Tag: Love

Through the Bible in a Year – February 10

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Job 40-42; Acts 15:36- 16:40; Psalm 51

Yesterday we thought of ‘surrendering ourselves to the unfathomable mystery of the Love of God’ – that which sustains all life and upholds the universe and is its most profound meaning.

In the sure and certain confidence of such love we may pray Psalm 51. In the Orthodox liturgy it is said every day at morning prayer. It is an acknowledgment of who we are – and who God is. It is fundamentally honest with regard to ourselves and our relationship to God. ‘Against you only have I sinned’ Our sin of course always has consequences which hurt others. Every sin does this – we are I think hopelessly naive about how our lives are so woven together that every sin has consequences of which we cannot dream, and perhaps that is just as well. [There is I think, a helpful parallel in chaos theory – which famously suggests that the beat of a hummingbird’s wing in the Philippines leads to hurricanes over the Atlantic – thus it is with our sin]

But rather than hide this profound truth about ourselves, we live out of an even deeper truth – that we live our lives in even deeper weave with that of God, who is closer to us than our own heartbeat. And so we come with confidence before him, not parading our sins, but confident in his love and mercy, with broken and contrite hearts. All our efforts to please turned to dust – which is of course the raw material of life, from the dust of the earth we were made, and from dust God can and does remake us, in his tender Love and mercy.

We say with Job ‘I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted – my eye has seen you and I repent in dust and ashes’

Job is commended for speaking the truth about God. To daily seek forgiveness in confidence and trust, is such truth speaking, and therein lies our great Hope.

Through the Bible in a Year – January 25

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Job 1-3; John 21; Psalm 34

The final chapter of John ties up a loose end, yet it is no mere coda. It expresses the Life that was and is and shall be.
the story of the reconciliation of Peter grows out of that old story in the Garden – but the outcome is dramatically different.

Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in Scripture is the Clue. Here we see that the death of Christ is no mere ‘fixing that which went wrong’. Peter, like our forebears of old, chose to know him not. Not to eat from the tree of Life, but that of knowledge of Good and Evil – not identifying himself with Christ whose Word is Life, but choosing a life for himself. And there are no tears of remorse. There is just the plain fact of his denial, a seemingly closed door.
Peter is naked, and ‘heard that it was the Lord’, and grabbed for his figleaves. We are too alert to that Old story – we too hide for shame, as we have always done, since the beginning. But Jesus reveals this is something New, or rather an alternative path that was always present in creation – although for a while the path to it was barred by the presence of the Cherubim – by the Presence of the Living God Himself – the way to that Tree, Life is opened, and no one will close it.
The way of Jesus is extraordinary to us. There is no call for sorrow, to prove we are sorry so that we might be ‘forgiven’, but with an eternal watch on our future behaviour.

Peter expresses no contrition, only that deep deep shame in the Presence of the Living One which the One who Lives for ever has come to Heal.
Peter comes to Christ. Christ asks him the Only question that matters – do you Love me?

Do you Love Me?

Through the Bible in a Year – January 21

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Genesis 42-43; John 17; Psalm 30

The seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel reveals the very heart of the gospel – that we might know the Father and the Son. We so often express salvation in terms of being ‘saved from’, like Lot’s wife we are to ready to look behind. That which we are saved from is not worth a moments consideration. Rather the work of Jesus is to reconcile us to God, not in some forensic sense, but to restore the realtionship which our first ancestor knew – of profound intimacy and love – “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them” And that as we are drawn into that by the love of God in Christ, so we are as his people drawn together in such love, ‘that the world may know’

Jesus at prayer – read this – meditate upon it – respond in praise and adoration – and abide in this Love