Contineo – the Sequel

I resisted the temptation to dive into a new set of Bible notes until the New Year began.  There is a sense in which I think God almost sighs, even yawns perhaps, when I dig these things out. I have a ticky-box gene along with all the other interesting genes.  I am not saying that quiet times are a bad thing because they are not but sometimes they can become part of a routine – something you do because you have always done it and there may be this vague idea of a bad day ahead if you don’t.  When it ceases to be life or stir your innards and becomes words just tossed about in your head maybe it’s time to do something else instead.

The opening studies are all about Nahum.  I wonder if, in heaven, there are many people that go up to Nahum and say, “I really loved your book, by the way.” Perhaps he is one of the book writers of the Bible who heaven dwellers avoid because they know they never read his book. I am reading it.

It’s about Ninevah.  When I think of Ninevah I think of Jonah and the Whale. Jonah warned the inhabitants of Ninevah about God’s coming judgement upon them.  They repented, seriously so, the king coming down from his throne and tearing his clothes, and the punishment was averted.  Jonah sat sulking for a while under a vine.  Jonah spoke his warning one hundred and fifty years before Nahum began prophesying.  You’d think that having come so close to being obliterated by God the people would have been a lot more careful about how they treated God and God’s people.  A slow slide away from honouring God over the next one hundred and fifty years led to them being told that the end was coming.  One hundred and fifty years of forgetting how close they came to destruction. There was going to be no mass repentance this time and no king climbing down from his throne.  This time there would be nothing left of them. Nahum was no Jonah. This time there would be no escape.

The name Nahum means comfort and consolation.  Nahum was not there to comfort or console the inhabitants of Ninevah.  His words of comfort and consolation were for God’s people who had been mistreated for years.

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.” Nahum 1:7

How much more comfort do you need? It must be hard to hold on to such words when life all around you seems to be saying that God isn’t good, that he can’t help you and he doesn’t care what happens to you.  Life says it.  Nahum said otherwise.  We need, sometimes, to stop listening to life and pay attention to Nahum.

There is another verse that I really connected with:-

“Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away.” Nahum 1:13

What an incredibly strong picture that presents!  The yoke broken spoke to me about release, complete and lasting. The yoke is broken so that it can’t be used again. The shackles are torn away.  They are not placed in a storage box to be taken out at a later date and put back on. God comes across as angry that His people have been enslaved.  Throughout the Old Testament God uses other nations to punish Israel for their idolatry, but when the nations he uses takes the opportunity given them to have victory over Israel and take it too far, becoming too cruel, God gets angry.

What particularly came to mind was a yoke of sickness and shackles of illness.  Many of my friends are involved in Healing on the Streets.  I saw them in my mind breaking yokes and tearing off shackles.

I shared all this in our meeting this morning.  One of my friends had been off work for quite a while struggling to overcome a virus. He needed to be back at work. A move to a lighter task in the workplace was a possibility but not guaranteed. My friend wanted his health back.

Contineo – my Latin word, “to hold together, to keep together, to connect or to join.” I had connected with a word spoken by God to Nahum. I had connected to a word about breaking yokes and tearing off shackles.  I had connected that in my mind to victory breaking a yoke of sickness.  The circuit was almost complete.  

Praying scripture is amazing.  It’s God’s word on the issue, not mine.  It’s God’s power on display, not mine.  I prayed for friend, speaking out the words of Nahum into the situation.

Yes, perhaps God sighed again.  There were no yawns this time.  The connection between His word and his healing touch had been made. 

Contineo

The adventure continues

Living in a Good Land

“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.”  (Deuteronomy 8:7-8)

I came across this verse a few weeks ago.  I was off work with a viral infection.  There used to be a time when colds lasted three days.  On the third day I would rise from the sick bed, get dressed and go back to work.  There was always a residue – a sniffley nose, perhaps, or a bit of a gravelly voice, but I could function.  These days I seem to take a little longer to bounce back.

I remember reading this verse and thinking it was so not my experience.  I wasn’t living in a good land but a very miserable one.  Bread might have been plentiful in the bread bin, but I had no appetite to eat it.

The verse became a rallying point for my spirit and I was stirred to pray.  In prayer I claimed the good land that God intended me to possess.  I claimed fruitfulness and refreshing.  I claimed abundance in every aspect of life.  I claimed wholeness and satisfaction.  I claimed enough and more to share with others.

I might have done some claiming, but nothing really changed.  I was still ill.  I was still coughing and sneezing and mopping up mucus.  Nothing in the physical world changed, but I was convinced that something in the heavenlies had changed.  I felt that a battle had been won on some higher plain.  I might have been physically done in, but in my spirit I was a victor. 

The verse became a rallying point again today.  It was nothing to do with praying for my own needs this time, but praying for others. 

Friends and family seem not to be living in a good land right now. 

I don’t have any answers to pull them out of the mire they have sunk into.  The things that work for me, don’t always work for other people because we are wired differently.   Sometimes there is nothing that I can do to physically help.  I live too far away.

So I prayed.  On their behalf I claimed fruitfulness and refreshing for them.  I claimed abundance in every aspect of their life.  I claimed wholeness and satisfaction.  I claimed that they would experience enough and more to share with others.

I remember Martin Luther King in one of his speeches declaring that the fight has been a long one and he needs some victories.  I am feeling much like that.  The battles my friends and families are fighting are not like the three day viral infections, but seemingly endless with no light at the end of a tunnel.  They need some victories.

Lord, let them see and experience the good land you have brought them into.

It's a Mystery

Joe and I went to the theatre yesterday to see a play. It was, according to the flyer we picked up earlier in the week, an “enchanting adaptation of a medieval mystery play about the beginning of everything”.

Mystery plays are plays based on Bible stories. In a medieval world where very few people could read or write, one way of teaching Bible stories was through drama. This performance included music, dance, singing and a backdrop screen with famous paintings of various Bible scenes projected on to it.

In terms of performance I would say the music was good. The harp player was excellent. A flute played a merry little tune every so often, and a cello created mood by playing a single haunting note. The singers were adequate, the dancers too – but they weren’t professionals.

As the scenes progressed – it put me in mind of my time in South Africa when we took the film “Jesus” to various outdoor venues around the black townships of Durban. We had a big screen, a projector and a generator. The film was in Zulu, so but knew the story well enough to provide my own mental dialogue.

The film wasn’t watched in silence. The audience joined in. There was a lot of hissing at snakes and bad people, and a lot of clapping for miracles performed. There were sharp intakes of breath when the nails were hammered into Jesus’ palms and there were sobs when he surrendered his spirit. I am not sure if the film took it as far as the resurrection scenes – I seem to remember not, but I am sure that there would have been some loud cheers at the empty tomb.

Then - it wasn’t s silent audience.

I have a “joining in” gene that gets switched on sometimes. Last night, I wanted to “join in”. The audience at the theatre wasn’t a big one. We were competing with the pantomime in the main theatre – so we had a select few. There might actually have been more people on stage than there were watching. I got the impression that many of the audience were friends or relatives of the people on stage, there to show solidarity. There wasn’t an invitation given openly, or not, to join in. The pantomime in the main theatre would have encouraged joining in (Oh no it wouldn’t!), but not this play.

I imagined medieval days, and being outside and the mystery plays performed to various village and town crowds. What the audience watched was familiar to them from previous years. The Bible stories they told had been told last year and the year before that. The audience knew when to hiss, clap, sob and cheer – and they were not a silent audience. Heaven and hell were realities to them. Excommunication was a threat they dreaded. They wanted to see the devil come to a sticky end and they wanted to see the saints triumph. They wanted to hear the booming voice of God.

It’s hard to imagine that there are children growing up that don’t know the full repertoire of Bible stories that I know. They are told that it’s all superstitious nonsense and that rational people don’t think believe these things any more. There may be interesting moral lessons to learn – but you can get those same messages from Harry Potter books.

I enjoyed the plays. I was not quite sure that the Authorised Version narrative helped make the message accessible. I think I saw at least one person I knew on stage. What I loved about last night was not having to read the Bible account for myself and imagine the changing scenes but watch as it played out for me.

I immersed myself in the stories and, if I couldn’t visibly join in, I did so invisibly.

Feet as Sure as a Cat's

We are into the second week of snow. There have only been two or three actual snowfalls, but with temperatures well into the minus numbers, the snow hasn’t had the chance to melt. It has just iced over.

It’s boot weather. Some people seem to wear boots well. They look fashionable in them. I look like some Siberian peasant in my boots. They are practical and for the most part keep my feet dry. I would say warm and dry, but the warm bit doesn’t really happen much without thick socks.

I have tended to wear the boots to get to work, then change into a pair of ordinary shoes. At the end of the day I change back into the boots for the homeward journey. On Thursday I couldn’t be bothered to change back into the boots, figuring the short journey through to car-park would not be difficult. I figured wrong. I minced my way to the car, taking very small baby steps, sliding everywhere.

There was an advert in one of the weekend newspapers. For a reasonable price I could have bought one-size-fits-all snow grips.

It brought to mind a Bible verse that I had read earlier in the week.

“The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just. The law of their God is in their hearts; their feet do not slip.” Psalm 37:30-31.

I quite like the way The Message puts v31:-

“His heart pumps God's Word like blood through his veins; his feet are as sure as a cat's.”

Pumping God’s word like blood through the veins is a very strong image. It’s not something you can do in a few snatched minutes here and there. It takes the physical heart less than one minute to pump blood to every cell in the body. Amazing! It seems to take a lot longer for my spirit to pump truth all around my spiritual body!

Sometimes, with my encounters with people throughout the day, I do not always feel like I am on firm ground. It is good to know that there is a way we can walk securely – with the law of God in our hearts.

If truth is being pumped into the right places – my feet will be sure as a cat’s.