Category: 2020 Bible Reflections

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 30th 2020: Psalm 121

You can read today’s passage here: Psalm 121 text

You can listen to today’s passage here: Psalm 121 Audio

Problems sometimes feel like mountains, don’t they? Looming over us, looking down on us, judging us, mocking our inability to cope, to offer a defence. We’re unable to think about doing anything about them because they overtake us. We’re powerless. Powerlessness leads, in my experience, to fear, anger, resentment and to turning in on myself, turning against myself. By the time I do this, I’ve long since given up raging against how unfair the world is. To be perfectly honest, I’ve probably given up doing what I should know by now is the great and right instinctive response when faced with crisis too: look to God for help.

As I read the passage today, it struck me how ironic it is that these mountains that loom over us, so powerful, so insurmountable, are exactly where our help  comes from? Where does help come from? It comes from the Lord, the maker of Heaven and Earth, the one who made the mountains and put them in their place. I use that turn of phrase deliberately. If we look to the Lord for help, He will put our troubles in their place which is, I believe, under His authority. All of us have problems, trouble, pain, suffering that we’ve faced in the past, are facing now and will face in the future. There’s no doubt about that. When we do, it takes faith and trust to hold on to the beautiful promise of this Psalm that the Lord will watch over us, He will watch over our going out and our coming in. Whatever happens, God doesn’t sleep. He has His eye on us. His love is for us every step of the way. It might be scary to think that God has His eye on you all the time. I truly believe that when He looks at you He does so with love. He loves you. It’s an old-fashioned phrase ‘He will keep your soul’ but that is the phrase that gives me the most comfort from this reading today. It is God who cares for me the most. Imagine the most cared-for you’ve ever felt in your whole life: that’s just a small picture of the care and the love and the passion that God has for you.

Something To Do

Think deliberately about trying to be as caring as you can towards those around you and yourself today. It might sound silly but I bet it helps.

Something To Pray

Father, thank you for caring for me, for keeping your eye on me. Help me to trust you and help me to know your love for me. Amen

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 27th 2020: Psalm 102

You can read today’s passage here: Psalm 102

You can listen to today’s passage here: Psalm 102

Some of us have been through times when we’ve wanted to lament – to let it all go, say what we really think, at a time, or times, when  it’s all been too much. ‘It’ could be a huge variety of things and I wouldn’t want to seek for you when you think about the reasons or situations you’ve been in that have led you to lament. When we’re talking about lament, though, we’re not meaning to lament your football team conceding a last minute goal to lose. We’re talking about something which has really changed the course of your life. Perhaps something that made you aware of your mortality, or something that was so deeply sad that it cut you right to the core. Each of us would have something different in our histories which is the thing that we most immediately think of when I describe such a feeling.

The writer of today’s psalm is in that place exactly. Such a feeling of pain and desolation as they describe could, for some of us, be unimaginable, but I bet it isn’t for all of us. This person is at the end of themselves and sees that their very life might end soon. And yet they want their words passed on so that future generations might praise the Lord. That’s quite some faith, right there. Further, the psalmist recognises that once their days are over, the Lord will still be the Lord and, as He is still God, the order of things will still be right.

Is your faith as strong as that? Is mine?

Looking forwards, the psalmist sees that those condemned to death will be released by God. As we live in uncertain times, times which none of us are certain of living through to the other side of, today’s psalm reminds us be faithful to God and to trust Him that those who live beyond us will be free to worship Him without fear.

Something To Do

At the end of reading or listening to a sobering psalm today, send an encouraging message of some kind to someone in a future generation reminding them to stay faithful to God.

Something to Pray

If you feel like lamenting today, then do. Be honest with God. If you don’t feel like lamenting today, pray for those around you who are in a place of sorrow that they would know comfort in their weariness and struggle.

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 26th 2020: Psalm 53

You can read today’s passage here: Psalm 53

You can listen to today’s passage here: Psalm 53

The message today is stark and straightforward: God is looking to see who trusts Him. I think it is implicit that if He looks and finds people trusting Him then they will be invited to do good things in the name of God, to make God known to other people and to set am example in how with how they live so that people don’t just see them as ‘nice’ or ‘good’ but godly too.

The corresponding outcome for those who ‘say in their heart there is no God’ is pretty stark. In short, the outcome is not good. However every person has the choice in whether they say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God. I’ve always found it fascinating how respectful God is of the human ability to choose or reject Him. That is until the end of it all, when ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ Or that’s how it appears to me, at least. So is it a real choice or just an illusion of one? I wonder….Either way, it seems pretty clear that the better choice to make now, today, is to be God’s person and follow His ways. I’m doing my best.

Something To Do

Be aware of the choices you make today. Where you know that God would have you do something in a particularly way, do your best to take that choice.

Something To Pray

‘Help me to trust you, even and especially on the days it’s hard.’

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 24th 2020: Psalm 54

You can read today’s passage here: Psalm 54 (NIV).

You can listen to today’s passage here: Psalm 54

‘Surely God is my help;
    the Lord is the one who sustains me.’

 ‘I will praise your name, Lord, for it is good.’

Sometimes it’s very tempting to cherry-pick the good bits from a Bible passage to suit what we want the Bible to say. You never do that, obviously. That mistake is one I make all on my own. You never just pick the one verse you like and ignore the ones around it, do you? No, of course you don’t.

If we were going to do that today, we’d focus on the verses I’ve picked out already. Don’t they sound good. The person writing this is sure and certain that the Lord – the one they have given their life to – is their help and the way that they are able to be sustained, to keep going. Not only that but the commitment and trust in the power of the name of the Lord that we’ve seen so often in readings recently – and which feels very timely at the present moment – is all present and correct. Never forget, trusting God is the right thing to do and the right way to go and the right direction to be facing in. Always.

Except that’s not all that the reading contains, is it.

Destruction of enemies is a pretty ugly thing to hope for.

But that is the aim of the psalmist here. There’s no doubt about it. God is requested to make sure that the psalmist is safe, that the enemies they face are wiped from the face of the earth and that God would show power in doing so.

We would never think like that though, would we.

No, of course not.

Except that I’ve started to see news stories around the world suggesting that those who might be ‘vulnerable’ could be expendable as we face and fight this invisible enemy. I’ve seen stories suggesting that the safe progress of the economy and the passing of a stable economy to future generations would potentially be worth the cost of lives of some people over 70 or otherwise vulnerable.

That’s a small step away from saying that caring for those who are impaired or disabled, or caring for people after they reach a certain age, or even if they fall within the most vulnerable 1.5 million people in the UK who were contacted by our National Health Service yesterday and told to stay inside for 12 weeks, is too much, too expensive, too costly, that it slows down the inevitable growth and progress of society too much.

You might think that’s extreme, but try being vulnerable or disabled at these times and imagine how it might sound, or feel.

No human being is ever expendable. Ever.

And so when I read passages like today’s, it makes me uncomfortable to think that someone who loved God wished for the destruction of their enemies, whether literally or metaphorically (I think the writer here is being very literal). The enemies I have are the ones that stop me from being part of God’s kingdom building army. I’m fortunate that I am not under threat of violence, I realise as I write these words. Let’s be people who use the freedom we have to be thankful to God and to trust Him, to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us.

Something to Do

Spend some time asking yourself who or what are your enemies at the moment? If you have any you can think of, here’s

Something to Pray

…pray for them to be blessed.

https://www.facebook.com/TheEmmanuelGroupOfChurches/videos/145801946798093/

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 23rd 2020: Psalm 70

You can read today’s passage by clicking here: Psalm 70

You can listen to today’s passage here: Psalm 70 Audio

‘May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you, may those who long for your saving help always say,
    “The Lord is great!”‘ It’s hard to be rejoicing in seeking something when you still haven’t found it. I quite often can’t find the chocolate biscuits at home and I can tell you that there is much more rejoicing when I find and eat the chocolate biscuits than in the time it takes me to root around in the cupboards to see whether the biscuits are still in the house or if they have been taken by others and have become ex-biscuits. A silly example perhaps, but the writer of today’s psalm is reminding us that the time is coming when we who trust in God will receive everything that we have been promised. And what a great day that will be, when the dwelling place of God is with people and He is with them and they are with Him and we know all that we’re meant to know and are known fully. Full togetherness, loving unity and everything that goes with that.

But for today, we see in part and know in part, and there is a beauty to the time of seeking. Seek the Lord while He may be found, indeed. So as we all keep seeking, keep seeking answers in this difficult time, keep seeking hope, healing, peace and freedom, let’s also keep praising. Our deliverer is coming.

Something to do

Find reasons to rejoice today. Good things happen every day. We just have to be looking for them.

Something to pray

‘Thank you God for your goodness and how great you are. I trust you. Amen’

https://www.facebook.com/TheEmmanuelGroupOfChurches/videos/1119138545086398/

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 21st 2020: Hebrews 8

You can read today’s passage here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… and if you would like to you can listen to it here: https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Heb.8. If you’re not in the practice of regularly listening to the Bible, I think you’ll find that it comes alive in a really different way when you listen to it compared to how it sounds in your own head when you read it from a book. I certainly do.

I run into two problems quite regularly as a minister which today’s passage looks at directly and challengingly enough to really make me stop and think. One is, to make sure I do my ministry and live my life ‘right’. The second is to do what I can to make sure that I serve the people that God has taken me to care for, love and support as best I can exactly that, as best I can. It’s easy to feel a failure at both of these tasks and the truth is that without God I would absolutely be a failure in my attempts.

‘But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.’

I’ll never be a High Priest in the way that the Old Testament and old covenant Priests were encouraged to live their lives to conform as closely as possible to what they had received as the directives on how to live and minister from the law that was given to Moses, but there’s still a temptation to build a ministry, or a temptation for us to build a Church, which is bigger, better, more noteworthy and which receives more favour than others we see around.

But here’s the rub and here’s what I think the writer to the Hebrews is trying to say: without Jesus, all efforts to do something good in ministry are fairly pointless, and not really ministry at all. It’s because Jesus did what He did that any of us are able to be followers of His and minister in the power of His name at all. None of us should minister in our own strength. There’s no point me praying ‘in the name of Haydon’. That won’t achieve anything, but if God writes his law on our hearts, his law of love over all things, mercy triumphing over judgement, people who act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Him every moment of their lives then, and only then, we might have some hope of being used to build a Jesus ministry, a kingdom ministry, one which does the things that Jesus does and has the world-transforming outcomes that all of us dream of but I wonder how many of us truly hope for. Do we want to see the world changed? Set aside our own ambitions and get in line with God’s and commit ourselves to His cause. Then great things can happen.

Something To Do

Write down or draw the ambitions you have for your life. Who are you trying to please? If you get everything you want, who will benefit?

Something To Pray

Ask God to give you an opportunity to show His love and power to someone today

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 20th 2020: Hebrews 7:11-28

You can read today’s post here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+7%3A11-30&version=NLT

Hebrews is a complicated book. It, or the English translations of it at least – I can’t claim to have read in other languages – is full of close argument and complex sentences which take a lot of unpicking. Take the 18 verses we’re given in the Morning Prayer Reading from the Church of England today. People could write books about exactly what is being argued here. Indeed it’s been done. But breaking it down to the core important single point the writer is making is what I am hoping to do in the next few sentences.

The writer is making the point that God set up priesthood – people who point people to God and represent them to Him -first with the tribe of Levi and Aaron. The covenant – the contract or relationship between God ands people – was continually broken by the people as they turned from God and did their own thing, living life in their own way. And so God set up priesthood in a new line, the order of Melchizedek – Melchizedek means ‘My King is Righteousness” – God wanted a King who was truly good, in the deepest, most meaningful and foundational sense of the word and so Jesus, who was ultimately good, ultimately put the kingdom of God first, justice mercy, joy and peace first and showed what true love was, this man was able to properly show God to people and people to God and so the new relationship was made possible.

I’ve tried to keep that short and so would probably be accused by some of cutting corners or missing out something central to Christian belief and history, but the key point is this: we couldn’t ever get to the point where we were who we were designed to be on our own. We needed Jesus to show us what it is to be a Godly person. He put God first in His life. He put the needs of others before His own. He didn’t ask to be served. He served others instead. His actions backed up His words. And His words shared love, joy, mercy and peace, as well as justice and a warning that one day a moment will come for each of us where we will be asked to account for what, or who we put first in our own lives. Jesus sacrificed everything so that we who often put ourselves first, so selfishly, don’t receive the consequences our selfish actions deserve. If we put our trust in him, ask for forgiveness for what is gone past and every day seek to live facing in a new direction, his direction, then we can be free in the freest sense of the word free.

I want that kind of freedom, but not so that I can put my feet up, metaphorically or literally and live just as I want to, but so that I can live in a way that is as close to the way that Jesus did it as I possibly can. Wouldn’t it be good to feel free? It doesn’t mean things won’t be hard or go wrong in the future, but it does mean that we have the kind of freedom, the kind of peace, that it is just not possible to manufacture on our own.

Something to do

Commit to doing 5 things tomorrow that will definitely put someone else first, rather than just making you happy or more comfortable.

Something to pray

Ask God to show you things from today from your life which have been selfish, have hurt others, hurt you or been not the way that he would want. Ask him to forgive you. If you do that and really mean that you won’t live the same way from now on, you can know that you are free. Make sure to (safely!) spread some of that freedom tomorrow.

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2020 Bible Reflections

March 18th 2020: Psalm 1

March 18th 2020: Psalm 1

You can read the text of today’s reading here:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+1&version=NLT

The text of this reading is pretty straightforward: if you want to be blessed, for life to be as it should be and to receive all that life has for you, all that God has for you, even, delight in the law of the Lord. It goes well for people who do, and it doesn’t go well for people who don’t. They are ‘the wicked’ (in the traditional, rather than modern sense). Most of us don’t want to be ‘the wicked’. We’d rather be the ‘good’. So, there’s a pretty big question: if we’re to delight in the law of the Lord and think, meditate on it day and night, what is that law?

People have been confused about this forever. Even the disciples of Jesus, the people who were closest to him and learned from him and did their utmost to follow what he asked them to do needed help working it all out, as we find it Matthew’s gospel,

“36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.””

So, isn’t this timely? In a moment in world history where we could choose to be only about ourselves and seek safety and security for us and our families, avoiding the consequences of Covid-19, we are told that every single one of the many (and if you don’t know how many there are, there really are many, many) laws and details of how people that want to delight in the law of God and know what it is to be truly free have to follow is this one: Love. Love for God, recognising that we need God, that we can’t do life on our own. Love for self, casting aside the words that have hurt us and put us down over the years, the actions of others and the actions and thoughts of ourselves which make us think that everyone else is great but we’re not worth love; that kind of love. And love for our neighbour. I often ask kids in school, ‘who is your neighbour’? And they sometimes say, ‘Mr Smith’ or ‘Mrs Jones lives across the road’. More often than not, though, they’ve got it much better than most of us adults. They say ‘everyone is my neighbour’. The whole community is our neighbours. Obviously love means different things in different relationships, but we have to show love to everyone, we have to value everyone as if they were the most precious person on the whole of the planet, and we have to let them do the same to us. If we do that, and if we have God at the centre of it all, then we’ll be going some way towards delighting in the law of the Lord, being like a tree planted in streams of living water, one which bears the best kind of fruit. Don’t you want to be like that? I do.

Something to Pray About

Pray for those who are working hard in hospitals caring for the sick, for those in isolation at home with sick relatives, worried about who might catch the virus next. Pray for those in laboratories working hard and unseen on behalf of all, that God would guide their hard work and give them wisdom.

Something To Do

Check in with your neighbours. Say hi. Ask about their day and how they are. If they say ‘fine’, ask again until they tell you the real story. Get to know their story. Be brave enough to listen and brave enough to share your story.

Haydon

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2020 Bible Reflections

The Return of Daily Bible Reflections

Periodically I discipline myself to write a short piece about the readings that are offered for each day by the Church of England, the Church I work for. As we are in the midst of Coronavirus and all that it has brought so far and will bring in the future, it feels like a good time to start writing them again, particularly as I’m largely going to be at home for a good while.

I hope you enjoy the posts which will follow and that you find them helpful. I know that a lot of people I know and who follow me aren’t Christians and will probably sigh and move on when the posts come up on your social media feeds, but you never know, some of my jokes might be funny. Unlikely, I know, but still, a possibility which makes reading the posts probably worthwhile.

Haydon