Been at an amazing funeral service today for a lady at church who was such a massive inspiration in how to live your life for Jesus. Kind of hard to blog after that really without feeling lacking somehow... I think there's a lot we can learn from the example, both positive and negative, of people older than us. But that's probably going to be a blog subject one day. Onto business then,
Today's readings
Exodus 21:1-22:31
Mark 2:18-3:30
Proverbs 5:1-14
Crikey the Old Testament stuff is tough today. I'm actually not going to go into it in much depth, nor the next couple of days because a lot of this law is not meant for us today but for the people at the time. God told Moses what was necessary for the Israelites to survive and the majority of the law involve not doing things that will isolate you from the community or cause ill feeling. But all these death penalties... That's tricky stuff. Like I said though, this isn't laws for today. These are the laws that worked for the people before Jesus came with the new law. Death isn't a punishment that we should have to face as Jesus came to save us from death. Instead we need to apply love and forgiveness rather than revenge and retribution. Think of people that upset you and how the thinking behins this passage seems to say that if someone has done something bad to you then go to the most extreme measure to get a degree of payback. But Jesus tells us not to kill our little brother for being the most annoying creature alive; instead we should forgive him and try our best to love him. Challenging stuff indeed! One small thing that hit me was in verse 32 of chapter 21, the compensation for a slave being 30 silver pieces, the same amount of money that Jesus' life was valued at. Jesus always said that He came to serve humanity and this to me is a clear indicator of that.
Into the New Testament we sashay and we start with a rare bit of teaching and slow motion in Mark's gospel. Jesus is stressing here the importance of us as His disciples being new and alive with His message rather than carrying on with our usual lifestyle and believing Jesus will let us off in the end. If we really want to follow Jesus then we have to accept that our lives might have to change and develop as we go alongside Him. Jesus also talks about priorities within our lives and how we should never let an Old Testament law stop us from doign God's will. Now I'm not saying we pick and choose here but Jesus wants us to be active and is very clear that it is His new law that should be followed rather than the old law as this new teaching is what is relevant now. We should never get hung up on principles which stop us spreading the love of God with other people.
Jesus then makes sure He's called all His disciples before talking about people who claim that what He does is evil. This is very similar to what went before. People often don't like change and there were people scared of Jesus' power and authority because it went against what they believed. We need to be open to see Jesus in situations, even if that sight is not what we were expecting to see!
Finally we start a new chapter in Proverbs. It's a pretty straight forward bit of wisdom today about relationships and it can be applied to boys and girls! Starting a relationship is always the best part of any romance but that's because we don't see the whole picture yet. Solomon is telling us here to go slow with our feelings and not to hang our self worth or reason for existence on the decisions and values someone else puts on us. Instead we should remember that it God who will love us regardless because of the potential we have to love and care for other people.
And that's your lot for today. Yesterday's song is here. Tomorrow I'll be much more awake so if you've not enjoyed the last four or five, there'll be a return to previous quality! Questions, comments and criticisms welcome as always
Jon
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