Living Wittily

TFTD July 7-13: "And Jesus said..."

Monday

Matthew 22.37: Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment.”

Sometimes we ask a question because we genuinely want to know; other times a question can be a mental body swerve, a way of avoiding the truth that stands in our way. This was Jesus’ reply to a trick question about which is the greatest commandment. Jesus’ answer was like a well-timed rugby tackle, leaving no room for manoeuvre. The first priority of the heart, the magnetic North of the soul, the first focus of the mind, is to love God with all that we are. To love God completely, and serve God first and foremost, is to give God first claim on our worship and obedience.

Tuesday

Matthew 22.39: Jesus said: “And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.”    

Second only to our love and obedience to God, is our love and service to our neighbour. The parable of the Good Samaritan is all the argument a Christian should ever need to be alert, responsive and compassionate to those we meet on the way who could do with our help. But if we need even more convincing, then Jesus’ astonishing self-revelation in the need of our neighbour is likewise like a well-timed rugby tackle that isn’t fooled by the body swerve: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matt.25.40)

Wednesday

Matthew 22.40: Jesus said: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

God demands no more than is contained in these two commandments. But the unpacking of them in lives of loving obedience to God and compassionate service to others is the work of a lifetime. “He has shown you, every one of you, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah distilled into that one verse all the commands of the Law and the Prophets for holiness and justice. Jesus concentrated all that teaching down into matters of the heart devoted in love to God, the soul centred in worship, the mind focused on obedience, and the neighbour loved and safe in our presence.

Thursday

Matthew 4.3 Jesus said: ”Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

These words were spoken under pressure. Temptation is that familiar inner process of being torn two ways at once, knowing there is a right and wrong choice of what course of action to take. The greatest commandment to love God with our whole selves means nothing in life matters more than God. Life is God’s gift. We live every day by the enabling grace of God, who calls us as his children to a loving and responsive obedience with all our heart, soul and mind. Seek first God’s rule in your heart and in your daily living; then every other thing will fall into its proper place.

Friday

Matthew 5.13: Jesus said: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”

Salt can’t lose its saltiness. But it can become adulterated, a mixed economy of salt and accumulated compromises. Jesus was saying two things. First, salt works when it makes a difference, when it is different from what it comes into contact with. The various uses of salt for preserving from corruption, medicinal aid to healing, adding flavour to what is bland, all depend on salt being salt! Second, the credibility of the good news depends on our being Christ-like, telling the Gospel, living lives of such convincing quality that Jesus is obvious and visible in who we are. Salt of the earth.

Saturday

Matthew 5.14: Jesus said: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Light is an element of the reality we inhabit that enables life, makes visible, pulses with energy and is used to make life liveable. Followers of Jesus are lights that guide and illuminate and encourage life. The light of Christ brings hope, by forgiveness banishes guilt, liberates from fear, and guides those who are lost and confused back to their home in God. And yes, wherever it’s dark, light can’t be hidden. On the contrary, light defies and defeats darkness. Travellers in the darkness, see the city lights, and know where home and safety lies. You, yes you, are the light of the world.

Sunday

Matthew 5. 16: Jesus said: “In the same way, let your light shine before everyone, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

The good news of God’s love revealed in Jesus, demonstrated on the cross, bursting abroad and let loose on the world at the resurrection – that’s the light that shines in and through the Christian’s heart, and as the living centre of the Christian community. This is who we are! Love God, completely; love your neighbour, every time; be the salt and be the difference; shine with the light of Christ out into the world around you. Be the Body of Christ who is the originating Light of the World.

"Your Word is a Lamp for My Feet and a Light to MY Path."

Some years ago, I spent several days on retreat at St Deiniol's Library and Psalm 119 was the main focus of study, prayer, and journal writing. I also set myself an essay, written for no reason other than writing for me is a way of thinking out and thinking through a complex text.

In 22 sections, each devoted to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line beginning with that specified letter, Psalm 119 is a masterpiece of literary precision. It is also a powerful teaching method for what it means to live a life of obedient love and faithful persistence in the service of God and others. The acrostic pattern is a well marked path for the reader, a metaphor the Psalm uses throughout for the life of loving obedience to God.

When I'm out walking, I take photographs of paths. Often they remind me of this Psalm, and one of its key verses: "Your word is a lamp for my feet, and a light to my path." (Psalm 119.105) This particular photo could be a visual exegesis of that verse!

TFTD June 30 - July 6: When Everything Seems Against Us, God Is Still for Us.

Monday

Psalm 3.1-2 “O Lord, how many are my foes. How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him!’”

In my teens I used to work beside one of the most negative folk I’ve ever known. No cloud ever had a silver lining! One work colleague said, “Aye everything in his favour’s against him!” But the truth is, sometimes in all of our lives there come times when there’s too much coming at us at the same time. This Psalm was written by someone who felt overwhelmed, and there were no silver linings. So he complained to God, which is exactly the right thing to do! When everything seems to be conspiring against us, the first response of faith is to remember God is for us.

Tuesday

Psalm 3.3 “But you are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.”

Part of the experience of feeling down is the body language, a head-hanging lethargy. Time and again the Psalm poet gives the bad news, then the counter argument – “But…” Yes there is much that gets us down, but God is a shield around us. Yes we might feel like hanging our heads in defeat, but God gives the energy and strength to lift up our heads and look at the world again, this time through the eyes of faith that God is to be trusted. God’s glory is most clearly shown when his grace is made perfect in our weakness, and we hold across heart and mind the shield of faith.

Wednesday

Psalm 3.4 “For the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.”

Prayer is not always about decorum, politely asking for God’s blessing. Nor are reverence and deference the most important inner attitudes in prayer. The psalm poet is shouting, pleading, arguing, with persistence and an intense need to be heard. When much is going wrong, and everything seems against us, there is an important place for honestly telling God how desperate we are. The prayer of the troubled is not an attempt to minimise our difficulties, or talk ourselves into acceptance. Prayer is a forceful cry for help, believing we are heard by God who is never so far away he does not hear, or will not answer. “I cry aloud, and he answers.”

Thursday

Psalm 3.5 “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.”

We all need a sound theology of sleep, as well as a sound sleep! Anxiety, life under pressure, too much going on in our head, the long build-up of stress; we’ve all known the churning misery of sleepless nights. It’s as if we don’t trust ourselves to let go, and risk loss of control by falling asleep! Yet every day we wake up we do so by the sustaining grace of God who gives us life in the first place. There is profound theology in the vivid memory of disciples thrown about in the boat during the dangerous squall on the Sea of Galilee, and “Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.”   

Friday

Psalm 3.6 “I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side.” 

This isn’t empty bravado. The Psalm poet is a realist, it’s just that his view of reality includes God. Again, we’ve all been in that place when we feel hemmed in, surrounded by more than we can deal with. Those words, “I will not fear”, are spoken in defiance of the worst the world can do. We have sung these words often enough! ““The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, / I will not, I will not desert to his foes; / That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake, / I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake!” And God says, “That’s a promise!”

Saturday

Psalm 3.7 “Arise, O Lord! Deliver me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.”

Exclamation marks signify theology with a loud voice, faith with the volume turned up. There is both confidence and desperation in the words. The Psalm poet knows ‘how many are my foes’, and ‘the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side.” This Psalm is for those times when we’ve run out of options, ideas, energy yet the hard stuff keeps coming. The strong language of broken jaws and teeth is hardly what we would call devotional prose! It is fighting talk, but it is God who is asked to act, to deliver, to enable life to go on, to lift up our heads, to be a shield around us. Christians are not exempt from storms of circumstance, whether on the Sea of Galilee or in the life that is ours. Sometimes our prayers need exclamation marks! 

Sunday

Psalm 3.8 “From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.”

In a self-help culture, awash with exaggerated positivity about what our life can be like if we just dream it, or go for it, people of faith live to an alternative worldview. “From the Lord comes deliverance.” It simply isn’t true that all the answers lie inside us, or that all problems can be solved by our determination, or mind-set. Blessing, when it comes, is gift. Sure, it requires our faithfulness, trust, obedience, and it may well cost us. But the Lord is at work in our lives, always and everywhere. Even the tough times and hard miles. He is our shield, bestows glory, and lifts up our head.

Pushing Back the Dreichness.

The Scottish word 'dreich' is characteristically expressive, and said in a slow Scottish accent conveys quite a lot of its meaning. A 'dreich' day is a day that is grey, damp, lacking in sunlight, cold, and not likely to do much to lift the spirits. It's usually used to describe the weather, but that same word with its cluster of associated downer words, accurately sums up our mood when our inner climate is grey, sunless and lacking life and energy.

The Psalm-poet found his own way of describing the soul exposed to experiences that have the same dampening effects on the spirit. "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" (Psalm 42.5) The gift that the Psalm poet gives to his readers is permission; yes, he says, it's OK to feel down, let down, overshadowed by anxiety, undermined by sadness. While the usual expectation in prayer is to thank and praise God, we have permission to come before God with our complaints, our burdens, and our emotional life laid low by whatever experiences deflate and deplete us. 

The above photograph was taken on a dreich day in Drum Castle gardens. The climate that day mirrored exactly the semantic range of 'dreich'! The grey filter of drizzle, low visibility and muted sounds, cold and damp, and no chance of any sunlight any time soon. Then the robin began to sing. In the midst of greyness, this red-breasted singer was defying the elements with an elemental song of its own. Sometimes a sacrament just happens. You don't plan it; there is no liturgy; no time to rehearse it, or prepare for its coming. It just happens. It is a gift event, a moment of revelation when colour and sound defy and push back the greyness. 

Like all the rest of us, the Psalm poet had his share of dreich days, enough of them to know that they are not forever, and even when they last, they needn't be the only mood setter in town! He had his own song: "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, my Saviour and my God!" On a dreich day, this wee robin sat up there singing into the greyness, a sacrament of song, a parable about the power of praise to push back the dreichness!   

The Fruit of the Spirit is Hope.

Now and again I have to remind myself that when Paul made a list of the fruits of the Spirit, he wasn't closing the door on other suggestions. It's also true that the nine fruits of the Spirit are not a varied list but a cluster; they are the fruit, singular and collective, of the Spirit's work of transforming and conforming each Christian to the image of Christ. Paul's carefully compiled list is intended as a counter-balance and contrast to the 'works of the flesh' as given in Galatians 5. That long list is one mean catalogue of so much that makes human behaviour evil, wicked, and cruel. In contrast to human nature at its unaided worst, there is the grace-enabled fruit of the Spirit:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

The fruit of the Spirit doesn't grow by gritted teeth, self-denial, and the moral hard work of self-help virtue. Fruit, including spiritual fruit, is the natural outcome of the life of the Spirit expressed in the character and freedom of the children of God. The fruit of the Spirit is evidence of grace, and it grows by the constant work of cultivation, pruning, nourishment and irrigation which are the horticultural equivalents of the Spirit at work in producing the fruit of Christlikeness in our souls.

But still, whether or not Paul was being exhaustive in the list of fruit as evidence, there is a case for at least one other characteristic fruit of the heart and mind touched and transformed by grace, led and nurtured by the Holy Spirit. In Romans 5.1-5 Paul reflects on the genealogy of hope - where it comes from, what it does, what sustains it. It's worth following the whole thought process:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

If the fruit of the Spirit is evidence of the work of God in our lives by the Spirit, then hope that arises from suffering, perseverance and character formation is likewise transformative. Hope is not unthinking optimism, worked-up positive thinking, or denial on steroids. Hope is a way of looking at the world through redeemed eyes, with a clear sight of the cross and its meaning, the resurrection and its effects, and a steady gaze at the glory of God in Jesus Christ. 

No wonder Paul nearer the end of the letter to those Christians at Rome put all this into a prayer: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Rom. 15.13) Hope is a fundamental shift in our worldview; Christians are called to live out a theology of hope, founded on God's love, and expressed in a faith that looks backward with gratitude and forward and outward at a world where the glory of God has been revealed in Christ, and in which the glory of God will be consummated in the new creation and fullness of redemption in Christ. 

This kind of thinking is both fruit and gift. Indeed the fruit of the Spirit grows in us because, "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." So when Paul prays to the God of hope, that those Roman Christians in all the ups and downs of their lives in the imperial city may be filled with joy and peace as they trust in God, and that they may overflow with hope, his prayer falls upon our own times with the same extravagant confidence in God. 

These are not easy times we are living in. Much that seemed secure, dependable and stabilising has been shaken. So have we. How do we stay hopeful and resilient in such fluctuating times? What inner attitudes and responses best equip us to live faithfully at a time when our faith in the status quo is decidedly undermined by events? Perhaps a regular reading and re-appropriation of these two texts will give us our bearings, and remind us whose we are, and the realities which undergird our faith. To overflow with hope, in a culture of denial or despair, is to 'shine like stars in a dark universe', as Paul put it to the Philippian believers.

The fruit of the Spirit is...hope, and hope is the echo in our hearts of the God of hope who has come to us in Jesus Christ, the revelation of the glory of God.

The fruit of the Spirit is hope, and hope does not disappoint because God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, God's gift to us.