended) to
pursue that ball to the ends of the earth if need be, and ready to savage it
mercilessly, with an anything but savage looking set of canines, if even the
slightest opportunity should arise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I watched the one-sided competition unfolding, I found
myself actually starting to root for the little guy – “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Go on little dog; you can do it boy!</i>”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then, with one eye still on the game, I decided I’d better
get back to my reading, and Matthew 15, verses 21-22…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:21 Then Jesus went
thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:22 And, behold, a
woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have
mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a
devil.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And though I’ve read the story many times, verse 23 always
gets me every time…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:23 But he answered her
not a word.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Throughout his brief but intensely busy public ministry,
Jesus responded to all kinds of pleas for help, in all kinds of ways, but of
all his responses, this is somehow the one I never see coming – complete silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Can this really be the same Jesus who by
verse 30 was gladly welcoming “great multitudes” and healing “those that were
lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others”?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And when his disciples pressed him for a response, not out of concern
for the woman’s plight, but because her constant nagging was getting to be a
bit of a pain (verse 23), Jesus’ words were perhaps even more surprising than
his silence…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:24 I am not sent
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But back on Parsons Drive, I was beginning to think I might have
a slight inkling of what Jesus was up to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was thinking back to the previous chapter of Matthew, the feeding of
the five thousand, and how Jesus responded then to the disciples’ bright ideas
– “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There’s no need for them to go; you
give them something to eat!</i>” (Matthew 14:16).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was remembering how Jesus liked nothing
better than to provoke a reaction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still if verse 24 is surprising, verse 26 is positively
shocking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The woman, perhaps taken aback
by the coldness of her reception, had now been reduced to a desperate three-word
appeal – “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord, help me</i>” (verse 25).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which, Jesus answered…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:26 It is not meet
to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And back on Parsons Drive, as up and down the street the
lights started to flicker on, another kind of light suddenly came on between my
ears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I read the words of verse 26, I
suddenly remembered an obscure fact I once picked up from some obscure
source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the Greek, the word used for
“dogs” can apparently be literally translated, “little dogs”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To a contemporary audience, verse 26 would
most likely conjure up an image of children and their household pets – their
“little dogs”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:27 And she said,
Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters'
table.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of the street the game was still afoot, and the
little dog was still going strong – just like the woman in the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did neither of them know when to call it a
day?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently both of them were
doggedly determined (no pun intended) to pursue their goal to the ends of the
earth if need be, if that’s what it would take to come, even for one instant,
within touching distance of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes life can give you the run-around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at those times when you need him most, those
are often the times when God is most difficult to lay a “paw” on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps at times, that’s the only way he can
provoke a reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps at times, that’s
the only way of getting our attention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But one lesson I’ve been trying to learn lately is the art
of keeping my eye on the ball, of letting everything else go to the wind, but
to keep my eye on that one source, that one centre, that one focus of
attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if the “ball” is slippery
and elusive, as it inevitably will be to the comical little legs of my soul, then
to learn a lesson from a little dog, and to keep after it, keep pursuing it, and
never ever stop chasing it down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15:28 Then Jesus
answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even
as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back on Parsons Drive, I looked up from my reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the far end of the street a certain little
dog was tearing into a certain football like there was no tomorrow, while a
certain couple of lads made increasingly desperate but futile attempts to prise
it away from him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There’s no
discouragement,</i>” wrote Bunyan, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shall
make him once relent.</i>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s doubtful
whether the woman of Canaan and the little dog of Parsons Drive were the kind
of “pilgrims” Mr Bunyan had in mind when he penned the words of his well-known
hymn – but there could hardly be a more fitting epitaph for either of them.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-74089958578540348392012-03-31T10:47:00.000-07:002012-03-31T10:47:50.389-07:00Matthew 14 – And the time is now past<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Wikipedia has a good page on “Midlife Crisis”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It talks about the way sufferers tend to “reassess their achievements in terms of their dreams”, and the way they tend to feel “a deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished” (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-life_crisis">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-life_crisis</a>).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes, Wikipedia certainly has a good page on “Midlife Crisis”, but I think I’ve found a better one…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:15 …This is a desert place, and the time is now past…</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Whatever your attitude toward midlife crises, or the theories of modern psychology in general, whether you think it’s all just a load of meaningless psychobabble, or whether you’re too busy trying to find a way out of your own personal “desert place” to worry about what labels some shrink might want to hang on you… whatever your attitude toward midlife crises, I think everyone, whether they’re at the beginning, middle or end of life, knows that feeling of “powerlessness” described in Wikipedia, that feeling of coming to a place where there’s no road back, and no obvious way forward, where so many opportunities have passed you by, and though the dreams remain, you have no power to make them a reality, and no realistic hope that they can ever be achieved.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And in just such a “desert place”, at just such a lateness of hour, the disciples came to Jesus and said…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:15 …the time is now past: send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus’ characteristically impractical, completely unworkable, and totally unrealistic response was simply…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:16 They need not depart: give ye them to eat.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The disciples, exasperated by the toe-curling naivety of the man, and perhaps wanting to rub his nose in the absurdity of what he appeared to be suggesting, plucked out a lad from the crowd (verse 17)…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feed this lot?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must be joking!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With what – this kid’s packed lunch?!</i>”</div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hadn’t there been opportunity enough, in the freshness of morning and the brightness of midday, for the people to “take thought for what they would eat and what they would drink”? (Matthew 6:25).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now the “time was past”, evening was upon them, and here they all were – too late to go back, no way to go forward; plenty of big ideas, but no power to make any of them a reality.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And as the disciples stood there, waving the “loaves and fishes” in his face, Jesus just smiled and said…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:18 …Bring them hither to me.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What the disciples did, might well have been done flippantly, but it seems that for once, they actually managed to do the right thing, the only thing, under the circumstances, they could do – they brought to Jesus what they had.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even God can do nothing with water under the bridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The water that flowed by yesterday is irretrievable, even to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the right thing to do – the only thing to do – is to take your two cupped hands, and plunge them deep into today’s stream – whether it be a torrent or a trickle – then scoop up a good brimming handful of what you have, and bring it to Jesus.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All the disciples had were five loaves and two fishes, but in the hands of Jesus, it became a feast for five thousand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Jesus’ hands, what little we have, is always more than enough.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">-----|-----</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I wake in the traffic on Curzon Street</i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washed up alive on the commuter tide</i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This town is covered in one-way signs</i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I wonder why I’ve never wondered why?</i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(From “Planning Our Escape From Middleton” by I. Same)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you remember the dreams of youth?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you remember what you said about the “rush-hour clones” – the identical commuters, with their identical suits, their identical jobs, their identical mortgages, and their identical 2.4 children?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you remember how you always said that wasn’t the life for you?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There’s a special plan and purpose for everyone,</i>” you said, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a ‘road less travelled’ for everyone to take.</i>”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All you need is the guts and imagination to go out and find it!</i>”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you remember the glorious dreams of youth?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps Peter was young enough to remember those dreams, as he stepped over the side of the boat, and suddenly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ridiculously!</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gloriously!</i> found himself walking on the water to Jesus.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We don’t know how far Peter got before reality started to set in, but somewhere between the end of verse 29 and the beginning of verse 30, it seems the precariousness of his situation came home to roost with a vengeance, and there he was – too late to go back, no way to go forward; plenty of big ideas, but no power to make them a reality.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:30 …when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid: and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What Peter did, might well have been done out of panic and desperation, but it seems that for once,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he actually managed to do the right thing, the only thing, under the circumstances, he could do – he brought to Jesus what he had.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What he had was a classic case of powerlessness in the face of his dreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And though that was all he had to offer, in the hands of Jesus, apparently that was more than enough…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him…</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even God can do nothing about the road we’ve travelled thus far – whether we turned onto it by accident or by design, whether we chose our path or it chose us – water under the bridge is irretrievable even to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the right thing to do – the only thing to do – is to reach out your hand, get a good firm hold on the hand of Jesus, and walk with him down today’s road – whether it be humdrum or “boisterous” – walk with him, and let his presence transform every road into a “road less travelled”, a road of endless possibilities, just waiting to be discovered at the end of every “Curzon Street”.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-9422136312727113212012-02-29T11:52:00.000-08:002012-02-29T11:52:10.244-08:00Matthew 13 – Buried treasure<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">No, you’ve not picked up a copy of everybody’s favourite Robert Louis Stevenson yarn, by mistake.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Believe it or not, Matthew 13 really does appear to be about the unlikely subject of (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yo ho ho, shiver me timbers and X marks the spot!</i>) buried treasure.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This comes out most clearly in verse 44…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">13:44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field…</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But the idea of hidden treasure, of something small and easily overlooked, but bursting with hidden potential, is alluded to again and again throughout the chapter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even the form of teaching employed by Jesus in Matthew 13 – which is jam-packed with parables from start to finish – is in itself a kind of “treasure hunt” for truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For what might appear to be simple, folksy stories on the surface, again and again show themselves to be bursting with the deepest moral and spiritual truths, to anyone with “ears to hear” (verse 9).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not that parables were everyone’s cup of tea, it seems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, some of the disciples apparently felt it necessary to interrupt Jesus’ teaching, right in the middle of his exposition of the Parable of the Sower, right in front of the “great multitudes” hanging on his every word, in order to have a quiet word in his ear about the whole, increasingly frustrating, parable “situation” (verse 10)…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why do you always have to teach the crowds in parables?</i>” they duly inquired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why don’t you just stop beating about the bush, and speak to them in plain Aramaic for once?!</i>”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But how do you express the inexpressible, or describe the indescribable, or unearth that long-sought-after heavenly treasure that even “prophets and righteous men” (verse 17) have never fully grasped?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, in Matthew 13, Jesus began with a “sower” and his seed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And the seed fell to the ground, small and easily overlooked, but bursting with hidden potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the seed was the “word of the kingdom” – the seed was Christ the “Word”, Christ the “express image” of God – hidden in the often shallow, and often thorny, ground of my life (verses 3-9 and 18-23).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And a seed, like all living things, tends to have a habit of growing – buried in the dark, hidden from every eye – a seed will grow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Winter seasons will come, and the seed will lie dormant, till it seems barely a spark of life remains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as the seasons turn, the hope of new life will once again spring eternal; and only as I rise on that first glorious morning of summer, will it truly be revealed what kind of tree I’ve been cultivating in the “secret places” of my heart.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like the “mustard seed” of verse 31 – the “least of all seeds”, but “when it is grown”, the “greatest” of trees with birds singing in its branches.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like the yeast (leaven) of verse 33 – just a couple of handfuls mixed into a batch of dough, but enough to raise a dozen loaves and more.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like the “children of the kingdom” of verse 38, the “righteous” of verse 43, who “shine forth as the sun” in the kingdom of heaven – because of their “good works”? – because of the “works of righteousness which [they] have done”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Titus 2:7, 3:5).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, because of the “good seed” of verse 37, sown by the “Son of man”, which they have nurtured, unseen, in their hearts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Which brings us back in a round about way to our “treasure hid in a field”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus tells us about a man who, on discovering the field’s true value, went off and sold all that he had in order to buy it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Unlike the man, I can never see with my own eyes, or touch with my own hands, the “treasure” of Christ, which I’ve come to believe is “hidden” within me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I, nevertheless, prepared to bank all on that “treasure”, that “one pearl of great price” (verse 46), and give all that I have in order to possess it?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bizarrely, where treasure is concerned, perhaps I have more in common with a certain one-legged rascal named Silver, than the man who bought the field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For, despite all his eyes had never seen, and all his hands had never touched, wasn’t our reckless pirate friend prepared to venture all on a single X, scrawled on a makeshift map?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whilst the man who bought the field did so with the glitter of gold still fresh in his eyes, and the feel of his new-found wealth still fresh on his fingers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">-----|-----</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Isaiah 36, the Assyrian “envoy” came to Jerusalem with a “great army” and a message for King Hezekiah (verses 4, 7 and 14)…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What confidence is this in which you trust?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t tell me you still trust in that God of yours?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He will not be able to deliver you!</i>”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And though I may not be besieged by great armies, there are times when the Assyrian envoy’s words ring just as loudly in my ears, when it feels like the “treasure” on which I’ve banked all, amounts to little more than childish stories, parables, and fairy-tales for dreamers and romantics, who ought to be old enough to know better.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And there I stand with my world-weary scepticism on the one hand, and the stories and parables of Matthew 13 painted like a big red X right across the other – stories that don’t try to argue or persuade, but simply mark out the spot, point out the way, and constantly challenge me to lay aside every doubt and venture <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> in order to obtain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> – “all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So hoist up the mainsail, me hearties!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take one last look at them thar harbour lights, them thar lights of hearth and home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then take a good, long look at this here map, and this here X.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Cause it’s for Treasure Island we be bound this day, boys – for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Treasure Island</i>, I say!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And neither wind nor wave, tide nor tempest, shall stand in our way!</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-52201178396981533872012-01-15T10:51:00.000-08:002012-01-15T10:51:15.074-08:00Matthew 12 – No sign<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">In Matthew 12, certain Scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus asking him to show them a “sign” (verse 38).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps they wanted to see one of his famous trademark miracles with their own eyes – a lame man walking, a blind man seeing, or if they really got lucky, and the rumours of Jairus’ daughter were anything to go by, perhaps even a bona fide raising-from-the-dead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps they had something a little more personal in mind, and they were expecting some kind of supernatural endorsement of their own position of religious authority, right in front of the crowds of “ordinary” people who, let’s face it, need to be reminded who’s boss every now and again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps they had much bigger fish to fry, and were looking for Jesus to “restore again the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6), put the “heathen” in their place, and “command fire to come down from heaven, and consume [the lot of] them [!]” (Luke 9:54).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus’ answer to all such demands for a “sign” was…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">12:39 …An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems the only sign he had to offer them – the only sign he could offer an expectant world – was not liberation from oppression and persecution, an end to corruption and hypocrisy in high places, the eradication of sickness, death and disease…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems the only sign he had to offer was the sign of Jonah (Jonas), the sign of his own exposure to the most brutal oppression and persecution, the sign of his own run-in with corruption and hypocrisy in high places, the sign of his own suffering and death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">-----|-----</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In John 6, the crowds whom Jesus had miraculously fed out of a “lad’s” meagre lunchbox, tracked him down again the next day and asked him (verse 30), “What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus in effect replied (verse 26), “You don’t want a sign, you want a meal ticket!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You have to smile at the totally shameless persistence of them: “We like you Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ve got real potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of us are ready to take you right now and make you king by force if need be (verse 15).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But God gave our ancestors manna to eat in the desert (verse 31), and if you’re really who you claim to be, you need to start putting your money where our mouths are!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You also have to smile at the endlessly longsuffering love of Jesus: “If you people want a meal ticket, I’ll give you a meal ticket!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For I am indeed your meal ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am the true bread of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come to me and eat this bread – my body broken for you – and you will never hunger again (verses 35 and 51), and I will be in you (verses 56-58), and by me you will live forever!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And John tells us that “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (verse 66).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Because it seems the only sign he had to offer them was the sign of Jonah, the sign of his broken body, the sign of his death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">-----|-----</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What sign do I come to Jesus, “seeking after”?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do I want some kind of supernatural endorsement of the work I’ve taken on for him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep down, do I secretly fear that there’s more of ambition than devotion in it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep down, do I fear the only person I’ve ever really served is… myself?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do I hanker after the “signs” of his presence, the peace he gives, the assurance, the confidence?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do I want to see signs of his transforming power in me, making me a better, nicer person, more patient, more kind, more caring, more considerate?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do I find myself standing at the crossroads, looking out on an uncertain and somewhat daunting future, without a road-sign in sight, or a satnav even remotely capable of pointing out the way?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do I come to Jesus “seeking after a sign”, and find that the only sign he has to offer me is the sign of Jonah, the sign of his death?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I’ve been “seeking after a sign” and find that “no sign is given me”, perhaps it’s just that I’ve been looking for all the wrong signs in all the wrong places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the only sign I really need has already been given me, was given me two thousand years ago, on a hill outside Jerusalem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps, as I take the true bread of life, as he becomes one with me, as I become identified with his death, and yet by him live forever, perhaps then my whole life becomes a “sign” – a sign to others, but mostly a sign to myself – a sign of what life could be, of what life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i> be, of how God can take the most meagre of “lunchboxes”, and make it a feast to last for all eternity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">-----|-----</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Psalm 119 seems to say in half a verse more than I could ever hope to articulate with all my “much speaking”…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">119:17 …that I may live, and keep thy word.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">God’s sign to us, is a sign <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> us.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">His sign is that I simply live my life, with all its ups and downs, its triumph and disaster, and live it keeping alongside him, keeping in step with him, keeping true to his life in me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To live, and keep living out the life of Christ, which is in me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To live, keeping in perfect time with his life in me, while he “improvises” something uniquely beautiful around the simple, steady “theme” of my life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps, if I were to truly see a sign like that in my life, then I’d be forced to agree that one sign can indeed be the only sign anyone ever really needs.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-44543670689740118732011-11-30T11:28:00.000-08:002011-11-30T11:55:19.877-08:00Matthew 11 – When the livin’ is easy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">11:30 …my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What I wouldn’t give to be a Russian oil billionaire.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To have so much money, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To have more money than I could ever spend in a dozen lifetimes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I were a Russian oil billionaire, I’d get myself a Premiership football club, a couple of apartments in the Trump Tower, a tropical island paradise or two…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I’d sit back, put my feet up, and settle down to live the life I’ve always dreamed of.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To live a life of luxury.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To live a life of ease.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So why am I not surprised to find that my idea of what constitutes an “easy” life, doesn’t quite tally with God’s take on the subject?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the “rich man” of Luke 12 who said to himself, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry</i>”, God could only say, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thou fool</i>”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And in fact, now that I think of it, the times in my life when the “livin’s” been “easiest”, have had little to do with luxury, or money, or even “taking my ease”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like the time when the kids were kids, and we barrelled through the park, scattering squirrels like tenpins, to get our first look at the sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then at a whim, though the sky was darkening and rain was in air, we all ran to catch the open-top bus, and rode like kings, the top deck all to ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And later that evening, when the kids were finally tucked-up in bed, I sat for a while at the top of the stairs, reading Psalm 103 and listening to the sounds of their untroubled sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">103:2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What I wouldn’t give to be riding on that drizzly, blustery top deck right now.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But those were rare and special moments, and although like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, it might sometimes be hard to drag me away, and I might sometimes embarrass myself by blurting out, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It is good for us to be here!</i>” and I might even suggest getting hold of some tents and try to set up camp right there on the mountaintop… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though I do all that and more, still there always comes a time when Jesus has to lead us back down the mountain, back down to the valley below, where day-to-day life goes on, where people are often “sore vexed” and sometimes “fall into the fire”, and no amount of prayer seems able to prevent it (Matthew 17).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But it’s not on the mountaintop, but right there in the midst of the valley, with all its demands pressing in around him, that I hear Jesus crying…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And I find myself struggling to recognise the Jesus he’s painting a picture of here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this Jesus with the “light and easy yoke”, the same one who had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20), who hadn’t a penny to pay the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27), nor one friend to stick by him when it came to the crunch (Matthew 26:56)?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If this really is the Jesus who finds living so “easy”, so uncomplicated, so simple and effortless, then all my self-help book theories about “life, love and how to be happy” are simply blown out of the water.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here I am, glibly reeling off all the cheap-and-cheerful slogans, telling myself that “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happiness is just about doing what you love, with the people that you love</i>”… and then I find Jesus, totally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">un</i>-loved, “despised and rejected”, practically homeless and penniless, not primarily concerned about happiness, about love, or even about life itself, but making it his one concern, his one raison d’<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">ê</span>tre, to do the will of “the one who sent him” – even if that “will” led ultimately to the cross.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If this is the Jesus who thinks life is so “easy”, a walk in the park, then I think we’ve all got some serious <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">re-</i>thinking to do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So what was Jesus’ secret?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could he be so “untroubled”, when he was constantly surrounded by troubles?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could be so “carefree”, when he carried a world of cares on his shoulders?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, perhaps part of the answer is in that aforementioned “raison d’<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">ê</span>tre” of Jesus, his single-minded determination to do God’s will, and in a sense, to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> God’s will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because only in his “oneness” with the Father, was it possible for Jesus to perfectly carry out the Father’s will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And equally, the Father’s only “will” concerning his Son was that they always be “one”, “I in him, and he in me” (to paraphrase John 10:38).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, in seeking to do God’s will, Jesus had only to concentrate all his energies on maintaining that constant “oneness” with the Father, and through that “oneness” to, in a sense, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">become</i> the will of God, by simply living out his daily life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And suddenly the whole of life boils down to this one profoundly simple formula, this one “needful thing” – to live in constant touch with God; to remain in constant contact with him; to maintain a vital, living “connection” to him; to live in constant “union” with God.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps this is what Jesus had in mind when he talked about “abiding” in the vine (John 15:4).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps this is what he meant when he talked about being “yoked”, the way two oxen might be yoked, as one, together (Matthew 11:29).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But be that as it may, surely the only explanation for Jesus’ claims to a “light and easy” life, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, is that he’d found a way to turn the whole of life – every event, every incident, every act, every deed – into just another means of realising his “oneness” with the Father – a means of expressing the boundless joy and delight of that “oneness”, the overflowing love, the unshakable strength of that “oneness” – whether eating, sleeping, walking, talking, or washing the disciples’ feet, every moment was just as “rare and special” as that all-too-brief interlude on the mountaintop, because every moment was suffused with the same divine presence, and anchored by the same unbreakable bond.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But perhaps the most startling thing about the closing verses of Matthew 11 is not that Jesus seemed to think “livin’” was “easy”, but the fact that he turns to us – to you, to me – and says, “Come and take my yoke upon you, and see for yourself how easy life can be!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus invites us all to be “yoked” together with him – through him, to be anchored by that same unbreakable bond with the Father; the bond that turns every moment – every wearisome task, every onerous duty – into an experience as “rare and special”, as ripe with possibilities, as any interlude on the mountaintop, or any fondly-remembered ride on a certain open-top bus.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-47807718722537890362011-10-26T11:17:00.000-07:002011-10-26T11:17:57.152-07:00Matthew 10 – The universal equation<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Before a big fat hairy caterpillar can fulfil its unlikely destiny, and take to the air on beautiful, reckless wings of little more than coloured tissue paper, it must first undergo a radical and terrifying metamorphosis.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Before a caterpillar can take to the air, it must first take to the grave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must first build its own burial chamber; it must cocoon itself within.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must first undergo a kind of death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And “in that sleep of death what dreams may come”? (Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 1)</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What dreams of flesh melting like wax… flowing… coalescing… reforming… according to some new and unknown design?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What dreams of “identity”, of “personality” and its every possession, evaporating like water – viewpoints… priorities… motivations… concerns… and every familiar way of thinking, slowly ebbing away and being supplanted by something frighteningly new and disturbingly alien?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But when those exquisitely patterned wings finally open and catch their first summer breeze, does the butterfly even remember that it once crawled in the murky shadows far, far below?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Matthew 10, we find the very first mention in the New Testament, of the cross.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">10:38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And I guess it’s true to say that no-one “follows after” Jesus for very long without the spectre of death rearing its ugly head at some point along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I guess it’s true to say that death, every bit as much as life, or birth, is at the very centre of the Christian message.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The man who said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), also said…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 10:39)</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s the “elephant” in the room that no-one likes to talk about.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But death casts such a long shadow, and we live under it, from the moment we take our first breath, to the moment we breathe our last (Matthew 4:16).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Death is a visit to the vet’s at age seventeen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The needle entering just above the paw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her body relaxing ever so slightly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking in her eyes, and they looked just the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could that be!?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They talk about the light going out of your eyes, don’t they?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But her eyes looked just the same.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Death is struggling to read the small print at age forty-seven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same eyes look back at me from the shaving mirror, but how did they get to be in my father’s face!?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Christians talk readily enough about the “new birth”, about being “born again”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But birth is only one half of the universal equation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before the new life can begin, the old one has to come to an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before there can be a rebirth, there must first be a “passing away” (2 Corinthians 5:17).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Remember, the man who said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7), also said…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Unless a seed falls into the ground and “dies”, it will always be nothing more than a seed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus was clearly referring to his own imminent death, but I believe he was also taking about you, and me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A caterpillar carries deep within its genetic makeup, the potential to become a butterfly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep within the caterpillar-life, there is another life-principle just waiting for the opportunity to manifest itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that butterfly-life can never be realised, unless the caterpillar-life first makes way for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will never be a fluttering of butterfly-wings, until that hopelessly earth-bound caterpillar “falls into the ground and dies”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By the same token, deep within you and me is the potential to become something radically – perhaps even frighteningly – different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That potential is not locked up in our genetic code, but entered our hopelessly earth-bound lives from the outside, at Bethlehem, and at Calvary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep within this “mortal flesh”, has been planted another life-principle – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christ</i>-life: the very essence of God himself – just waiting for the opportunity to “manifest” itself (2 Corinthians 4:11).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But that Christ-life can never be realised, unless this human-life first makes way for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will never be a golden head of wheat swaying in the breeze, until that shrivelled brown seed “falls into the ground and dies”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For a Christian, death is not a one-time deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Death is not a one-off, and hopefully far-distant, future event.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Death is not an end, but a process.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Referring to the way that he literally lived in constant danger of his life, Paul said, “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in a sense, as Christians, we too must learn to die daily, and to daily be reborn.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To die daily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To die hourly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To die continually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moment by moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this very moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you read.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in that death, to be reborn.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To die to every viewpoint and priority, every motivation and concern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To die to “personality” and its every possession.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, when all seems lost, to see that “personality” miraculously take to the air, resurrected, renewed, transformed, set free, to be what at heart it was always meant to be.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And when this human-life finally steps aside, and the resurrection-life of Christ lifts me up to “heavenly places” in him (Ephesians 2:6), does that “new creature” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) even remember that it once crawled in the murky shadows far, far below?</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-80195326773769364202011-09-19T03:27:00.000-07:002011-09-19T03:27:05.076-07:00Matthew 9 – They that be whole need not<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Imagine you were God.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And you’d come to earth to set up your kingdom.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And you were looking for the right people to help you run it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I wonder… who would you pick?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps you’d draw up a list of the qualities you’d hope to find in the ideal candidate:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal">Must be religious (non-churchgoers need not apply)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Must be an acknowledged spiritual leader, pastor and teacher</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Must be devout and pious, a man/woman of prayer</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Must be a well-respected, upstanding, pillar of the community, active in local charities and voluntary organisations</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Must give at least, say, 10% of income to the church</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Must be a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-fornicating, perfect family man/woman</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Imagine you lived in first century, Roman-occupied Palestine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You could’ve probably done a whole lot worse than to select a few interviewees from a certain religious sect, mentioned thirty times in the book of Matthew (on average about once a chapter!), and right there in the thick of it as usual in Matthew chapter 9.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Pharisees.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Devout; religious; holding to the highest moral standards; popular with the people; exemplifying everything upright and decent, respectable and godly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Pharisees were basically a “shoo-in” for the top job, and they knew it.<span> </span>And it’s quite obvious from their remarks in Matthew 9:11 that they’d already picked-out wallpaper for their new executive offices up on the top floor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>“Here comes the big announcement, guys.<span> </span>Remember, just act casual, and try to look surprised.<span> </span>Wait a minute, why is he going over to those publicans and sinners!?”</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Imagine their surprise then, when the Chief Executive himself started to call out the names, and amongst them were:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal">A paraplegic (Matthew 9:2)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">A social and religious outcast, excommunicated from the synagogue (Matthew 9:9)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">A corpse (Matthew 9:18)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">An “unclean” woman, “polluting” everyone she came into contact with (Matthew 9:20)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Two blind men (Matthew 9:27)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">And a demon-possessed mute (Matthew 9:32)</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And much to the chagrin of the Pharisees, the only qualifications God seemed to be interested in were:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Sickness</b> – <i>They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick</i> (Matthew 9:12)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><b>Sin</b> – <i>I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners</i> (Matthew 9:13)</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And that desperate, last-ditch, reaching-out-and-clinging-onto-something that Jesus called…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Faith </b>– <i>Be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole</i> (Matthew 9:22)</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Faith?</i><span> </span>Sure.<span> </span>Must be a man/woman of faith.<span> </span>That would be on anyone’s tick-list.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, <i>sin?</i><span> </span>You’re having a laugh!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And, <i>sickness?</i><span> </span>How on earth can sickness qualify anyone for anything!?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sickness is an aberration, a malfunction, a wrong state of being.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some people say that the presence of sickness and disease in the world proves that there is no God.<span> </span>At the other end of the spectrum, some people say that sickness is of the Devil, and it’s not God’s will for anyone to be sick.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If they were still here today, maybe that’s what the Pharisees would say.<span> </span>Certainly, that’s what some of Jesus’ disciples seemed to be saying, when they asked him whose sins were to blame for a man’s lifelong blindness (John 9:2).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus’ terse response to all such thinking is simply, “Only the sick man has need of a doctor.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it’s also true to say that only the sick man is aware of the “wrongness” of his situation, of the “wrongness” at the very heart of the human condition.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When a chronic depressive turns back the sheets on a bright new day, and the morning lies before him like an unbearable weight, he doesn’t need anyone to tell him that something’s not quite right with the world.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And as paradoxical as it may seem, that sense of “wrongness”, that sense of “need”, is the only true gateway to God, and the ultimate “rightness” of perfect “oneness” with him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus said, “<i>It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God</i>” (Matthew 19:24).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And for a man who possesses all of life’s riches, in health, wealth, talent and temperament, position and popularity, how difficult it is to see more than two feet beyond those dazzling, all-consuming blessings, which unfortunately, like the proverbial “all good things”, must one day come to an end.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">How perverse is human nature, when the more blessed we are, the more difficult it becomes to see the wood for the trees – to see the one, true blessing, which lies at the root of all blessings – the blessing of possessing God himself, and with him, all things.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">How difficult it is for the little “Pharisee” in me, with all his comfortable respectability, his cold religiosity, his all-important social standing, to reach out, as the woman of Matthew 9:20 reached out – to reach out with nothing to lose, nothing to offer, nothing more to give – to reach out with hands that were empty enough to take hold of what so many in the crowd were too “heavy laden” to carry – to reach out “having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 6:10).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In one of Aesop’s fables, the North Wind and the Sun had a competition to decide which of them was the strongest.<span> </span>They agreed that whoever first succeeded in making a passing traveller take off his cloak would be declared the winner.<span> </span>The more the North Wind blew, the more the traveller wrapped his cloak around him, the more tightly he clutched it to his chest.<span> </span>Only in the warming rays of the Sun did the traveller finally relax his grip, and let the now-superfluous cloak fall from his shoulders.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sickness.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It can bend you. <span> </span>It can twist you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It can crush you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But how perverse is human nature – in the warm sunshine of blessing, God so easily becomes “superfluous”, an unnecessary burden, just an extra weight to be carried on the road; whilst in the howling gale of sickness, the stricken traveller needs no encouragement to reach out for something – <i>anything</i> – to shield him from the blast; he needs no encouragement to reach for that once-burdensome “cloak”, to wrap it firmly around his shoulders, to clutch it tightly to his chest, to cling onto it with all his might.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps Paul said it best.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><i>Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me</i></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"> (2 Corinthians 12:9).</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-78106600209638597462011-08-03T12:39:00.000-07:002011-08-03T12:39:06.987-07:00Matthew 8 – Pressed on every side<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Do you know how it feels to be pressed on every side?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Paul certainly did (see 2 Corinthians 1:8 and 4:8).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so did Jesus.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At the beginning of Matthew 8, we find him mobbed by “great multitudes”; but it’s perhaps informative that although crowds of people pressed him on every side, the only one to really “touch” him was a solitary leper, crying out from a socially-acceptable distance, well beyond the edge of the throng.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In verse 5, we find Jesus retreating to Capernaum, and seeking brief respite from his public ministry in the privacy of Peter’s home…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But en route: a centurion, “beseeching him”…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Awaiting him at the house: Peter’s mother-in-law, lying “sick of a fever”…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And by evening, word of his whereabouts begins to reach the crowds; and again they come.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And again, upon himself, he “takes their infirmities” and “bares their sicknesses” (verse 17)…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And again, he is forced to move on.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As Jesus prepares to board a boat bound for the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, an earnest young scribe comes breathlessly pledging to follow him anywhere – to the ends of the earth if need be!<span> </span>And is that a trace of irony in Jesus’ response, or am I perhaps just projecting my own feelings onto him?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>“Follow me anywhere, would you?<span> </span>And yet, truly, I alone, in all of creation, have nowhere I can go.<span> </span>Truly, I alone have nowhere to lay my head.”</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, in verse 24 we find him huddled in the bottom of the boat, and sleeping the sleep of the bone-weary.<span> </span>Did he know what awaited him on the other shore, I wonder? – Pigs, and tombs, and demons, and indignant locals, requesting him to kindly stay away.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, as though even nature itself was determined not to give the poor guy a break, as though even God himself was against him…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>8:24 …behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves…</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you know how it feels to be pressed on every side?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jesus certainly did.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And the question that always seems to spring so readily to mind is… <i>why</i>?<span> </span>I don’t ask God for any special favours, or any special treatment, but if he can’t bring himself to help me, couldn’t he at least stop putting extra obstacles in my way!?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Why</i>?<span> </span>It’s hard to find an answer when you’re hunkered down in the bottom of your boat.<span> </span>But the answer Paul found is recorded in his second letter to the Corinthians…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>1:8 For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>1:9 But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Humanly, Jesus was utterly spent, “poured out like water” (Psalm 22:14), exhausted enough to sleep through a howling gale, and then barely bat an eyelid as the waves crashed over the sides of the ship and the cold seawater sloshed all around his soggy, makeshift bed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But it wasn’t human frailty that “arose” from the bottom of the boat.<span> </span>It wasn’t human weakness that “rebuked” the winds and the sea.<span> </span>It was impossible for the incessant turmoil of human life to bring forth such a “great calm” (Matthew 8:26).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Jesus was something “un-crushable”, inexhaustible, indomitable.<span> </span>Beyond and above his frail human flesh was something rock-solid and unshakable.<span> </span>As though his humanity was just the tip of a gigantic iceberg, the visible pinnacle of a towering mountain of divine strength.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Do you know how it feels to be pressed on every side?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Christ, you are a “partaker” of the same “divine nature” that dwelt within him (2 Peter 1:4).<span> </span>Perhaps, as Paul says, it’s time to stop trusting in yourself; perhaps it’s time to let those things that press, press through the brittle crust of your humanity, so that you can start plumbing the unfathomable depths of God – those hidden depths of divine “life, and health, and peace”, which were there all along, did you but know it, lying just beneath the surface.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-12219615054536352402011-07-08T11:19:00.000-07:002011-07-08T11:19:20.818-07:00Matthew 7 – Beached<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hello there!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My name’s Sandy Broad, and I’m here today to tell you about Broadway Bay Developments – the place where you can live like a star, right here on the beach – the place where you can build your own little piece of heaven, right here on the beautiful, golden sand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, listen folks, I don’t expect you to just take my word for it – that’s why I’ve invited a few friends along to help me paint you a picture of what life’s really like here at Broadway Bay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, first of all, please put your hands together and let’s give a big Broadway Bay welcome to, Mr David Soulful...<span> </span>Come on up here, Davie!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, when David came to Broadway Bay back in the summer of ’69, little did he know that he was about to begin a kind of journey – a spiritual journey of self-discovery that would change the course of his life forever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You see, in my humble opinion, David is one of our nation’s most gifted singer-songwriters, and when he first came to Broadway Bay, well in a way, it was like coming home to a place he’d never been before.<span> </span>For the first time, out at Introspection Point, Davie found a place where he could truly explore his innermost feelings, his most deeply-felt emotions – a place where he could, in his own words, “sing the slowly turning pain of this poor heart of mine”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So at Introspection Point, we built Davie a house – and much more than a house.<span> </span>Because, in truth, the house was just a focal point, a fulcrum, around which David could build his whole life – a channel, through which David could pour out his whole life in poetry and song.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And speaking of which… we do have a few copies of David’s new album, My Poor Sad Sweet Self, which you’ll be able to purchase at the back of the hall, right after this presentation.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So let’s hear it one more time folks, for Mr David Soulful!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to another good friend of mine... Mr J. B. Walton <i>aaaaaaaaand</i> family!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Come on up here, JB!<span> </span>Come on up here, Mrs W!<span> </span>Come on up here, kids!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m sure JB won’t mind me telling you that he had the most miserable childhood you could ever imagine – the only child of an only child – no-one knows how many long, lonely nights he spent sitting in front of a TV set, dreaming of the idyllic family life he saw portrayed there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But here at Broadway Bay, we’re in the business of making dreams come true.<span> </span>And JB will tell you, that’s exactly what we did for him all those years ago, when we moved JB, and his lovely new wife Loretta, into one of the wonderful family homes, in the wonderful family neighbourhood, of Scant Comfort Cove.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I tell you, we must be doing something right, because Loretta’s expecting number nine in the fall, and their eldest, JB Junior, is hoping to make JB a granddaddy, just in time for Christmas!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And you know folks, when I asked JB what the best thing is about family life here in Broadway Bay, do you know what he told me?<span> </span>He told me, “Sandy, you’ve heard it said that when a father dies, he lives on in his children?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, he just put one of those great big hands of his on my shoulder, and with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Well, Sandy, I intend to live on an awful looong time!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That’s right!<span> </span>Give it up folks, for the Walton family!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All right now.<span> </span>There’s just one more guest I’d like you all to meet – a very special guest, and a very special friend… please welcome with me, the Reverend Slim Veneer!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Come on up here, Rev!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I guess there’s not a man, woman or child who’s not heard of the Free Assemblies of Broadway Bay, the Reverend’s flourishing church, which we locals like to simply and affectionately call, the FABB Fellowship.<span> </span>The Rev tells me that he’s now laying-on up to five back-to-back services every Sunday, just to accommodate his ever-growing congregation!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But what not everyone may be aware of is that just a few short years ago, FABB was anything but “fabulous”.<span> </span>For instance, when Rev Veneer first arrived at Broadway Bay, the entire congregation of the FABB Fellowship would have easily fitted into the Ping-Pong room of today’s church!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Rev was simply appalled by the lack of purpose, drive and ambition he found amongst god’s own people – people who were seemingly content to worship in a building that, for all intents and purposes, had scarcely changed since their great-grandfathers worshipped there!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, within just eighteen months of the Rev’s arrival, the old church had been demolished, and the foundations were already being laid for the gigantic church mega-plex you see today, with its twenty-five thousand seat auditorium, its giant fifty-foot TV screen (which ensures folks at the back don’t miss any of the platform-action!), its cafes, its conference suites, its fully-equipped gym, sauna and health spa – not to mention the mini-mall and twelve-lane bowling alley the Rev recently submitted plans for!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But I guess, for me, what exemplifies Reverend Veneer, and the whole FABB project, is that they’ve taken what to many is just a prayer, and turned it into a statement of intent.<span> </span>Because at FABB, it’s not just, “Thy kingdom come” – sometime, anytime, never; it’s, “Together, we can build it!” – a kingdom of decency, prosperity, and good old-fashioned neighbourliness, right here in Broadway Bay!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So let’s just thank the Reverend for his incredibly precious time, folks; and if there are any questions, I’d be pleased to take one or two right now…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes, thank you – the gentleman in the garish spotted tie.<span> </span>Do you have a question, sir?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Yes.<span> </span>Delvin Debree of the Bay Chronicle.<span> </span>Isn’t it true, Mr Broad, that there’s been something of an exodus from Broadway Bay in recent weeks – bay residents just upping sticks and joining the small, ramshackle communities that’ve grown-up on the slopes of Narroway Ridge?</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well now, Mr… Debree, is it?<span> </span>I don’t know where you people get your information from, but I do believe that if you check your sources you’ll find that the only people who’ve left Broadway Bay recently are the kind of people that, quite frankly, we’re not too sorry to see the back of!<span> </span>And if a bunch of bums, winos, and floozies want to drag their pitiful hides up that narrow, death-trap of a road, and set-up house on that God-forsaken rock… well, I don’t think too many people will be shedding a tear down here, on the beautiful beaches of Broadway Bay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Narroway Ridge!?<span> </span>What kind of a place is that to raise a family?<span> </span>My God, it doesn’t even have a sea-view!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Narroway Ridge!?<span> </span>I’ll tell you something about Narroway Ridge: I was up there hunting deer a few weeks ago, and do you know what the road-sign says?<span> </span>Well, I’ll tell you what it says: it says…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Welcome to</b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>NARROWAY RIDGE</b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Population</b>:<span> </span><i>“Few there be”</i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>In Friendship With</b>:<span> </span><i>“The poor in spirit”</i></div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-87196097140310965972011-05-29T02:15:00.000-07:002011-05-29T02:15:16.397-07:00Matthew 6 – A thoughtless way of life<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">“Take no thought for your life,” says Jesus.<span> </span>“The birds don’t save for a rainy day, they don’t have pension schemes or life insurance policies, but still God feeds them – and if he feeds the birds, don’t you think he’ll feed you?” (Matthew 6:26).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Take no thought for your life,” says Jesus.<span> </span>“The dandelions don’t arrange overdrafts or run up credit card bills, but just look at them!” he laughs.<span> </span>“Doesn’t God clothe them in the season’s brightest, brashest fashions?<span> </span>And if he so handsomely clothes the weeds in your lawn, don’t you think he’ll clothe you?” (Matthew 6:28-30).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These verses from Matthew 6 (even in their horrendously paraphrased forms!) have always struck a chord with me.<span> </span>They are words to the worrier; words to the anxious; words to the restless; words to the insecure – and maybe that in itself speaks volumes about me!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, be that as it may, there’s no denying the power these words have to comfort and reassure those “thorny ground” types like me, who so often let the cares of life, and the deceitfulness of prosperity, choke them like thorns (Matthew 13:22).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So why then do I suddenly find myself casting a sceptical eye over Jesus’ exhortation to “take no thought” for my life?<span> </span>Where are the comfort and reassurance I expect to find there?<span> </span>Why do his words suddenly strike such a hollow note with me?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it’s just that I’m in danger of turning, somewhat prematurely, into a grumpy, world-weary, old man!<span> </span>Perhaps it’s just that I’ve seen, a few too many times, the way bad stuff happens to good people – to people that I love.<span> </span>And, whether I like it or not, experience tells me that God doesn’t always “feed” and “clothe” us – he doesn’t always write a blank cheque to cover all our material needs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“If God feeds the birds,” says Jesus, “don’t you think he’ll feed you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But just the other day, I opened my front door and found the remains of a young blackbird, delivered directly to my doorstep, by the neighbourhood’s ever-efficient <i>feline</i> courier service.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“If God clothes the weeds,” says Jesus, “don’t you think he’ll clothe you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But just the other day, I heard reports that wildfires across Scotland, triggered by the unseasonably dry weather, had destroyed acres of ancient Caledonian pine forest, and dozens of irreplaceable bird nesting sites.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Needless to say, birds, at times, do go hungry – and even those irritatingly resilient dandelions in my lawn, that mock all my best efforts to defeat them, have started to droop a little lately for want of a drop of rain!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, like it or not, the harsh reality is that God doesn’t always “feed” and “clothe” the birds and the beasts – nor does he always “feed” and “clothe” us.<span> </span>Even Paul, who had the kind of intimacy with God I could only dream of, at times went hungry and without decent clothing...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace. (1 Corinthians 4:11)</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why this should be is a question for far wiser men than me.<span> </span>Why there is hunger, and disease, and pain, and suffering in the world is an age-old question best left for philosophers and theologians to ponder, and endlessly debate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What’s more, I know I’d be doing Jesus a great disservice if I were to imply that he was either ignorant or indifferent to the reality of human suffering – or even <i>animal</i> suffering for that matter.<span> </span>After all, in Matthew 10:29, didn’t he say that not one sparrow, falling to the ground, is beneath God’s attention?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And, now that I think about it, if we did live in a world without tears, and troubles, and tragedy, what would be the point of telling us to “take no thought” for our lives?!<span> </span>The fact is, in a world like that, in a world of guaranteed health and wealth and happiness, no-one <i>would</i> be giving their “lives”, their welfare, their security, a second thought.<span> </span>In a way, far from detracting from Jesus’ message, the very presence of suffering in the world is actually what gives his message its meaning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So just what exactly <i>was</i> Jesus getting at then, when he implored us – not once, not twice, but three times, in the space of just a few verses –to “take no thought” for our lives (Matthew 6:25, 31 and 34)?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, because life is so fragile, so fickle, so full of uncertainty, no wonder people are always “taking thought” for tomorrow, obsessing about the future, crossing bridges before they come to them, and looking for storms in every teacup; no wonder people can become so easily fixated on anything, and everything, that gives them even the vaguest sense of control over what will always be, for the most part, “uncontrollable”.<span> </span>I guess, in the end, what we’re all looking for is a little “solidity”, a little “permanence” – just one little corner of our lives that we can rely on and call our own.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But what I might call taking a natural interest in my future happiness and my long-term security, Jesus simply calls laying up for yourself treasure on earth – and where “treasure” is concerned, “earth” will only ever be one thing: a place “where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal” (Matthew 6:19).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And this, I’m afraid, is the crux of the matter: every thought we “take” for our lives is a thought that is squandered on something that never can be, and was never intended to be, anything other than “temporary”, “transitory”, and oh so terribly brief.<span> </span>If this is indeed our “treasure”, then we really are “of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But there is another kind of treasure, hidden within the crumbling “earthen vessel” (2 Corinthians 4:7) of our lives: God himself – his very life, his very essence – “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away” (1 Peter 1:4) – the very life of God, “made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11).<span> </span>This is the “pearl of great price”; this is the treasure worth selling all to possess (Matthew 13:46).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So when Jesus said “take no thought for your life”, he said it with his eyes wide open; he said it looking life, with all its indiscriminate suffering and crippling anxiety, full in the face; he said it with eyes that saw, even in the most tragic circumstances, and the most unbearable situations, a hidden “treasure”, untarnished and untouched, by all that life could throw at him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">God grant us all the grace to lead such a “thoughtless” way of life, and walk like Jesus, calm and collected, upon these constantly churning waters of our lives.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-50095553293700334872011-04-21T08:36:00.000-07:002011-04-26T12:50:29.970-07:00Matthew 5 – My left cheek<m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent> </m:defjc></m:rmargin></m:lmargin></m:dispdef></m:smallfrac><br />
<blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s hardly the first time I’ve read these words of Jesus. So what is it about them that I still find so... “jarring”? Why is it that, as I read these words, it really does feel a bit like getting a metaphorical slap in the face?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I suppose it’s partly because they turn commonsense, and my entire world-view, completely upside-down. In fact, throughout the whole chapter, Jesus seems determined to overturn everything I thought I knew about life – just like he literally “overturned” the lives of a certain bunch of “moneychangers” in Matthew 21.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“If someone hits you with a left,” says Jesus. “Drop your guard, and give him a shot at the other cheek!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“If that big bully hits you again,” says Mum. “You jolly well hit him back, and you can bet he won’t be quite so eager to pick on you again!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why should I listen to Jesus, when Mum told me to do the exact opposite of what he says? Why shouldn’t I listen to Mum, when what she told me to do turned out to be absolutely one hundred percent correct? (That big bully never ever bothered me again!)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Turn the other cheek? You must be joking! Why should I?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, for one reason, that’s what God would do...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>5:45 He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But whichever way you look at it, “sending rain” from a nice safe distance is a whole lot different to an up-close-and-personal slap in the face. With all due respect, what does God know about life on the street?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then I read Matthew 26. And I realise that God knows more about turning the other cheek than I’ll ever know...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>26:67 Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But a small, pig-headed part of me still tries to argue that this is a special case, and it simply doesn’t apply to me. Jesus was the one-and-only Son of God, with a special and unique work to do. It was all very well for him to go like a lamb to the slaughter, but in the real world, it’s just not realistic, it’s just not reasonable, to expect ordinary people to live like that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ordinary people have to live in the world as it is, not as we’d all like it to be. Turning the other cheek is fine as an “ideal” – a beautiful, but totally impractical, moral standard – but the inconvenient truth is that people will walk all over you, if you let them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If you don’t stick up for yourself, then who on earth do you think will!?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, just when I’m actually beginning to convince myself, I have to go and spoil it by noticing something about that last sentence – something that forces me to reconsider my whole position, and take another look at what Jesus has been trying to tell me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Because at the middle of that sentence is the word... “self”. It’s a word that’s also found in Matthew 16...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now there’s an “inconvenient” truth, if ever I’ve heard one! Because the truth is, if I want to “come after” Jesus, and through him enter into union with the life of God, my own life, my own “self”, must be repeatedly “denied”, and in a sense, continually put to death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Whenever “self” is in the ascendency, the “life-of-God-in-me” has to take a back seat. Whenever I am self-absorbed, self-assertive, self-assured, self-concerned, self-confident, self-conscious, self-content... there’s just simply “no room at the inn” for the life of God in me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So when Jesus says things like, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3) and then goes on to say, “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23) he’s not just referring to material wealth, but to the riches of a self-sufficient soul that has, within itself, everything it could possibly need to live a full and prosperous life – everything that is, but the one “needful thing” – the true riches of life-eternal dwelling within.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Which, in a round about way, brings me back to the prickly subject of turning the other cheek...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, before we go any further, I probably ought to confess that I’ve not actually been punched in the mouth, or even slapped in the face, since I said goodbye to the so-called “play”-ground of Queen Elizabeth’s School for Boys, a long, long time ago. But over the years I’ve discovered that grown-ups have their own ways of slapping you down, without even having to lift a finger.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And when you do find yourself on the receiving-end of a barbed comment, or a humiliating remark – when you’re given the cold shoulder, or deftly stabbed in the back – usually the first thing to be hurt is your pride. And, if you’re anything like me, your pride will usually have plenty to say about it...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>How dare they treat me like that? – It’s about time I got a bit of respect around here! No, I’m not perfect, but I shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of treatment – and I’ll be damned if I’m going to take it lying down this time! Just who do they think they are? – That’s what I’d like to know! Who on earth gave them the right to treat me like that?</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And already the damage has been done – long before pride turns into indignation, and indignation turns into anger, and anger turns into retaliation. No wonder Oswald Chambers called pride, “the deification of self” (go back and count the number of times you’ve just read the words “I” and “me” if you’ve any doubts on that score!) And wherever self is at the centre, wherever self is exalted, wherever self is made “god”, God’s life in me is quenched, and choked, and slowly but surely expires.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so there’s a choice to be made. When I’m the lucky recipient of a good old-fashioned slap in the face – in the literal sense, or in that slightly more sophisticated, but no less painful, “grown-up” manner – I can either do what comes naturally, do what anyone in my position would do, do what I’ve every right to do, do what Mum told me to do, and jolly well stand up for myself – or I can waive my own rights, disregard my own desires, deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Jesus.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I choose the former, I can walk away with my pride intact and my head held high, but the life of God within will almost certainly be weakened and diminished in the process. If I choose the latter, if I am prepared to lose face, turn the other cheek, and in a sense die to myself, then I will almost certainly find that the flip side of “dying to self” is “living to God”.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-30031704831769757562011-03-20T12:52:00.000-07:002011-03-20T12:52:05.620-07:00Matthew 4 – Sitting in darkness<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I knew such a man,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:3.<span> </span>And I knew a man like that too.<span> </span>A man who “sat in darkness”.<span> </span>A man who spent most of his waking hours sitting in darkness, and all of his sleeping hours lying in the same.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let’s call him Roy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Before sunrise, Roy sat in traffic for 35 minutes during his daily commute to the office.<span> </span>On arriving, Roy went quickly to his cubicle, switched on his computer, and sat at his desk for 3 hours 55 minutes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At 12:30, Roy broke for a 30 minute lunch (of cheese and pickle sandwiches) which he took sitting at his desk.<span> </span>After lunch, Roy sat at his desk for a further 3 hours 55 minutes, before finally sitting in traffic for 35 minutes more during his daily commute back home in the dwindling daylight.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And if you’re wondering what Roy did in the only 10 minutes of his 8 hour working day that appear to be unaccounted for, let’s just say he probably spent at least part of it sitting in the office men’s room.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There were windows in Roy’s office, but by strict order of management, the blinds were to stay permanently shut.<span> </span>At the end of the day, it all comes down to basic health and safety.<span> </span>You’ve probably not seen what the sun can do to an unprotected monitor screen – the glare is simply murder on your eyes!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So the view from Roy’s seat, over the rim of his cubicle’s partitioning walls, was of an emergency exit sign (consisting of a picture of a running man, a green arrow and an open door), and the office clock (which always ran five minutes slow – for some reason).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The office’s fluorescent lights were always on the blink – quite literally.<span> </span>Maybe you’ve not seen what a fluorescent tube does when it’s about to fail – the way it starts to flicker, to flash, to blink – it can drive you nuts!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Roy was the most patient of men, but even he had his limits.<span> </span>And a blinking tube above his cubicle was where he drew the line!<span> </span>Roy was not the most daring of men, but a “faulty fluorescent” was enough to get him balancing precariously, on one leg, high above his desk, reaching on tiptoes for the offending tube.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so tubes were frequently removed, but although the proper paperwork was always diligently submitted, in triplicate, to Admin, tubes were rarely, if ever, replaced.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And slowly but surely, year by year, the office grew darker and darker.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And twenty years passed by, like a half-remembered dream.<span> </span>And the darkness, slowly but surely, year by year, resolved itself into the inexorably approaching “shadow of death” – and the deeper, darker shadow of a life unlived.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, one bleak and starless night, Roy had a dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In his dream, he was surrounded by total darkness.<span> </span>He felt himself to be sitting cross-legged on a smooth, hard surface of some kind – but it’s difficult to be sure of anything when it’s too dark to see your own hand in front of your face!<span> </span>He felt as though he’d been sitting there forever – but in the dark, a minute could be an hour, and an hour could be a lifetime.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, suddenly, a pin-prick of light.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And the pin-prick grew – slowly at first, then faster and faster, growing brighter and brighter, till his whole world seemed to be filled with overwhelming, all-consuming light.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Roy screwed his eyes shut, in a futile attempt to block out the light, to bring back the darkness.<span> </span>And then, just when he thought he could stand it no more...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As suddenly as it had come, the light was gone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Swirls and splashes of colour popped like bubbles in front of Roy’s eyes, as his overloaded retinas vainly struggled to keep up.<span> </span>Then, Roy noticed that one particular formless mass of mauve splodges was no longer quite so formless anymore.<span> </span>Even as he watched, the splodges were merging, coalescing, taking on the form of...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Words...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing is wasted</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing is lost</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing falls by the wayside</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>If it is bound up in me</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing is pointless</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing is meaningless</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Nothing is worthless</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>If it is bound up in me</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Everything that is bound up in me is</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Eternally significant</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Inconceivably important</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Unimaginably precious</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Live</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And move</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And have your being</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>In me</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And every empty moment</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Every fruitless action</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Will be ripe with value</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And purpose</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Walk</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>In the light</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>As I am</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>In the light</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And every dull grey moment</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Every obscure action</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Will be just another means</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Of stepping into the light</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The first light of morning found Roy sitting in traffic.<span> </span>He sat at the wheel for 35 minutes till the commuter tide washed him up at the office.<span> </span>Then he sat at his desk for a further 3 hours 55 minutes, before breaking for a 30 minute lunch, which he took sitting at his desk.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was just another day at the office.<span> </span>Just like thousands before it, and thousands more to come.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And yet, if you happened to look very closely, you couldn’t help but notice an odd quivering of Roy’s lips.<span> </span>And, what’s more, if you happened to have any sort of talent for reading lips, you couldn’t help but notice that he was muttering something, softly, under his breath, over and over again...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Make it a means.<span> </span>Make it a means. <span> </span>Make it a means...</i></div></blockquote>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-87794776263198806912011-02-27T02:37:00.000-08:002011-02-27T02:37:00.151-08:00Matthew 3 – Opening heaven<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I first read these closing verses of Matthew 3, I was going to write about the Trinity; I was going to point out that although the Trinity is never explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, it is implicit in a number of passages, and this is one of the first examples; I was going to pick out the references to “Son” and “Spirit”, and the implied reference to Father (“a voice from heaven”); I was even going to try and draw a neat analogy between the concept of the Trinity and the atomic theory of the structure of matter...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, while I was still mulling it all over, I had to pick up my son from cricket training.<span> </span>It was just after 5, and the light was already beginning to fade.<span> </span>It had been a long day, and a longer week.<span> </span>And, as I jumped into the car and shoved a CD into the slot, my mood was as grey and gloomy as the dusky February sky.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But somewhere during the short half-hour journey – maybe at the point where the narrow, winding B-roads opened out, and the lights of the city appeared just beyond the next rise, and the music swelled in sympathy – my mood took a little turn for the better.<span> </span>And a little, overlooked, phrase from verse 16 took root in my mind...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And, lo, the heavens were opened unto him.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So if you are interested in knowing that the word "atom" comes from the ancient Greek adjective <i>atomos</i>, “indivisible”, and you want to draw your own parallels between “The LORD our God is one LORD”, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the "indivisible atom" (which actually turned out to be composed of various subatomic particles), then here are a few links you might like to check-out:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_theory">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_theory</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.particleadventure.org/4interactions.html">http://www.particleadventure.org/4interactions.html</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/physics/atom/atom2.html">http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/physics/atom/atom2.html</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://physicsnet.co.uk/a-level-physics-as-a2/particles-radiation/particle-interactions/">http://physicsnet.co.uk/a-level-physics-as-a2/particles-radiation/particle-interactions/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But if, on the other hand, this all smacks to you of pointless academic speculation... well stick with me, and let’s turn our attention to more practical matters, because if the Trinity means anything, it has to mean something “concrete” in my daily life; and what I really want to know is how to “open heaven”, how to stand, as it were, in the Son of God’s shoes, and see the Spirit descending, and hear the Father speaking.<span> </span>What I really want to know is what on earth does the Trinity mean to <i>me</i>?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I believe the Trinity ought to mean something to me, because God’s purpose for me, perhaps ultimately the only purpose of my existence, is for my life to be drawn up into the pure, unadulterated, boundless life and love and joy and communion of the triune Godhead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In John 17, Jesus himself prayed for no less...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>17:21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>17:22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>17:23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And this is the way “heaven opens” to me.<span> </span>Not through pearly gates, and cherubs, and harps, and haloes, but through perfect union with the life of God, and through that union, perfect oneness with everyone who has been drawn up, together with me, into that Life with a capital “L”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But how can I enter into that eternal, indivisible union of Father-Son-Spirit, which is the ultimate source of all life and love, and is the only true “heaven”?<span> </span>The answer is, quite simply, I can’t!<span> </span>Paul tells us quite plainly in 1 Corinthians that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (15:50).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course the “heavens opened” to the Son of God – they would do, wouldn’t they? – but, by the very nature of things, to me, the way to God is “closed”, the door to heaven is firmly shut.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You might well ask.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“With men this is impossible,” says Jesus.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, with the hint of a smile: “But with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26).<span> </span>“Don’t you know that I <i>am</i> the door?<span> </span>I <i>am</i> the way?<span> </span>No-one comes to God but by me; but whosoever will, may come freely.” (John 10:9 and 14:6; Revelation 22:17).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">God, in the person of his Son, has “opened heaven” to me.<span> </span>The life of God entered human flesh at Bethlehem, and by the “foolishness” of simply “believing” (1 Corinthians 1:21), I am drawn up into that life, just like a branch is grafted into the vine (John 15).<span> </span>Maybe “flesh and blood” can’t enter heaven, but heaven, it seems, can enter “flesh and blood”.<span> </span>And “in” and “through” the Son of God, who became the Son of Man, the “heavens are opened unto me”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So heaven is not a place you go to some day when you die – it is a “relationship” you enter into, right here and now.<span> </span>“<i>Now</i> are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:2).<span> </span>As my life is “transplanted” into the life of the Son (with a capital “S”), I become, as it were, a son (with a little “s”), and I am immediately drawn up into the relationship of a son, with the same inseparable bond with Father and Spirit as the “only begotten” Son himself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But a branch can be “in” the vine, and still produce no fruit.<span> </span>And I can be “in” a relationship of perfect oneness with the source of all life and love, and still experience no life, no love, no joy, no peace...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And I must learn how to “abide” in the vine (John 15:4).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock,” says Jesus.<span> </span>“If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And here is the challenge, and the work of a lifetime – to learn how to “open the door”, to open up my life to the “heaven” within, to “lay aside every weight” – the “cares”, and even the “riches and pleasures of this life” – that so easily “choke” the “inner life”, and “quench” the Spirit in me (Hebrews 12:1; Luke 8:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is the task set before me, to turn those rare moments of inner quietness and “openness” towards God into my normal, habitual mode of living – to turn a moment on a dim and empty twilight road, into a way of life.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-56679743683775377372011-01-30T11:48:00.000-08:002011-01-30T11:48:15.546-08:00Matthew 2 – Dreams and false alarms<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Matthew 2 is a chapter of dreams and signs and messages from God.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In verse 1, we have the “wise men” seeing a “star in the east”.<span> </span>In verse 9, the star seemed to go “before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was”.<span> </span>In verse 12, they were “warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Wise Men saw signs and visions, they were led by them, warned by them, and in verse 10 they rejoiced over them – and no doubt over the wonderful way God was dealing with them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then... it’s Joseph’s turn to dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In verse 13, the Wise Men had scarcely departed before we have Joseph dreaming of an angel telling him to “take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt”.<span> </span>Then in verse 19, after the death of Herod, another dream and an angel giving him the “all clear” to return to Israel.<span> </span>And finally, in verse 22, a last dream and a warning to avoid Judaea where Herod’s equally dangerous son now reigned.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All of this dreaming, the angelic encounters, the visions in the heavens, set me to thinking about the way God talks to us today.<span> </span>Maybe you don’t believe God does speak to us today.<span> </span>But some people certainly do!<span> </span>They say that God has told them to do this or that, that God has given them a message for you, that God has been speaking to them about some special enterprise or other.<span> </span>To hear them talk, you’d think they were describing a conversation with their doctor or their financial adviser, not with the “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last”, before whom John fell “as dead” in Revelation 1:17.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, all I have to draw on is my own experience, and in my experience, on those occasions when God has “spoken” to me, it has always been with “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), it has always needed to be mixed with faith, and it has always been accompanied by something like the “exceeding great joy” the Wise Men experienced in Matthew 2:10 when they realised that the mind behind the universe was “mindful” of them, and interested in their paltry affairs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No spectacular signs for me; no dreams or visions; no angel voices; in fact, no audible voices at all.<span> </span>Just a simple verse of scripture, transformed by my circumstances, and the spirit of God, into something more; a snippet of conversation I was half-listening to on the radio; a bedtime story I was reading to the kids; a single word in somebody’s long and rambling prayer; a single line from a novel, suddenly standing out in stark contrast to its context in the story.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A simple coming together of ordinary events, what we often call <i>coincidence</i>.<span> </span>But it’s only coincidence when there’s no <i>connection</i>.<span> </span>And faith sees the connection.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Case in point: a certain Friday morning in March; a certain upcoming meeting at work; a certain amount of confusion over 1 and 2 Samuel...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And David said to Ittai, Go and pass over. And Ittai the Gittite passed over, and all his men, and all the little ones that were with him.</i></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was over my usual hurried breakfast that I turned bleary-eyed to the reading <span> </span>for Friday 15<sup>th</sup> March in my “daily devotional”, but inadvertently went to 2 Samuel 15, rather than 1 Samuel 15, and read the above.<span> </span>An obscure verse, accidentally plucked from the middle of an obscure story, meaningless to me today, but on that particular morning, the morning of the redundancy meeting at work, faith made the connection and – amazingly, impossibly, <i>absurdly!</i> – I heard God’s voice speaking directly into my situation, and with the most intimate knowledge of my need.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t know whether some people do literally “dream dreams” and “see visions” today (Joel 2:28), or whether in today’s “sophisticated” society, you would be more likely to consult a psychiatrist, or read-up on alien abduction, if you really thought a shining, celestial being had been trying to communicate with you whilst you slept!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Maybe God, in his humility, condescends to speak to us in whatever way we are willing, or able, to listen to him.<span> </span>And, let’s face it, the sad truth is that God is probably more likely to catch my attention through the writing on the back of my cereal packet at breakfast, than he would be through a whole choir of angels whilst I slept!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, as it says in Isaiah 43:19, God can “even make a way in the wilderness”, and I believe he both can, and does, make a way to speak to us today.<span> </span>The problem isn’t so much in God’s speaking, but in our <i>hearing</i>, and <i>recognising</i> his voice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I said, in my experience, whenever God has “spoken” to me, it has always been with “a still small voice”.<span> </span>The fact that it’s always been a “small” voice has, I’m sure, more to do with me, and my ability to hear, than God, and the volume of his voice!<span> </span>But be that as it may, to my ears at least, God’s voice is often reduced to barely a whisper.<span> </span>And a whisper is so easily ignored, so easily misheard, and so easily drowned-out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can’t really say how often I’ve ignored God’s voice, but I can definitely say there have been times when I’ve misheard him, or maybe just heard what I wanted to hear.<span> </span>And there have definitely been times when what he’s actually been trying to tell me has been drowned-out by other voices, voices with agendas and aspirations of their own, voices that I managed to convince myself belonged to God, when all the time, deep down, I knew they belonged to<i> me</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so, it takes faith to hear God’s voice.<span> </span>It takes faith to believe that God is able to make himself heard over all the competing voices echoing around my head.<span> </span>And after one or two “false alarms”, when my own desires and ambitions have, as it were, put words into God’s mouth, and sent me marching off down a blind alley of my own making, that’s when faith is needed all the more.<span> </span>That’s when “the serpent” sneers at the sheer audacity of it, the <i>absurdity</i> of it: that I should actually believe that God is speaking to <i>me</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Yea, hath God said...?</i><span> </span>(Genesis 3:1)</div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And that’s part of my motivation in writing this piece – to bolster my faith, to remind myself, not of dreams and false alarms, but of times when I’ve heard a still small voice, and for once I’ve recognised it for what it is, for once all the other voices have ceased, for once I’ve just <i>shut-up</i> and listened.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even Samuel had to learn how to listen to God’s voice.<span> </span>To truly hear his voice was just as rare and “precious in those days; there was no open vision” (1 Samuel 3:1).<span> </span>And young Samuel had to learn the hard way how to lie back down and say, “Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth” (1 Samuel 3:9).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I guess that’s a lesson we would all do well to learn.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3220044508503900628.post-78019621301831617792011-01-05T11:03:00.000-08:002011-01-05T11:03:33.258-08:00Matthew 1 – In the right place, at the right time<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--> <m:smallfrac m:val="off"> <m:dispdef> <m:lmargin m:val="0"> <m:rmargin m:val="0"> <m:defjc m:val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440"> <m:intlim m:val="subSup"> <m:narylim m:val="undOvr"> </m:narylim></m:intlim> </m:wrapindent><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Matthew kicks-off the New Testament not with a bang but with what, at least to the modern reader, might be considered a rather dull and dry list of names – a genealogy of Jesus, which is at best tedious and at worst almost unpronounceable!<span> </span>No doubt Matthew was trying to make the important point, for the benefit of his first century Jewish readers, that Jesus was descended from the kingly line of David, and that his birth fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">1:22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet...</div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All well and good, but what can a list of antiquated names say to me, separated as I am by time and space and culture from Matthew’s original readers?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, I was thinking about that, and it set me to thinking about Matthew and his first meeting with Jesus.<span> </span>Matthew tells us a bit about it himself in chapter 9.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">9:9 And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.</div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems to have been very much a chance encounter.<span> </span>Jesus had only just returned to Capernaum after a short excursion to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and was literally <i>between miracles</i>, having just healed a “man sick of the palsy” (9:2), and on his way to the healing of Jairus’ daughter and a woman “with an issue of blood” (9:20).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And suddenly, there was Matthew, sitting at his tax collector’s booth by the roadside.<span> </span>In the right place, at the right time.<span> </span>In the right place, not only <i>externally</i> (in that he was physically by the side of the right road – in the right place to physically meet Jesus), but also <i>internally</i> (in that he was in that rare and blessed internal state that could respond without hesitation or debate to Jesus’ “Follow me”).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just stop and consider for a moment how often you’ve ever been in the position of knowing exactly what you want, exactly what you need, and without a second thought, without fear or uncertainty, you’ve joyfully reached out, and gratefully grasped it with both hands.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not that often, I’d wager!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My sister was an art student many years ago, and in her final show she exhibited a piece entitled, “I Put This Moment There”.<span> </span>It spoke to me about the <i>preciousness</i> of every moment, and although I like to think every moment is indeed precious, I have to admit that there are some moments where everything just comes together, everything falls into place, in a miracle of coincidence (or design) – when, even to the most hardened sceptic, it feels as if the mind behind the universe really has “put the moment there”, ripe for the taking, and dropped it, complete and perfect, right in the palm of your hand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was that kind of moment for Matthew, when Jesus, passing by, spoke two words and everything fell into place.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All well and good, but what does all this have to do with the fulfilment of ancient prophesies, exhaustive (and exhausting!) genealogies, and Matthew 1?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, in any story involving the birth of a child, it’s natural to focus on mother and baby – that’s where all the action is after all!<span> </span>But if Matthew’s genealogy says anything to me, it’s that <i>Joseph</i> was in the right place, at the right time, right in the centre of a moment that God had been in the process of “putting there” for generations.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Because, you will notice, that Matthew gives us the genealogy, not of the drama’s leading lady Mary, but of one of history’s supporting characters – Joseph.<span> </span>Now, I’m quite aware that Matthew was probably just following first century Jewish etiquette, giving the man his rightful place as head of the household, and that’s why his genealogy focuses on Joseph rather than Mary, but whatever his motivations, Matthew has left us with something like a slow motion moving picture of God’s hand as it swept through 42 generations, 42 lives both remarkable and mundane, till it finally came to rest in one place, at one time, on one ordinary man, for one special moment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Maybe Matthew had his own “special moment” in mind (or at least somewhere in a corner of his subconscious) when he penned the genealogy of Joseph... or more likely, he was just following tradition.<span> </span>No matter.<span> </span>What we have in Matthew 1 is an illustration of the way God can weave together the moments of all kinds of obscure lives – the life of a “Sadoc”, or a “Zorobabel”, or yes even a “Joseph” – moments when those people were in God’s right place, at God’s right time – not always in the place they wanted to be, not always understanding the circumstances in which they found themselves, not always able to mildly “trust and obey” perhaps, but nevertheless “kept by the power of God” (1 Peter 1:5) and “called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), and all drawn up into the culmination of God’s slowly unfolding plan, to place a certain man, Joseph, at the side of a certain woman, Mary, just at the time when she was most vulnerable, and everything was at stake.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When God said, “I put this moment there,” Joseph, like Matthew, was in the right place, at the right time.<span> </span>My prayer for the New Year is that what was true of Joseph, and true of Matthew, will be in some measure true of me.</div>Howard Fowlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09672635683023421332noreply@blogger.com0