Day 70

Intros are for wimps. Onto business then,

Today’s readings

Leviticus 23:1-24:23
Mark 15:33-47
Psalm 32:1-11


Few things hit me from Leviticus today. The first is how awesome God is to grant all these days off work. David Cameron gives us one day where we're going to watch a wedding and yet God just keeps on deciding on days off. I like that God is this joyful as I think that too often we see the Old Testament God as having only a hard heart and no love in Him.

Next thing is how harsh the stoning seems but then I look at what has happened and here you have someone who is fighting against someone else and uses God's name which had much more power and weight then that it does now sadly, in order to try and score points in a fight. This is just after God has blessed Israel with all this free time and during the time when the Israelites are still reliant on God for helping them out with the whole lacking a country thing! God does things for a reason and dissidents like this couldn't be tolerated within a society that was so desperately needing unity. Could they just have banished the offender? Well they might as well given him a death sentence as send him into the wilderness with no support or connections. This way the people saw the need to unite for God and that God's law applied to everyone, regardless of where they came from.

The final thing to hit me from this is how quickly the people follow the orders of God to execute this boy. Now how often are they whining and moaning about God's laws but the minute they are told to carry out something which could be tied into anger or revenge then there's no hesitation. I wonder about their motives and I take this a challenge for when we get too wrapped up in using the bits of God's word that we like rather than actually following the bits that we don't want to do.

Into the New Testament and here Jesus dies. Now I recently was challenged by something I heard from a comedian who often talks about Christianity. He suggested that Jesus' words here showed that maybe He was actually deluding Himself and didn't realise until the last moment that He was nothing more special than any other human. It's possible definitely isn't it? Hmmm... challenging stuff. But then Jesus was just a human. That's the point. He had our weaknesses and our fears. Our doubts were present in Him. But what is fantastic is the resurrection to come. Jesus was scared to die and was bound to be seperate from God until He rose again. It's no wonder that when this bond He had known since the start of time to the most perfect love was broken, He reacted with terror and anguish. How much should we strive to get this love for ourselves and others if the alternative can fill someone as powerful and wise as Jesus with such terror? Such a huge challenge...

Finally our Psalm today tells us not to keep our emotions stored up inside us but to let them out to God. Sometimes we think that prayers in our head and heart are all God needs and they are but they aren't necessarily all we need. We've just seen Jesus shout out a prayer of desperation that could potentially cause real problems for those who heard it. And yet He did it because He needed to get that release from the fear. God doesn't want us to be obsessed with keeping it together and appearing ok. Equally, He doesn't want us to flouncing drama queens. But He has given us emotions so that we express them when we need to. If there's something on your heart that is joyful or sorrowful then shout it to God. He wants you to release it to Him.

And that's it. Onto the next one...