Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope! Psalm 119.118 I guess lots of the thoughts in these posts recently have been about hope. Throughout the Bible, there are so many people who depend on their hope in God’s promise of a good life, a long life, productive fields, good weather, idyllic peacefulness... (like that depicted above). They believed that if they lived faithfully to the ways God had told them to live, God would be faithful to them to, in the form of the promised goodness and blessing they’d been covenanted.
In some respects, this is why I live in some of the ways I choose to live too. I believe God has given us insights into practices and ways to try and live that benefit us, those our lives affect and the planet we live on. This is why I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, why I don’t drink caffeine or alcohol, and why I set my life around a rhythm of weekly rest. It’s also why I do (nearly) regular exercise, choose to give away a percentage of what I earn and try to be kind and generous to the other people in my life. Of course, there are ways I could do better - some days I eat too many Skittles, for example! Sometimes I don’t feel like being kind, and want all my time for myself. Some weeks exercise is slow and painful or boring or just too much effort! But I try. And just like people in the Bible - they realised that even sometimes when they were trying really hard to live in all the right ways, it could never guarantee the idyllic, perfect life they’d been promised. And on those days, they - like I - found God’s promise true still, but yet unfulfilled. And they kept hope in its future fulfilment. Crying out to God, “...and let me not be put to shame in my hope!” Interestingly (to me, anyway!), there is at least some benefit starting to be seen in trying to make health choices in line with biblical principles. There were some studies a little while back called The Blue Zone Studies, which featured Seventh-Day Adventists as some of the people who live the longest, which it puts down to our ”discouragement of eating meat, rich foods, caffeinated drinks and ‘stimulating’ condiments and spices” (whatever they are, lol!). God has promised good things. And in my life, I have known numerous times when God has followed through on that promise. I have also known times when it’s certainly felt like those promises had been abandoned, only to realise later that they were still there, ready to give me new hope precisely when I needed it most. That’s life! This is what the Bible shows - through good times, and through droughts, through joyful dances, and laments, God is there and gives us purpose and direction in how to live in line with the hope we have been given. Hope of what is perfect; hope of painless, fear-less, stress-less good! So we pray, and we hope! As always, stay safe, and take care!
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But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as humans see: humans look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16.7 I’ve seen a few posts recently being super angry at people for their “unnecessary” reasons for being outside... Everyone likes to be the righteous one. Well, it makes me realise how glad I am that God doesn’t view our actions the way we view the actions of others, based on our own disgruntled senses of and need for superiority.
Maybe that person in the park doesn’t have a garden like I do, and suffers from anxiety, calmed only by the wide open space that reminds her of God’s care of even the grass of the fields. Maybe that person buying house paint has worked with her hands all her life and is losing grasp of herself sitting doing nothing and so is doing up the house to feel useful and keep her mind and hands busy each day in lockdown. Maybe that neighbour standing a little too close as she talks to the family in the next garden down is so, so lonely, and doesn’t have the social connections I do in my household or via online communication. When God picked out a king, he sent he prophet Samuel to go and anoint him, and from how things looked, Samuel got the king wrong EVERY time. There is often another way to view things. I’m going to keep trying to look at people the way God does - valuing them for nothing they’ve done, but simply because they are precious. I fall short. Time and time again. Especially now. But I’ll keep trying. Stay safe, and take care! For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2.15 You've all experienced it if you've been outside for any reason at the moment: you're running along, or walking to the supermarket, and someone comes around the corner on to the same path you're on and they're coming towards you. Either you or they cross the road - maybe the streets by you are so empty like they are by me that you run in the road. Maybe you try to smile, to imitate some kind of friendliness, but we each - and rightly so right now - are avoiding each other like we stink.
I'm not saying don't do this. Stick to government advice: stay at least 2m from anyone when you're out for your necessary trips. But it was an experience like this that made one of my church pastors think of this Bible verse for today's LOOK UP IN LOCKDOWN post. And I wonder if there are ways, right now, that our "aromas", our presence (physical, virtual, in a letter or card, or a gift ordered online), could be as the pleasing aroma of Christ is to God. Something that when it is received, it is loved and wanted and good. I baked ginger parkin the other day (today is the 3rd day since, so we finally get to eat it), from my grandad's recipe. And the smell, even just as I mixed up the mixture, was amazing! I'm not sure I can even describe it! It filled me with a warmth, and a want, and a thankfulness! Can my actions, thoughts, words, deeds bring that to someone after, but also during, this lockdown time? In my pastor's words: 'How to encourage that to happen in each of us is worth pondering.' As always: Stay safe, and take care! Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life." John 14.6a Maybe right now you're still coming to terms with how quickly our human-made systems are weakening and struggling. Health, education, economic systems; right now we see how fragile they really are, and how the sense of security they give us is not true.
I remember the first time I felt like I might not be able to handle this crisis. The a week before the lockdown, my house had been in quarantine anyway as I'd picked something up at the school I work in and was showing the covid-symptoms. So by week 2 of lockdown, we'd already had 2 weeks of total not leaving the house ever, and it was starting to look like that wasn't going to change any time soon. I missed people, and felt like a bird in a cage - all classic things lots of people are feeling right now. But I wasn't sad, just annoyed. Then I went to ASDA - we'd had our shopping brought to us before, because we weren't allowed out, so this was the first time I'd left the house, and there were signs up, sharing the measures they were putting in to try and help people get what they need. Certain hours on certain days for NHS staff, limits on how many of something someone could buy. They even had a similar announcement over the tannoy system. And I found I was nearly in tears at these things! It became real. I relied on these systems, and took them for granted that they were freedoms and abilities I'd always have! I didn't think I'd be in a position struggling to make a normal meal because I can't seem to get all the ingredients for anything!! Yet here I am. Here we are. I got over that falling-apart-ness, for the time-being anyway. I came to realise more and more that my life does not depend on those systems. They help my life, certainly they do. And I'm more grateful than ever for them. But I'm not dependent on them for my being, my identity, my capacity to go on. And neither are you. Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life." Follow that way. Seek that truth. Live that life. It is more fulfilling and dependable and purposeful and useful than anything else in all the world. Stay safe, and take care! Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when they look at it, shall live." Numbers 21.8 I was really stuck with this one for a while... both the verse and the comments just confused me a little, and I wasn't really hearing anything in them. So first off, I want to share that experience because that's ok - especially those who are creative among us, we often expect ourselves to come up with all the ideas always. And sometimes that comes from other people expecting that of us! That we can turn any topic or comment into something creative, or that we have a view on everything that they want to hear. Well often; but not always. And that's ok.
This has been my experience with studying the Bible too. Sometimes, some texts are just confusing. I pray for God to explain to me what they mean, or how they could possibly show the God that the rest of the Bible says God is, and who Jesus - the Word become flesh - shows God is! But I don't get the answer. That's ok too. God will speak to me in that passage when God knows I'm ready or I need it. So first off, don't be afraid to park things for a while - somewhere you can come back to them, again and again, but not somewhere you're anxiously seeing them all the time and worrying about your lack of inspiration! Secondly - this image. When I kept coming back to my church's post for today, there was one line that the imagery stood out to me. It was talking about the story that comes before the above verse, where the people had done wrong, and this is what had made a way for the snakes that were biting and killing them all to come into the camp. And they came, all together, and corporately confessed what they'd done, crying out to God, realising that what they did had caused this bad thing to happen. And their deep introspection and genuine remorse and pain and suffering moved God to act. Then that imagery I was talking about: 'We too can move heaven during this lockdown...' I think the rest of the image speaks for itself. Stay safe, and take care! |
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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