Quotes for Today:
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle’s own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. by Aesop (620 BC – 560 BC), The Eagle and the Arrow
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. by Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD – 661 AD), A Hundred Sayings
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment. by Andre Maurois (1885 – 1967)
Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults. by Antisthenes (445 BC – 365 BC)
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. by Baltasar Gracian
Love your enemies; for they shall tell you all your faults. by Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn’t dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. by Bette Davis (1908 – 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. by Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)
He hasn’t an enemy in the world – but all his friends hate him. by Eddie Cantor (1892 – 1964)
Never explain–your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. by Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. by Eric Hoffer (1902 – 1983)
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid. by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)
Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall – but don’t rush to pick him up either. by Jewish Proverb
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. by John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963)
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. by John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963), Inaugural Adress, January 20, 1961
The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on. by Joseph Heller (1923 – 1999), Catch 22
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. by Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), in Christian Science
If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. by Moshe Dayan (1915 – 1981)
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. by Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. by Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
We can learn even from our enemies. by Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), Metamorphoses
Use your enemy’s hand to catch a snake. by Persian Proverb
Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy. by Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims
Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend. by Saadi (1184 – 1291)
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. by Sally Kempton
Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy. by Spike Milligan
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. by Thomas Jones (1892 – 1969)
Sermon for Today:
HOW A MAN’S CONDUCT COMES HOME TO HIM by Charles H. Spurgeon
NO. 1235 A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MAY 16TH, 1875, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man
shall be satisfied from himself.” — Proverbs 14:14.
A common principle is here laid down and declared to be equally true in
reference to two characters, who in other respects are a contrast. Men are
affected by the course which they pursue; for good or bad their own
conduct comes home to them. The backslider and the good man are very
different, but in each of them the same rule is exemplified — they are both
filled by the result of their lives. The backslider becomes filled by that
which is within him, as seen in his life, and the good man also is filled by
that which grace implants within his soul. The evil leaven in the backslider
leavens his entire being and sours his existence, while the gracious fountain
in the sanctified believer saturates his whole manhood, and baptizes his
entire life. In each case the fullness arises from that which is within the
man, and is in its nature like the man’s character; the fullness of the
backslider’s misery will come out of his own ways, and the fullness of the
good man’s content will spring out of the love of God which is shed
abroad in his heart.
The meaning of this passage will come out better if we begin with an
illustration. Here are two pieces of sponge, and we wish to fill them: you
shall place one of them in a pool of foul water, it will be filled, and filled
with that which it lies in; you shall put the other sponge into a pure crystal
stream, and it will also become full, full of the element in which it is placed.
The backslider lies asoak in the dead sea of his own ways, and the brine
fills him; the good man is plunged like a pitcher into “Siloa’s brook, which
flows hard by the oracle of God,” and the river of the water of life fills him
to the brim. A wandering heart will he filled with sorrow, and a heart
confiding in the Lord will be satisfied with joy and peace. Or take two
farmsteads; one farmer sows tares in his field, and in due time his barns are
filled therewith; another sows wheat, and his garners are stored with
precious grain. Or follow out our Lord’s parable: one builder places his
frail dwelling on the sand, and, when the tempest rages, he is swept away
in it, naturally enough; another lays deep the foundations of his house, and
sets it fast on a rock, and as an equally natural consequence he smiles upon
the storm, protected by his well-founded dwelling-place. What a man is by
sin or by grace will be the cause of his sorrow or of his satisfaction.
I. I shall take the two characters without further preface, and first let us speak awhile about THE BACKSLIDER. This is a very solemn subject, but one which it is needful to bring before the present audience, since we all have some share in it. I trust there may not be many present who are backsliders in the worst sense of the term, but very, very few among us are quite free from the charge of having backslidden, in some measure, at some time or other since conversion. Even those who sincerely love the Master sometimes wander, and we all need to take heed lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.
There are several kinds of persons who may with more or less propriety be
comprehended under the term “backsliders,” and these will each in his own
measure be filled with his own ways.
There are, first, apostates, those who unite themselves with the church of
Christ, and for a time act as if they were subjects of a real change of heart.
These persons are frequently very zealous for a season, and may become
prominent, if not eminent, in the church of God. They did run well, like
those mentioned by the apostle, but by some means they are, first of all,
hindered, and slacken their pace; after that they linger and loiter, and leave
the crown of the causeway for the side of the road. By-and-by in their
hearts they go back into Egypt and at last, finding an opportunity to return,
they break loose from all the restraints of their profession, and openly
forsake the Lord. Truly the last end of such men is worse than the first.
Judas is the great type of these pre-eminent backsliders. Judas was a
professed believer in Jesus, a follower of the Lord, a minister of the gospel,
an apostle of Christ, the trusted treasurer of the college of the apostles, and
after all turned out to be the “son of perdition” who sold his Master for
thirty pieces of silver. He ere long was filled with his own ways, for,
tormented with remorse, he threw down the blood-money he had so dearly
earned, hanged himself, and went to his own place. The story of Judas has
been written over and over again in the lives of other traitors. We have
heard of Judas as a deacon, and as an elder; we have heard Judas preach,
we have read the works of Judas the bishop, and seen Judas the missionary.
Judas sometimes continues in his profession for many years, but, sooner or
later, the true character of the man is discovered; his sin returns upon his
own head, and if he does not make an end of himself, I do not doubt but
what, even in this life, he often lives in such horrible remorse that his soul
would choose strangling rather than life. He has gathered the grapes of
Gomorrah, and he has to drink the wine; he has planted a bitter tree, and he
must eat the fruit thereof. Oh sirs, may none of you betray your Lord and
Master. God grant I never may. “Traitor! Traitor!” Shall that ever be
written across your brow? You have been baptised into the name of the
adorable Trinity, you have eaten the tokens of the Redeemer’s body and
blood, you have sung the Songs of Zion, you have stood forward to pray in
the midst of the people of God, and will you act so base a part as to betray
your Lord? Shall it ever be said of you, “Take him to the place from
whence he came, for he is a traitor?” I cannot conceive of anything more
ignominious than for a soldier to be drummed out of a regiment of Her
Majesty’s soldiers, but what must it be to be cast out of the host of God!
What must it be to be set up as the target of eternal shame and everlasting
contempt for having crucified the Lord afresh, and put him to an open
sham! How shameful will it be to be branded as an apostate from truth and
holiness, from Christ and his ways. Better never to have made a profession
than to have belied it so wretchedly, and to have it said of us, “it is
happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his
own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the
mire.” Of such John has said, “They went out from us, but they were not of
us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us:
but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all
of us.”
This title of backslider applies also to another class, not so desperate but
still most sad, of which not Judas but David may serve as the type: we refer
to backsliders who go into open sin. There are men who descend from purity to careless living, and from careless living to indulgence of the flesh,
and from indulgence of the flesh in little matters into known sin, and from
one sin to another till they plunge into uncleanness. They have been born
again, and therefore the trembling and almost extinct life within must and
shall revive and bring them to repentance: they will come back weary,
weeping, humbled, and brokenhearted, and they will be restored, but they
will never be what they were before; their voices will be hoarse, like that of
David after his crime for he never again sung so jubilantly as in his former
days. Life will be more full of trembling and trial, and manifest less of
buoyancy and joy of spirit. Broken bones make hard travelling, and even
when they are set they are very subject to shooting pains when ill weathers
are abroad. I may be addressing some of this sort this morning, and if so I
would speak with much faithful love. Dear brother, if you are now
following Jesus afar off you will, ere long, like Peter, deny him. Even
though you will obtain mercy of the Lord, yet the text will certainly be
fulfilled in you, and you will be “filled with your own ways.” As certainly
as Moses took the golden calf and ground it into powder, and then mixed it
with the water which the sinful Israelites had to drink, till they all tasted the
grit in their mouths, so will the Lord do with you if you are indeed his
child: he will take your idol of sin and grind it to powder, and your life
shall be made bitter with it for years to come. When the gall and
wormwood are most manifest in the cup of life it will be a mournful thing
to feel “I procured this unto myself by my shameful folly.” O Lord, hold
thou us up, and keep us from fulling belittle and little, lest we plunge into
overt sin and continue in it for a season; for surely the anguish which
comes of such an evil is terrible as death itself. If David could rise from his
grave and appear before you with his face seamed with sorrow and his
brow wrinkled with his many griefs, he would say to you “keep your hearts
with all diligence, lest ye bring woe upon yourselves. Watch unto prayer,
and guard against the beginnings of sin lest your bones wax old through
your roarings, and your moisture be turned into the drought of summer.” O
beware of a wandering heart, for it will be an awful thing to be filled with
your own backslidings.
But there is a third sort of backsliding, and I am afraid a very large number
of us have at times come under the title — I mean those who in any
measure or degree, even for a very little time, decline from the point
which they have reached. Perhaps such a man hardly ought to be called a
backslider, because it is not his predominant character, yet he backslides. If he does not believe as firmly, and love as intensely, and serve as zealously
as he formerly did, he has in a measure backslidden, and any measure of
backsliding, be it less or be it more, is sinful, and will in proportion as it is
real backsliding fill us with our own ways. If you only sow two or three
seeds of the thistle there will not be so many of the ill weeds on your farm
as if you had emptied out a whole sack, but still there will be enough and
more than enough. Every little backsliding, as men call it, is a great
mischief; every little going back even in heart from God, if it never comes
to words or deeds, yet will involve us in some measure of sorrow. If sin
were clean removed from us sorrow would be removed also, in fact we
should be in heaven, since a state of perfect holiness must involve perfect
blessedness. Sin, in any degree, will bear its own fruit, and that fruit will be
sure to set our teeth on edge; it is ill therefore to be a backslider even in the
least degree.
Having said so much, let me now continue to think of the last two kinds of
backsliders, and leave out the apostate. Let us first read his name, and then
let us read his history, we have both in our text.
The first part of his name is “backslider.” He is not a back runner, nor a
back leaper, but a backslider, that is to say he slides back with an easy,
effortless motion, softly, quietly, perhaps unsuspected by himself or
anybody else. The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You
cannot slide up, nay, you have to cut every step with an ice axe; only with
incessant labor in cutting and chipping can you make any progress; you
need a guide to help you, and you are not safe unless you are fastened to
the guide, for you may slip into a crevasse. Nobody ever slides lip, but if
great care be not taken they will slide down, slide back, or in other words
backslide This is very easily done. If you want to know how to backslide,
the answer is leave off going forward and you will slide backward, cease
going upward and you will go downward of necessity, for stand still you
never can. To lead us to backslide, Satan acts with us as engineers do with
a road down the mountains side. If they desire to carry the road from
yonder alp right down into the valley far below, they never think of making
the road plunge over a precipice, or straight down the face of the rock, for
nobody would ever use such a road; but the road makers wind and twist.
See, the track descends very gently to the right, you can hardly see that it
does run downwards; anon it turns to the left with a small incline, and so,
by turning this way and then that, the traveler finds himself in the vale
below. Thus the crafty enemy of souls fetches saints down from their high places; whenever he gets a good man down it is usually by slow degrees.
Now and then, by sudden opportunity and strong temptation, the Christian
man has been plunged right from the pinnacle of the temple into the
dungeon of despair in a moment, but it is not often the case; the gentle
decline is the devil’s favourite piece of engineering, and he manages it with
amazing skill. The soul scarcely knows it is going down, it seems to be
maintaining the even tenor of its way, but ere long it is far below the line of
peace and consecration. Our dear brother, Dr. Arnot, of the Free Church,
illustrates this very beautifully by supposing a balance. This is the heavy
scale loaded with seeds, and the other is high in the air. One morning you
are very much surprised to find that what had been the heavier scale is
aloft, while the other has descended. You do not understand it till you
discover that certain little insects had silently transferred the seeds one by
one. At first they made no apparent change, by-and-bye there was a little
motion, one more little seed was laid in the scales and the balance turned in
a moment. Thus silently the balance of a man’s soul may be affected, and
everything made ready for that one temptation by which the fatal turn is
made, and the man becomes an open transgressor. Apparently insignificant
agencies may gradually convey our strength from the right side to the
wrong by grains and half-grains, till at last the balance is turned in the
actual life and we are no more fit to be numbered with the visible saints of
God.
Think again of this man’s name. He is a “backslider,” but what from? He is
a man who knows the sweetness of the things of God and yet leaves off
feeding upon them. He is one who has been favored to wait at the Lord’s
own table, and yet he deserts his honorable post, backslides from the things
which he has known, and felt, and tasted, and handled, and rejoiced in —
things that are the priceless gifts of God. He is a backslider from the
condition in which he has enjoyed a heaven below; he is a backslider from
the love of him who bought him with his blood; he slides back from the
wounds of Christ, from the works of the Eternal Spirit, from the crown of
life which hangs over his head, and from a familiar intercourse with God
which angels might envy him. Had he not been so highly favored he could
not have been so basely wicked. O fool and slow of heart to slide froth
wealth to poverty, from health to disease, from liberty to bondage, front
light to darkness; from the love of God, from abiding in Christ, and from
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost into lukewarmness, worldliness, and sin. The text, however, gives the man’s name at greater length, “The backslider
in heart.” Now the heart is the fountain of evil. A man need not be a
backslider in action to get the text fulfilled in him, he need only be a
backslider in heart. All backsliding begins within, begins with the heart’s
growing lukewarm, begins with the love of Christ being less powerful in
the soul. Perhaps you think that so long as backsliding is confined to the
heart it does not matter much; but consider for a minute, and you will
confess your error. If you went to your physician and said, “Sir, I feel a
severe pain in my body,” would you feel comforted if he replied “There is
no local cause for your suffering, it arises entirely from disease of the
heart”? Would you not be far more alarmed than before? A case is serious
indeed when it involves the heart. The heart is hard to reach and difficult to
understand, and moreover it is so powerful over the rest of the system, and
has such power to injure all the members of the body, that a disease in the
heart is an injury to a vital organ, a pollution of the springs of life. A
wound there is a thousand wounds, a complicated wounding of all the
members a stroke. Look ye well then to your hearts, and pray, “O Lord
cleanse thou the secret parts of our spirit and preserve us to thy eternal
kingdom and glory!”
Now let us read this man’s history — “he shall be filled with his own
ways.” From which it is clear that he falls into ways of his own. When he
was in his right state he followed the Lord’s ways, he delighted himself in
the law of the Lord, and he gave him the desire of his heart; but now he has
ways of his own, which he prefers to the ways of God. And what comes of
this perverseness? Does he prosper? No; he is before long filled with his
own ways; we will see what that means.
The first kind of fullness with his own ways is absorption in his carnal
pursuits. He has not much time to spend upon religion; he has other things
to attend to. If you speak to him of the deep things of God he is weary of
you, and even of the daily necessaries of godliness he has no care to hear
much, except at service time. He has his business to see to, or he has to go
out to a dinner party, or a few friends are coming to spend the evening: in
any case, his answer to you is “I pray thee have me excused.” Now, this
pre-occupation with trifles is always mischievous, for when the soul is
filled with chaff there is no room left for wheat; when all your mind is
taken up with frivolities, the weighty matters of eternity cannot enter.
Many professed Christians spend far too much time in amusements, which
they call recreation, but which, I fear, is far rather a redestruction than a recreation. The pleasures, cares, pursuits, and ambitions of the world swell
in the heart when they once enter, and by-and-bye they fill it completely.
Like the young cuckoo in the sparrow’s nest, worldliness grows and grows
and tries its best to cast out the true owner of the heart. Whatever your
soul is full of, if it be not full of Christ, it is in an evil case.
Then backsliders generally proceed a stage further, and become full of their
own ways by beginning to pride themselves upon their condition and to
glory in their shame. Not that they really are satisfied at heart, on the
contrary, they have a suspicion that things are not quite as they ought to
be, and therefore they put on a bold front, and try to deceive themselves
and others. It is rather dangerous to tell them of their faults, for they will
not accept your rebuke, but will defend themselves, and even carry the war
into your camp. They will say, “Ah, you are puritanical, strict and straight-laced, and your manners and ways do mischief rather than good.” They would not bring up their children as you do yours, so they say. Their
mouths are very full because their hearts are empty, and they talk very
loudly in defense of themselves, because their conscience has been making
a great stir within them. They call sinful pleasure a little unbending of the
bow, greed is prudence, covetousness is economy, and dishonesty is
cleverness. It is dreadful to think that men who know better should attempt
thus to excuse themselves. Generally the warmest defender of a sinful
practice is the man who has the most qualms of conscience about it. He
himself knows that he is not living as he should, but he does not intend to
cave in just yet, nor at all if he can help it. He is filled with his ways in a
boasted self-content as to them.
Ere long this fullness reaches another stage, for if the backslider is a
gracious man at all, he encounters chastisement, and that from a rod of his
own making. A considerable time elapses before you can eat bread of your
own growing: the ground must be ploughed and sown, and the wheat has
to come up, to ripen and to be reaped, and threshed and ground in the mill,
and the dour must be kneaded and baked in the oven; but the bread comes
to the table and is eaten at last. Even so the backslider must eat of the fruit
of his own ways. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.” Now look at the backslider eating the fruit
of his ways. He neglected prayer, and when he tries to pray he cannot; his
powers of desire, emotion, faith, and entreaty have failed; he kneels awhile,
but he cannot pray; the Spirit of supplications is grieved, and no longer
helps his infirmities. He reaches down his Bible; he commences to read a chapter, but he has disregarded the word of God so long that he finds it to
be more like a dead letter than a living voice, though it used to be a sweet
book before he became a backslider. The minister, too, is altered; he used
to hear him with delight; but now the poor preacher has lost all his early
power, so the backslider thinks. Other people do not think so, the place is
just as crowded, there are as many saints edified and sinners saved as
before; but the wanderer in heart began criticizing, and now he is entangled
in the habit, and he criticises every thing, but never feeds upon the truth at
all. Like a madman at table he puts his fork into the morsel and holds it up,
looks at it, finds fault with it, and throws in on the floor. Nor does he act
better towards the saints in whose company he once delighted; they are
dull society and he shuns them. Of all the things which bear upon his
spiritual life he is weary, he has trifled with them, and now he cannot enjoy
them. Hear him sing, or rather sigh —
“Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love thy house of prayer;
I sometimes go where others go,
But find no comfort there.”
How can it be otherwise? He is drinking water out of his own cistern and
eating the bread of which he sowed the corn some years ago. His ways
have come home to him.
Chastisement also comes out of his conduct in other ways. He was very
worldly and gave gay parties, and his girls have grown up and grieved him
by their conduct. He himself went into sin, and now that his sons outdo his
example, what can he say? Can he wonder at anything? Look at David’s
case. David felt into a gross sin, and soon Amnon his son rivalled him in
iniquity. He murdered Uriah the Hittite, and Absalom murdered his brother
Amnon. He rebelled against God, and lo, Absalom lifted up the standard of
revolt against him. He disturbed the relationships of another man’s family
in a disgraceful manner, and behold his own family rent in pieces, and never
restored to peace; so that even when he lay a-dying he had to say, “My
house is not so with God.” He was filled with his own ways, and it always
will be so, even if the sin be forgotten. If you have sent forth a dove or a
raven from the ark of your soul, it will come back to you just as you sent it
out. May God save us from being backsliders lest the smooth current of
our life should twin into a raging torrent of woe.
The fourth stage, blessed be God, is at length reached by gracious men and
women, and what a mercy it is they ever do reach it! At last they become
filled with their own ways in another sense; namely, satiated and
dissatisfied, miserable and discontented. They sought the world and they
gained it, but now it has lost all charms to them. They went after other
lovers, but these deceivers have been false to them, and they wring their
hands and say, “Oh that I could return to my first husband for it was better
with me then than now.” Many have lived at a distance from Jesus Christ,
but now they can bear it no longer; they cannot be happy till they return.
Hear them cry in the language of the fifty-first psalm, “Restore unto me the
joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” But, I tell you,
they cannot get back very easily. It is hard to retrace your steps from
backsliding, even if it be but a small measure of it; but to get back from
great wanderings is hard indeed, much harder than going over the road the
first time. I believe that if the mental sufferings of some returning
backsliders could be written and faithfully published they would astound
you, and be a more horrible story to read than all the torments of the
Inquisition. What racks a man is stretched upon who has been unfaithful to
his covenant with God! What fires have burned within the souls of those
men who have been untrue to Christ and his cause! That dungeons, what
grin and dark prisons under ground have saints of God lain in who have
gone aside into By-path meadow instead of keeping to the king’s highway.
Their sighs and cries, for which after all they have learned to be thankful,
are dolorous and terrible to listen to, and make us learn that he who sins
must smart, and especially if he be a child of God, for the Lord has said of
his people, “you only have I known of all the people of the earth, therefore
I will punish you for your iniquities.” Whoever may go unchastised, a child
of God never shall: the Lord will let his adversaries do a thousand things
and not punish them in this life, since he reserves vengeance for them in the
life to come, but as for his own children, they cannot sin without being
visited with strikes.
Beloved friends, let all go straight away to the cross at once for fear we
should be backsliders —
“Come, let us to the Lord our God
With contrite hearts return
Our God is gracious, nor will leave
The penitent to mourn.”
Let us confess every degree and form of backsliding, every wandering of
heart, every decline of love, every wavering of faith, every flagging of zeal,
every dulness of desire, every failure of confidence. Behold, the Lord says
unto us, “Return”; therefore let us return. Even if we be not backsliders it
will do us no hurt to come to the cross as penitents, indeed, it is well to
abide there evermore. O Spirit of the living God, preserve us in believing
penitence all our days.
II. I have but little time for the second part. Excuse me therefore if I do not attempt to go into it very deeply. As it is true of the backslider that he grows at last full of that which is within him and his wickedness, is true also of THE CHRISTIAN that in pursuing the paths of righteousness and the way of faith, he becomes filled and contented too. That which grace has placed within him fills him in due time.
Here then we have the good man’s name and history.
Notice first, his name. It is a very remarkable thing that as a backslider if
you call out his name will not as a rule answer to it, even so a good man
will not acknowledge the title here assigned him. Where is the good man?
Know that every man here who is right before God will pass the question
on, saying, “There is none good save One, that is God.” The good man will
also question my text and say “I cannot feel satisfied with myself.” No,
dear friend, but mind you read the words aright. It does not say “satisfied
with himself,” no truly good man ever was self-satisfied, and when any talk
as if they are self-satisfied it is time to doubt whether they know much
about the matter. All the good men I have ever met with have always
wanted to be better; they have longed for something higher than as yet they
have reached. They would not own to it that they were satisfied, and they
certainly were by no means satisfied with themselves. The text does not say
that they are, but it says something that reads so much like it that care is
needed. Now, if I should seem to say this morning that a good man looks
within and is quite satisfied with what he finds there, please let me say at
once, I mean nothing of the sort. I should like to say exactly what the text
means, but I do not know quite whether I shall manage to do it, except you
will help me by not misunderstanding me, even if there should be a strong
temptation to do so. Here is the good man’s history, he is “satisfied from
himself,” but first I must read his name again, though he does not own to
it, what is he good for? He says, “good for nothing,” but in truth he is
good for much when the Lord uses him. Remember that he is good because the Lord has made him over again by the Holy Spirit. Is not that
good which God makes? When he created nature at the first he said of all
things that they were very good; how could they be otherwise, since he
made them? So in the new creation a new heart and right spirit are from
God, and must be good. Where there is grace in the heart the grace is good
and makes the heart good. A man who has the righteousness of Jesus, and
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is good in the sight of God.
A good man is on the side of good. If I were to ask, who is on the side of
good? we would not pass on that question. No, we would step out and say
“I am. I am not all I ought to be, or wish to be, but I am on the side of
justice, truth, and holiness; I would live to promote goodness, and even die
rather than become the advocate of evil.” And what is the man who loves
that which is good? Is he evil? I trow not. He who truly loves that which is
good must be in a measure good himself. Who is he that strives to be good,
and groans and sighs over his failures, yea and rules his daily life by the
laws of God? Is he not one of the world’s best men? I trust without self-righteousness the grace of God has made some of us good in this sense, for what the Spirit of God has made is good, and if in Christ Jesus we are new
creatures, we cannot contradict Solomon, nor criticize the Bible if it calls
such persons good, though we dare not call ourselves good.
Now, a good man’s history is this, “He is satisfied from himself.”
That means first, that he is independent of outward circumstances. He does
not derive satisfaction from his birth, or honors, or properties; but that
which fills him with content is within himself. Our hymn puts it so truly —
“I need not go abroad for joys,
I have a feast at home,
My sighs are turned into songs,
My heart has ceased to roam.
Down from above the blessed Dove
Is come into my breast,
To witness thine eternal love
And give my spirit rest.”
Other men must bring music from abroad if they have any, but in the
gracious man’s bosom there lives a little bird that sings sweetly to him. He
has a flower in his own garden more sweet than any he could buy in the
market or find in the king’s palace. He may be poor, but still he would not
change his estate in the kingdom of heaven for all the grandeur of the rich.
His joy and peace are not even dependent upon the health of his body, he is
often well in soul when sick as to his flesh; he is frequently full of pain and
yet perfectly satisfied. He may carry about with him an incurable disease
which he knows will shorten and eventually end his life, but he does not
look to this poor life for satisfaction, he carries that within him which
creates immortal joy: the love of God shed abroad in his soul by the Holy
Ghost yields a perfume sweeter than the flowers of Paradise. The
fulfillment of the text is partly found in the fact that the good man is
independent of his surroundings.
And he is also independent of the praise of others. The backslider keeps
easy because the minister thinks well of him and Christian friends think well
of him, but the genuine Christian who is living near to God thinks little of
the verdict of men. What other people think of him is not his chief concern;
he is sure that he is a child of God, he knows he can say, “Abba, Father,”
he glories that for him to live is Christ, and to die is gain, and therefore he
does not need the approbation of others to buoy up his confidence. He runs
alone, and does not need, like a weakly child, to be carried in arms. He
knows whom he has believed, and his heart rests in Jesus; thus he is
satisfied, not from other people and from their judgment, but “from
himself.”
Then, again, the Christian man is content with the well of upbringing water
of life which the Lord has placed within him. There, my brethren, up on the
everlasting hills is the divine reservoir of all-sufficient grace, and down here
in our bosom is a spring which bubbles up unto everlasting life. It has been
welling up in some of us these five and-twenty years, but why is it so? The
grand secret is that there is an unbroken connection between the little
spring within the renewed breast and that vast unfathomed fount of God,
and because of this the well-spring never fails; in summer it still continues
to flow. And now if you ask me it I am dissatisfied with the spring within
my soul which is fed by the all-sufficiency of God, I reply, no, I ant not. If
you could by any possibility cut the connection between my soul and my
Lord I should despair altogether, but as long as none can separate me from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, I am satisfied and at
rest. Like Naphtali we are “satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of
the Lord.”
Faith is in the good man’s heart and he is satisfied with what faith brings
him, for it conveys to him the perfect pardon of his sin. Faith brings him nearer to Christ. Faith brings him adoption into the family of God. Faith
secures him conquest over temptation. Faith procures for him everything
he requires. He finds that by believing he has all the blessings of the
covenant daily to enjoy. Well may he be satisfied with such an enriching
grace. The just shall live by faith.
In addition to faith, he has another filling grace called hope, which reveals
to him the world to come, and gives him assurance that when he falls
asleep he will sleep in Jesus, and that when he awakes he will arise in the
likeness of Jesus. Hope delights him with the promise that his body shall
rise, and that in his flesh he shall see God. This hope of his sets the pearly
gates wide open before him, reveals the streets of gold, and makes kiln
hear the music of the celestial harpers. Surely a man may well be satisfied
with this.
The godly heart is also satisfied with what love brings him; for love though
it seem but a gentle maid, is strong as a giant, and becomes in some
respects the most potent of all the graces. Love first opens wide herself like
the flowers in the sunshine, and drinks in the love of God, and then she
joys in God and begins to sing: —
“I am so glad that Jesus loves me.”
She loves Jesus, and there is such an interchange of delight between the
love of her soul to Christ and the love of Christ to her, that heaven itself
can scarce be sweeter. He who knew this deep mysterious love will be
more than filled with it, he will need to be enlarged to hold the bliss which
it creates. The love of Jesus is known, but yet it passeth knowledge. It fills
the entire man, so that he has no room for the idolatrous love of the
creature, he is satisfied from himself, and asks no other joy.
Beloved, when the good man is enabled by divine grace to live in
obedience to God, he must, as a necessary consequence, enjoy peace of
mind. His hope is alone fixed on Jesus, but a life which evidences his
possession of salvation casts many a sweet ingredient into his cup. He who
takes the yoke of Christ upon him and learns of him finds rest unto his
soul. When we keep his commandments we consciously enjoy his love,
which we could not do if we walked in opposition to his will. To know that
you have acted from a pure motive, to know that you have done the right
is a grand means of full content. What matters the frown of foes or the
prejudice of friends, if the testimony of a good conscience is heard within? We dare not rely upon our own works, neither have we had a desire or
need to do so, for our Lord Jesus has saved us everlastingly; still, “Our
rejoicing is this, the testimony our conscience, that in simplicity and godly
sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had
our conversation in the world.”
The Christian needs to maintain unbroken fellowship with Jesus, his Lord,
if he would be good as a soldier of Christ, but if his communion be broken
his satisfaction will depart. If Jesus be within we shall be satisfied from
within, but not else; if our fellowship with him be kept up, and it may be
from day to day, and month to month, and year to year (and why should it
ever be snapped at all), then the satisfaction will continue, and the soul will
continue to be full even to the brim with the bliss which God alone can
give. If we are by the Holy Spirit made to be abundant in labor or patient in
suffering, if, in a word, we resign ourselves fully up to God, we shall find a
fullness of his grace placed within ourselves. An enemy compared some of
us to cracked vessels, and we may humbly accept the description. We do
find it difficult to retain good things, they run away from our leaking
pitchers; but I will tell how a cracked pitcher can be kept continually full.
Put it in the bottom of an ever-flowing river, and it must be full. Even so
though we are leaking and broken, if we abide in the love of Christ we shall
be filled with his fullness. Such an experience is possible; we may be
“Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea,
And lost in his immensity,”
Then we shall be full, full to running over; as the Psalmist says “my cup
runneth over.” The man who walls in God’s ways, obediently resting
wholly upon Christ, looking for all his supplies to the great eternal deeps,
that is the man who will be filled, filled with the very things which he has
chosen for his own, filled with those things which are his daily delight and
desire. Well may the faithful believer be filled, for he has eternity to fill him
— The Lord has loved him with an everlasting love; — there is the eternity
past: “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my
covenant shall not depart from thee” — there is the eternity to come. He
has infinity, yea the infinite One himself, for the Father is his Father, the
Son is his Savior, the Spirit of God dwells within him — the Trinity may
well fill the heart of man. The believer has omnipotence to fill him, for all
power is given unto Christ, and of that power Christ will give to us
according as we have need. Living in Christ and hanging upon him from day to day, beloved, we shall have a “peace of God which passeth all
understanding to keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” May we
enjoy this peace and magnify the name of the Lord for ever and ever.
Amen.
Hymn for Today:
“Jesus Calls Us” by Cecil Frances Alexander, 1818-1895
1. Jesus calls us o’er the tumult
of our life’s wild, restless sea;
day by day his sweet voice soundeth,
saying, “Christian, follow me!”
2. As of old the apostles heard it
by the Galilean lake,
turned from home and toil and kindred,
leaving all for Jesus’ sake.
3. Jesus calls us from the worship
of the vain world’s golden store,
from each idol that would keep us,
saying, “Christian, love me more!”
4. In our joys and in our sorrows,
days of toil and hours of ease,
still he calls, in cares and pleasures,
“Christian, love me more than these!”
5. Jesus calls us! By thy mercies,
Savior, may we hear thy call,
give our hearts to thine obedience,
serve and love thee best of all.
Through the Bible in One Year:
! Samuel 21 to 30
1 David then got up and left, and Jonathan went back to the town.
2 David then went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech came out trembling to meet David and said, ‘Why are you alone? Why is nobody with you?’
3 David replied to Ahimelech the priest, ‘The king has given me an order and said to me, “Do not let anyone know anything about the mission on which I am sending you, or about the order which I have given you.” I have arranged to meet the guards at such and such a place.
4 Meanwhile, if you have five loaves of bread to hand, give them to me, or whatever there is.’
5 The priest replied to David, ‘I have no ordinary bread to hand; there are only consecrated loaves of permanent offering — provided that the men have kept themselves from women?’
6 David replied to the priest, ‘Certainly, women have been forbidden to us, as always when I set off on a campaign. The men’s things are clean. Though this is a profane journey, they are certainly clean today as far as their things are concerned.’
7 The priest then gave him what had been consecrated, for the only bread there was the loaves of permanent offering, which is taken out of Yahweh’s presence, to be replaced by warm bread on the day when it is removed.
8 Now one of Saul’s servants happened to be there that day, detained in Yahweh’s presence; his name was Doeg the Edomite and he was the strongest of Saul’s shepherds.
9 David then said to Ahimelech, ‘Have you no spear or sword here to hand? I did not bring either my sword or my weapons with me, because the king’s business was urgent.’
10 The priest replied, ‘The sword of Goliath the Philistine whom you killed in the Valley of the Terebinth is here, wrapped in a piece of clothing behind the ephod; if you care to take it, do so, for that is the only one here.’ David said, ‘There is nothing like that one; give it to me.’
11 David journeyed on and that day fled out of Saul’s reach, going to Achish king of Gath.
12 Achish’s servants said to him, ‘Is not this David, the king of the country? Was it not of him that they sang as they danced: Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands?’
13 David pondered on these words and became very frightened of Achish king of Gath.
14 When their eyes were on him, he played the madman and, when they held him, he feigned lunacy. He drummed his feet on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
15 Achish said to his servants, ‘You can see that this man is mad. Why bring him to me?
16 Have I not enough madmen, without your bringing me this one to weary me with his antics? Is he to join my household?’
1 David left there and took refuge in the Cave of Adullam; his brothers and his father’s whole family heard this and joined him there.
2 All those in distress, all those in debt, all those who had a grievance, gathered round him and he became their leader. There were about four hundred men with him.
3 From there David went to Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, ‘Allow my father and mother to stay with you until I know what God intends to do for me.’
4 He left them with the king of Moab and there they stayed all the time that David was in the stronghold.
5 The prophet Gad, however, said to David, ‘Do not stay in the stronghold; leave and make your way into the territory of Judah.’ David then left and went to the forest of Hereth.
6 When Saul heard that David and the men with him had been discovered, Saul was at Gibeah, seated under the tamarisk on the high place, spear in hand, with all his staff standing round him.
7 ‘Listen, Benjaminites!’ said Saul to them, ‘Is the son of Jesse going to give you all fields and vineyards and make all of you commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds
8 that you all conspire against me? No one warned me when my son made a pact with the son of Jesse; none of you felt sorry for me or warned me when my son incited my servant to become my enemy, as he is now.’
9 Then, up spoke Doeg the Edomite, who was in command of Saul’s staff, ‘I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech son of Ahitub.
10 That man consulted Yahweh on his behalf, gave him provisions and also the sword of Goliath the Philistine.’
11 The king then sent for the priest Ahimelech son of Ahitub and his whole family, the priests of Nob; they all came to the king.
12 Saul said, ‘Now listen, son of Ahitub!’ He replied, ‘Here I am, my lord.’
13 ‘Why have you conspired against me,’ said Saul, ‘you and the son of Jesse, giving him bread and a sword and consulting God on his behalf, for him to rebel against me as is now the case?’
14 Ahimelech replied to the king, ‘Of all those in your service, who is more loyal than David son-in-law to the king, captain of your bodyguard, honoured in your household?
15 Was today the first time I ever consulted God on his behalf? Indeed it was not! The king has no grounds for bringing any charge against his servant or against his whole family, for your servant knew nothing whatever about all this.’
16 The king retorted, ‘You must die, Ahimelech, you and your whole family.’
17 The king said to the scouts who were standing round him, ‘Forward! and put the priests of Yahweh to death, for they too are on David’s side, they knew that he was escaping, yet did not warn me of it.’ The king’s professional soldiers, however, would not lift a hand to strike the priests of Yahweh.
18 The king then said to Doeg, ‘Forward, you! Fall on the priests!’ Doeg the Edomite stepped forward and fell on the priests, himself that day killing eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod.
19 Nob, the town of the priests, Saul put to the sword: men and women, children and infants, cattle, donkeys and sheep.
20 One son of Ahimelech son of Ahitub alone escaped. His name was Abiathar, and he fled away to join David.
21 When Abiathar told David that Saul had slaughtered the priests of Yahweh,
22 David said to Abiathar, ‘I knew, that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would be sure to inform Saul. I am responsible for the death of all your kinsmen.
23 Stay with me, do not be afraid, for he who seeks your life seeks mine; you will be safe with me.’
1 News was then brought to David, ‘The Philistines are besieging Keilah and plundering the threshing-floors’.
2 David consulted Yahweh, ‘Shall I go and fight these Philistines?’ Yahweh replied to David, ‘Go and fight the Philistines and save Keilah.’
3 But David’s men said to him, ‘We are already afraid here in Judah; how much more, then, if we go to Keilah to fight the Philistine troops!’
4 So David consulted Yahweh again and Yahweh replied, ‘Be on your way; go down to Keilah, since I shall give the Philistines into your power.’
5 So David and his men went to Keilah and fought the Philistines and carried off their cattle and inflicted a great defeat on them. Thus David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.
6 When Abiathar son of Ahimelech took refuge with David, he went down to Keilah with the ephod in his hand.
7 When word was brought to Saul that David had gone to Keilah he said, ‘God has delivered him into my power: he has trapped himself by going into a town with gates and bars.’
8 Saul called all the people to arms, to go down to Keilah and besiege David and his men.
9 David, however, was aware that Saul was plotting evil against him, and said to Abiathar the priest, ‘Bring the ephod.’
10 David said, ‘Yahweh, God of Israel, your servant has heard that Saul is preparing to come to Keilah and destroy the town because of me.
11 Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? Yahweh, God of Israel, I beg you, let your servant know.’ Yahweh replied, ‘He will come down.’
12 David then went on to ask, ‘Will the notables of Keilah hand me and my men over to Saul?’ Yahweh replied, ‘They will hand you over.’
13 At this, David made off with his men, about six hundred in number; they left Keilah and went where they could. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he abandoned the expedition.
14 David stayed in the desert, in the strongholds; he stayed in the mountains, in the desert of Ziph; Saul kept looking for him day after day, but God did not deliver him into his power.
15 David was aware that Saul had mounted an expedition to take his life. David was then at Horesh in the desert of Ziph.
16 Jonathan son of Saul set off and went to David at Horesh and encouraged him in the name of God.
17 ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said, ‘for my father Saul’s hand will not reach you. You are to reign over Israel, and I shall be second to you. Saul my father is himself aware of this.’
18 And the two made a pact before Yahweh. David stayed at Horesh and Jonathan went home.
19 Some men from Ziph then went up to Saul at Gibeah and said, ‘Look, David is hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh, on the Hill of Hachilah to the south of the wastelands.
20 Now whenever you wish to go down, my lord king, do so; we shall make it our task to hand him over to the king.’
21 Saul replied, ‘May you be blessed by Yahweh for sympathising with me.
22 Go and make doubly sure, find out exactly what place he frequents, for I have been told that he is very cunning.
23 Take careful note of all the hiding places where he lurks, and come back to me when you are certain. I shall then come with you and, if he is in the country, I shall track him down through every clan in Judah!’
24 Setting off they went to Ziph ahead of Saul. Meanwhile, David and his men were in the desert of Maon, in the plain to the south of the wastelands.
25 When Saul and his men set out in search, David was told and went down to the gorge running through the desert of Maon.
26 Saul and his men proceeded along one side of the mountain, David and his men along the other. David was hurrying to escape from Saul, while Saul and his men were trying to cross over to David and his men’s side, to capture them,
27 when a messenger came to Saul and said, ‘Come at once, the Philistines have invaded the country.’
28 So Saul broke off his pursuit of David and went to oppose the Philistines. That is why the place is called the Gorge of Separations.
1 From there David went up and installed himself in the strongholds of En-Gedi.
2 Once Saul was back from pursuing the Philistines, he was told, ‘David is now in the desert of En-Gedi.’
3 Saul thereupon took three thousand men selected from all Israel and went in search of David and his men east of the Rocks of the Mountain Goats.
4 He came to the sheepfolds along the route, where there was a cave, and went in to cover his feet. Now David and his men were sitting in the recesses of the cave;
5 David’s men said to him, ‘Today is the day of which Yahweh said to you, “I shall deliver your enemy into your power; do what you like with him.” ‘ David got up and, unobserved, cut off the border of Saul’s cloak.
6 Afterwards David reproached himself for having cut off the border of Saul’s cloak.
7 He said to his men, ‘Yahweh preserve me from doing such a thing to my lord as to raise my hand against him, since he is Yahweh’s anointed.’
8 By these words David restrained his men and would not let them attack Saul.
9 Saul then left the cave and went on his way. After this, David too left the cave and called after Saul, ‘My lord king!’ Saul looked behind him and David, bowing to the ground, prostrated himself.
10 David then said to Saul, ‘Why do you listen to people who say, “David intends your ruin”?
11 This very day you have seen for yourself how Yahweh put you in my power in the cave and how, refusing to kill you, I spared you saying, “I will not raise my hand against my lord, since he is Yahweh’s anointed.”
12 Look, father, look at the border of your cloak in my hand. Since, although I cut the border off your cloak, I did not kill you, surely you realise that I intend neither mischief nor crime. I have not wronged you, and yet you hunt me down to take my life.
13 May Yahweh be judge between me and you, and may Yahweh avenge me on you; but I shall never lay a hand on you!
14 (As the old proverb says: Wickedness comes out of wicked people, but I shall never lay a hand on you!)
15 On whose trail is the king of Israel campaigning? Whom are you pursuing? On the trail of a dead dog, of a flea!
16 May Yahweh be the judge and decide between me and you; may he examine and defend my cause and give judgement for me by rescuing me from your clutches!’
17 When David had finished saying this to Saul, Saul said, ‘Is that your voice, my son David?’ And Saul began to weep aloud.
18 ‘You are upright and I am not,’ he said to David, ‘since you have behaved well to me, whereas I have behaved badly to you.
19 And today you have shown how well you have behaved to me, since Yahweh had put me in your power but you did not kill me.
20 When a man comes on his enemy, does he let him go unmolested? May Yahweh reward you for the good you have done me today!
21 Now I know that you will indeed reign and that the sovereignty in Israel will pass into your hands.
22 Now swear to me by Yahweh that you will not suppress my descendants once I am gone, or blot my name out of my family.’
23 This David swore to Saul, and Saul went home while David and his men went back to the stronghold.
1 Samuel died and all Israel assembled to mourn for him. They buried him at his home in Ramah. David then set off and went down to the desert of Maon.
2 Now, there was a man in Maon whose business was at Carmel; the man was very rich: he owned three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was then at Carmel, having his sheep shorn.
3 The man’s name was Nabal and his wife’s Abigail. She was a woman of intelligence and beauty, but the man was miserly and churlish. He was a Calebite.
4 When David heard in the desert that Nabal was at his sheepshearing,
5 he sent ten men off, having said to them, ‘Go up to Carmel, visit Nabal and greet him from me.
6 And this is what you are to say to my brother, “Peace to you, peace to your family, peace to all that is yours!
7 I hear that you now have the shearers; your shepherds were with us recently: we did not molest them, nor did they lose anything all the while they were at Carmel.
8 Ask your young men and they will tell you. I hope that you will give the men a welcome, coming as we do on a festival. Whatever you have to hand please give to your servants and to your son David.” ‘
9 David’s men went and said all this to Nabal for David, and waited.
10 Nabal retorted to the men in David’s service, ‘Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?
11 There are many servants nowadays who run away from their masters. Am I to take my bread and my wine and the meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men who come from I know not where?’
12 David’s men turned on their heels and went back, and on their arrival told him exactly what had been said.
13 David then said to his men, ‘Every man buckle on his sword!’ And they buckled on their swords, and David buckled on his too; about four hundred followed David while two hundred stayed with the baggage.
14 Now one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife. He said, ‘David sent messengers from the desert to greet our master, but he flared up at them.
15 Now, these men were very good to us; they did not molest us and we lost nothing all the time we had anything to do with them while we were out in the country.
16 Night and day, they were like a rampart to us, all the time we were with them, minding the sheep.
17 So now make up your mind what you should do, for the ruin of our master and his whole family is a certainty, and he is such a brute that no one can say a word to him.’
18 Abigail hastily took two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep ready prepared, five measures of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs and loaded them on donkeys.
19 She said to her servants, ‘Go on ahead, I shall follow you’ — but she did not tell her husband Nabal.
20 As she was riding her donkey down behind a fold in the mountain, David and his men happened to be coming down in her direction; and she met them.
21 Now, David had decided, ‘It was a waste of time my guarding all this man’s property in the desert so that he lost nothing at all! He has repaid me bad for good.
22 May God bring unnameable ills on David and worse ones, too, if by morning I leave a single manjack alive of all who belong to him!’
23 As soon as Abigail saw David, she quickly dismounted from the donkey and, falling on her face in front of David, prostrated herself on the ground.
24 She fell at his feet and said, ‘Let me take the blame, my lord. Let your servant speak in your ear; listen to what your servant has to say!
25 My lord, please pay no attention to this brute Nabal for his nature is like his name; “Brute” is his name and brutal he is. But I, your servant, did not see the men whom my lord sent.
26 And now, my lord, as Yahweh lives and as your soul lives, by Yahweh who kept you from the crime of bloodshed and from taking vengeance with your own hand, may your enemies and all those ill-disposed towards you become like Nabal.
27 As for the present which your servant has brought my lord, I should like this to be given to the men in your service.
28 Please forgive your servant for any offence I have given you, for Yahweh will certainly assure you of a lasting dynasty, since you are fighting Yahweh’s battles and no fault has been found in you throughout your life.
29 Should anyone set out to hunt you down and try to kill you, your life will be kept close in the wallet of life with Yahweh your God, while your enemies’ lives he will fling out of the pouch of the sling.
30 Once Yahweh has done for you all the good things which he has said he will do for you, and made you ruler of Israel,
31 you must have no anxiety, my lord, no remorse, over having wantonly shed blood, over having taken a revenge. When Yahweh has done well by you, then remember your servant.’
32 David said to Abigail, ‘Blessed be Yahweh, God of Israel, who sent you to meet me today!
33 Blessed be your wisdom and blessed you yourself for today having restrained me from the crime of bloodshed and from exacting revenge!
34 But as Yahweh, God of Israel, lives, who prevented me from harming you, had you not hurried out to meet me, I swear Nabal would not have had a single manjack left alive by morning!’
35 David then accepted what she had brought him and said, ‘Go home in peace; yes, I have listened to you and have pardoned you.’
36 Abigail returned to Nabal. He was holding a feast, a princely feast, in his house; Nabal was in high spirits, and as he was very drunk she told him nothing at all till it was daylight.
37 In the morning, when Nabal’s wine had left him and his wife told him everything that had happened, his heart died within him and he became like a stone.
38 About ten days later Yahweh struck Nabal, and he died.
39 When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, ‘Blessed be Yahweh for having defended my cause over the insult which I received from Nabal, and for having restrained his servant from doing wrong! Yahweh has made Nabal’s wickedness rebound on his own head!’
40 David then sent Abigail an offer of marriage. When the men in David’s service came to Abigail at Carmel, they said, ‘David has sent us to take you to him, to be his wife.’
41 She stood up, then prostrated herself on the ground. ‘Consider your servant a slave’, she said, ‘to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.’
42 Quickly Abigail stood up again and mounted a donkey; followed by five of her servant-girls, she followed David’s messengers and became his wife.
43 David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel and he kept them both as wives.
44 Saul had given his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to Palti son of Laish, from Gallim.
1 Some men from Ziph went to Saul at Gibeah and said, ‘Look, David is hiding on the Hill of Hachilah on the edge of the wastelands!’
2 So Saul set off and went down to the desert of Ziph, accompanied by three thousand picked men of Israel, to search for David in the desert of Ziph.
3 Saul pitched camp on the Hill of Hachilah, which is on the edge of the wastelands near the road. David was then living in the desert and saw that Saul had come after him into the desert.
4 Accordingly, David sent out spies and learned that Saul had indeed arrived.
5 Setting off, David went to the place where Saul had pitched camp. He saw the place where Saul and Abner son of Ner, commander of his army, had bedded down. Saul had bedded down inside the camp with the troops bivouacking round him.
6 Speaking to Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai son of Zeruiah and brother of Joab, David said, ‘Who will come down with me to the camp, to Saul?’ Abishai answered, ‘I will go down with you.’
7 So in the dark David and Abishai made their way towards the force, where they found Saul lying asleep inside the camp, his spear stuck in the ground beside his head, with Abner and the troops lying round him.
8 Abishai then said to David, ‘Today God has put your enemy in your power; so now let me pin him to the ground with his own spear. Just one stroke! I shall not need to strike him twice.’
9 David said to Abishai, ‘Do not kill him, for who could raise his hand against Yahweh’s anointed and go unpunished?
10 As Yahweh lives,’ David said, ‘Yahweh himself will strike him down: either the day will come for him to die, or he will go into battle and perish then.
11 Yahweh forbid that I should raise my hand against Yahweh’s anointed! But now let us take the spear beside his head and the pitcher of water, and let us go away.’
12 David took the spear and the pitcher of water from beside Saul’s head, and they made off. No one saw, no one knew, no one woke up; they were all asleep, because a torpor from Yahweh had fallen on them.
13 David crossed to the other side and halted on the top of the mountain a long way off; there was a wide space between them.
14 David then called out to the troops and to Abner son of Ner, ‘Abner, why don’t you answer?’ Abner replied, ‘Who is that calling?’
15 David said to Abner, ‘Are you not a man? Who is your equal in Israel? Why, then, did you not guard the king your lord? One of the people came to kill the king your lord.
16 What you did was not well done. As Yahweh lives, you all deserve to die since you did not guard your lord, Yahweh’s anointed. Look where the king’s spear is now, and the pitcher of water which was beside his head!’
17 Recognising David’s voice, Saul said, ‘Is that your voice, my son David?’ David replied, ‘It is my voice, my lord king.
18 Why is my lord pursuing his servant?’ he said. ‘What have I done? What crime have I committed?
19 May my lord king now listen to his servant’s words: if Yahweh has incited you against me, may he be appeased with an offering; but if human beings have done it, may they be accursed before Yahweh, since they have as effectively banished me today from sharing in Yahweh’s heritage as if they had said, “Go and serve other gods!”
20 So I pray now that my blood shall not be shed on soil remote from Yahweh’s presence, when the king of Israel has mounted an expedition to take my life, as one might hunt a partridge in the mountains!’
21 Saul replied, ‘I have done wrong! Come back, my son David; I shall never harm you again, since today you have shown respect for my life. Yes, I have behaved like a fool, I have been profoundly in the wrong.’
22 In reply, David said, ‘Here is the king’s spear. Let one of the men come across and get it.
23 May Yahweh reward each as each has been upright and loyal. Today Yahweh put you in my power but I would not raise my hand against Yahweh’s anointed.
24 As today I set great value by your life, so may Yahweh set great value by my life and deliver me from every tribulation!’
25 Saul then said, ‘May you be blessed, my son David! In what you undertake, you will certainly succeed.’ David then went on his way and Saul returned home.
1 ‘One of these days,’ David thought, ‘I shall perish at the hand of Saul. The best thing that I can do is to get away into the country of the Philistines; then Saul will give up tracking me through the length and breadth of Israel and I shall be safe from him.’
2 So David set off and went over, he and his six hundred men, to Achish son of Maoch, king of Gath.
3 He settled at Gath with Achish, he and his men, each with his family and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail widow of Nabal of Carmel.
4 When news reached Saul that David had fled to Gath, he stopped searching for him.
5 David said to Achish, ‘If I have won your favour, let me be given a place in one of the outlying towns, where I can live. Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?’
6 That very day Achish gave him Ziklag; and this is why Ziklag has been the property of the kings of Judah to the present day.
7 The time that David stayed in Philistine territory amounted to a year and four months.
8 David and his men went out on raids against the Geshurites, Girzites and Amalekites, for these are the tribes inhabiting the region which, from Telam, goes in the direction of Shur, as far as Egypt.
9 David laid the countryside waste and left neither man nor woman alive; he carried off the sheep and cattle, the donkeys, camels and clothing, and then came back again to Achish.
10 Achish would ask, ‘Where did you go raiding today?’ David would reply, ‘Against the Negeb of Judah,’ or ‘the Negeb of Jerahmeel,’ or ‘the Negeb of the Kenites.’
11 David spared neither man nor woman to bring back alive to Gath, ‘in case’, as he thought, ‘they inform on us and say, “David did such and such.” ‘ This was the way David conducted his raids all the time he stayed in Philistine territory.
12 Achish trusted David. ‘He has made himself detested by his own people Israel,’ he thought, ‘and so will be my servant for ever.’
1 It then happened that the Philistines mustered their forces for war, to fight Israel, and Achish said to David, ‘It is understood that you and your men go into battle with me.’
2 David said to Achish, ‘In that case, you will soon see what your servant can do.’ Achish replied to David, ‘Right, I shall appoint you as my permanent bodyguard.’
3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned him and buried him at Ramah, his own town. Saul had expelled the necromancers and wizards from the country.
4 Meanwhile the Philistines had mustered and had come and pitched camp at Shunem. Saul mustered all Israel and they encamped at Gilboa.
5 When Saul saw the Philistine camp, he was afraid and his heart trembled violently.
6 Saul consulted Yahweh, but Yahweh gave him no answer, either by dream, divination or prophet.
7 Saul then said to his servants, ‘Find a necromancer for me, so that I can go and consult her.’ His servants replied, ‘There is a necromancer at En-Dor.’
8 And so Saul, disguising himself and changing his clothes, set out accompanied by two men; their visit to the woman took place at night. ‘Disclose the future to me’, he said, ‘by means of a ghost. Conjure up the one I shall name to you.’
9 The woman replied, ‘Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has outlawed necromancers and wizards from the country; why are you setting a trap for my life, then, to have me killed?’
10 But Saul swore to her by Yahweh, ‘As Yahweh lives,’ he said, ‘no blame shall attach to you for this business.’
11 The woman asked, ‘Whom shall I conjure up for you?’ He replied, ‘Conjure up Samuel.’
12 The woman then saw Samuel and, giving a great cry, she said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!’
13 The king said, ‘Do not be afraid! What do you see?’ The woman replied to Saul, ‘I see a ghost rising from the earth.’
14 ‘What is he like?’ he asked. She replied, ‘It is an old man coming up; he is wrapped in a cloak.’ Saul then knew that it was Samuel and, bowing to the ground, prostrated himself.
15 Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed my rest by conjuring me up?’ Saul replied, ‘I am in great distress; the Philistines are waging war on me, and God has abandoned me and no longer answers me either by prophet or by dream; and so I have summoned you to tell me what I ought to do.’
16 Samuel said, ‘Why consult me, when Yahweh has abandoned you and has become your enemy?
17 Yahweh has treated you as he foretold through me; he has snatched the sovereignty from your hand and given it to your neighbour, David,
18 because you disobeyed Yahweh’s voice and did not execute his fierce anger against Amalek. That is why Yahweh is treating you like this today.
19 What is more, Yahweh will deliver Israel and you too, into the power of the Philistines. Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me; and Yahweh will hand over the army of Israel into the power of the Philistines.’
20 Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground. He was terrified by what Samuel had said and was also weak from having eaten nothing all that day and night.
21 The woman went to Saul and, seeing his terror, said, ‘Look, your servant has obeyed your order; I have taken my life in my hands and obeyed the command which you gave me.
22 Now please, you in your turn listen to what your servant has to say. Let me offer you a piece of bread. Eat something and get some strength for your journey.’
23 But he refused. ‘I will not eat,’ he said. His servants however pressed him, and so did the woman. Allowing himself to be persuaded by them, he got up from the ground and sat on the bed.
24 The woman owned a fattened calf which she quickly slaughtered, and she took some flour and kneaded it and with it baked some unleavened cakes
25 which she served to Saul and his servants; they ate, and then set off and left the same night.
1 The Philistines mustered all their forces at Aphek while the Israelites pitched camp near the spring in Jezreel.
2 The Philistine commanders marched past with their hundreds and their thousands, and David and his men brought up the rear with Achish.
3 The Philistine chiefs asked, ‘What are these Hebrews doing?’ Achish replied to them, ‘Why, this is David the servant of Saul, king of Israel, who has been with me for the last year or two. I have had no fault to find with him from the day he gave himself up to me until the present time.’
4 But the Philistine chiefs were angry with him. ‘Send the man back,’ they said, ‘make him go back to the place which you assigned to him. He cannot go into battle with us, in case he turns on us once battle is joined. Would there be a better way for the man to regain his master’s favour than with the heads of these men here?
5 Is not this the David of whom they sang as they danced: Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?
6 So Achish called David and said, ‘As Yahweh lives, you are loyal, and I am quite content with all your doings in our campaigning together, since I have found no fault with you from the day you came to me until the present time. But you are not acceptable to the chiefs.
7 So go home, in peace, rather than antagonise them.’
8 ‘But what have I done,’ David asked Achish, ‘what fault have you had to find with your servant from the day I entered your service to the present time, for me not to be allowed to go and fight the enemies of my lord the king?’
9 In reply, Achish said to David, ‘In my opinion, it is true, you are as good as an angel of God; but the Philistine chiefs have said, “He must not go into battle with us.”
10 So get up early tomorrow morning, with your master’s servants who came with you, and go to the place which I assigned to you. Do not harbour resentment, since personally I have no fault to find with you. Get up early tomorrow morning and, as soon as it is light, be off.’
11 So David and his men got up early to leave at dawn and go back to Philistine territory. And the Philistines marched on Jezreel.
1 Now by the time David and his men reached Ziklag three days later, the Amalekites had raided the Negeb and Ziklag; they had sacked Ziklag and burnt it down.
2 They had taken the women prisoner, and everyone who was there, both small and great. They had not killed anyone, but had carried them off and gone away.
3 When David and his men arrived, they found the town burnt down and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.
4 Then David and the people with him wept aloud till they were too weak to weep any more.
5 David’s two wives had been captured: Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail widow of Nabal of Carmel.
6 David was in great trouble, since the people were talking of stoning him; the people all felt very bitter, each man for his own sons and daughters. But David took courage from Yahweh his God.
7 To the priest Abiathar son of Ahimelech, David said, ‘Bring me the ephod.’ Abiathar brought the ephod to David.
8 David then consulted Yahweh, ‘Shall I go in pursuit of these raiders? Will I overtake them?’ The answer was, ‘Go in pursuit; you will certainly overtake them and rescue the captives.’
9 David accordingly set off with the six hundred men who were with him and reached the torrent of Besor.
10 David then continued the pursuit with four hundred men, two hundred staying behind who were too exhausted to cross the torrent of Besor.
11 Out in the country they found an Egyptian and brought him to David. They gave him some bread to eat and some water to drink;
12 they also gave him a piece of fig cake and two bunches of raisins; he ate these and his spirits revived — he had had nothing to eat or drink for three days and three nights.
13 David then said to him, ‘Whose man are you and where do you come from?’ He replied, ‘I am a young Egyptian, the slave of an Amalekite; my master abandoned me because I fell sick three days ago.
14 We raided the Negeb of the Cherethites, and the Negeb of Judah, and the Negeb of Caleb too, and we burnt Ziklag down.’
15 David said, ‘Will you guide me to these raiders?’ He replied, ‘Swear to me by God not to kill me or hand me over to my master, and I will guide you to these raiders.’
16 He guided him to them, and there they were, scattered over the whole countryside, eating, drinking and celebrating, on account of the enormous booty which they had brought back from the territory of the Philistines and the territory of Judah.
17 David slaughtered them from dawn until the evening of the following day. No one escaped, except four hundred young men who mounted camels and fled.
18 He rescued everything that the Amalekites had taken — David also rescued his two wives.
19 Nothing of theirs was lost, whether small or great, from the booty or sons and daughters — everything that had been taken from them; David recovered everything.
20 They captured the flocks and herds as well and drove them in front of him. ‘This is David’s booty,’ they shouted.
21 When David reached the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow him and whom he had left at the torrent of Besor, they came out to meet David and the party accompanying him; David approached with his party and greeted them.
22 But all the rogues and scoundrels among the men who had gone with David began saying, ‘Since they did not go with us, we shall not give them any of the booty which we have rescued, except that each of them can have his wife and children. Let them take them away and be off.’
23 But David said, ‘Do not behave like this, brothers, with what Yahweh has given us; he has protected us and has handed over to us the raiders who attacked us.
24 Who would agree with you on this? No: As the share of the man who goes into battle, so is the share of the man who stays with the baggage. They will share alike.’
25 And from that day on, he made that a rule and custom for Israel, which obtains to the present day.
26 When David reached Ziklag, he sent parts of the booty to the elders of Judah, town by town, with this message, ‘Here is a present for you, taken from the booty of Yahweh’s enemies’:
27 to those in Bethel, to those in Ramoth of the Negeb,
28 to those in Jattir, to those in Aroer, to those in Siphmoth, to those in Eshtemoa,
29 to those in Carmel, to those in the towns of Jerahmeel, to those in the towns of the Kenites,
30 to those in Hormah, to those in Borashan, to those in Athach,
31 to those in Hebron and to all the places which David and his men had frequented.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Daily Office for Monday, January 30, 2012:
Psalm 56
1 [For the choirmaster Tune: 'The oppression of distant princes' Of David In a quiet voice When the Philistines seized him in Gath] Take pity on me, God, as they harry me, pressing their attacks home all day.
2 Those who harry me lie in wait for me all day, countless are those who attack me from the heights.
3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you,
4 in God, whose word I praise, in God I put my trust and have no fear, what power has human strength over me?
5 All day long they carp at my words, their only thought is to harm me,
6 they gather together, lie in wait and spy on my movements, as though determined to take my life.
7 Because of this crime reject them, in your anger, God, strike down the nations.
8 You yourself have counted up my sorrows, collect my tears in your wineskin.
9 Then my enemies will turn back on the day when I call. This I know, that God is on my side.
10 In God whose word I praise, in Yahweh whose word I praise,
11 in God I put my trust and have no fear; what can mortal man do to me?
12 I am bound by the vows I have made, God, I will pay you the debt of thanks,
13 for you have saved my life from death to walk in the presence of God, in the light of the living.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Psalm 57
1 [For the choirmaster Tune: 'Do not destroy' Of David In a quiet voice When he escaped from Saul in the cave] Take pity on me, God, take pity on me, for in you I take refuge, in the shadow of your wings I take refuge, until the destruction is past.
2 I call to God the Most High, to God who has done everything for me;
3 may he send from heaven and save me, and check those who harry me;Pause may God send his faithful love and his constancy.
4 I lie surrounded by lions, greedy for human prey, their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword.
5 Be exalted above the heavens, God! Your glory over all the earth!
6 They laid a snare in my path — I was bowed with care — they dug a pit ahead of me, but fell in it themselves.Pause
7 My heart is ready, God, my heart is ready; I will sing, and make music for you.
8 Awake, my glory, awake, lyre and harp, that I may awake the Dawn.
9 I will praise you among the peoples, Lord, I will make music for you among nations,
10 for your faithful love towers to heaven, your constancy to the clouds.
11 Be exalted above the heavens, God! Your glory over all the earth!(New Jerusalem Bible)
Psalm 58
1 [For the choirmaster Tune: 'Do not destroy' Of David In a quiet voice] Divine as you are, do you truly give upright verdicts? do you judge fairly the children of Adam?
2 No! You devise injustice in your hearts, and with your hands you administer tyranny on the earth.
3 Since the womb they have gone astray, the wicked, on the wrong path since their birth, with their unjust verdicts.
4 They are poisonous as any snake, deaf as an adder that blocks its ears
5 so as not to hear the magician’s music, however skilful his spells.
6 God, break the teeth in their mouths, snap off the fangs of these young lions, Yahweh.
7 May they drain away like water running to waste, may they wither like trampled grass,
8 like the slug that melts as it moves or a still-born child that never sees the sun.
9 Before they sprout thorns like the bramble, green or burnt up, may retribution whirl them away.
10 The upright will rejoice to see vengeance done, and will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 ‘So’, people will say, ‘the upright does have a reward; there is a God to dispense justice on earth.’(New Jerusalem Bible)
Psalm 64
1 [For the choirmaster Psalm Of David] Listen, God, to my voice as I plead, protect my life from fear of the enemy;
2 hide me from the league of the wicked, from the gang of evil-doers.
3 They sharpen their tongues like a sword, aim their arrows of poisonous abuse,
4 shoot at the innocent from cover, shoot suddenly, with nothing to fear.
5 They support each other in their evil designs, they discuss how to lay their snares. ‘Who will see us?’ they say,
6 ‘or will penetrate our secrets?’ He will do that, he who penetrates human nature to its depths, the depths of the heart.
7 God has shot them with his arrow, sudden were their wounds.
8 He brings them down because of their tongue, and all who see them shake their heads.
9 Everyone will be awestruck, proclaim what God has done, and understand why he has done it.
10 The upright will rejoice in Yahweh, will take refuge in him, and all the honest will praise him.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Psalm 65
1 [For the choirmaster Psalm Of David Song] Praise is rightfully yours, God, in Zion. Vows to you shall be fulfilled,
2 for you answer prayer. All humanity must come to you
3 with its sinful deeds. Our faults overwhelm us, but you blot them out.
4 How blessed those whom you choose and invite to dwell in your courts. We shall be filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.
5 You respond to us with the marvels of your saving justice, God our Saviour, hope of the whole wide world, even the distant islands.
6 By your strength you hold the mountains steady, being clothed in power,
7 you calm the turmoil of the seas, the turmoil of their waves. The nations are in uproar, in panic those who live at the ends of the earth;
8 your miracles bring shouts of joy to the gateways of morning and evening.
9 You visit the earth and make it fruitful, you fill it with riches; the river of God brims over with water, you provide the grain. To that end
10 you water its furrows abundantly, level its ridges, soften it with showers and bless its shoots.
11 You crown the year with your generosity, richness seeps from your tracks,
12 the pastures of the desert grow moist, the hillsides are wrapped in joy,
13 the meadows are covered with flocks, the valleys clothed with wheat; they shout and sing for joy.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Genesis 19:1-29
1 When the two angels reached Sodom in the evening, Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. As soon as Lot saw them, he stood up to greet them, and bowed to the ground.
2 ‘My lords,’ he said, ‘please come down to your servant’s house to stay the night and wash your feet. Then you can make an early start on your journey.’ ‘No,’ they said, ‘we shall spend the night in the square.’
3 But he pressed them so much that they went home with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking unleavened bread, and they had supper.
4 They had not gone to bed when the house was surrounded by the townspeople, the men of Sodom both young and old, all the people without exception.
5 Calling out to Lot they said, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so that we can have intercourse with them.’
6 Lot came out to them at the door and, having shut the door behind him,
7 said, ‘Please, brothers, do not be wicked.
8 Look, I have two daughters who are virgins. I am ready to send them out to you, for you to treat as you please, but do nothing to these men since they are now under the protection of my roof.’
9 But they retorted, ‘Stand back! This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge. Now we shall treat you worse than them.’ Then they forced Lot back and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men reached out, pulled Lot back into the house with them, and shut the door.
11 And they dazzled those who were at the door of the house, one and all, with a blinding light, so that they could not find the doorway.
12 The men said to Lot, ‘Have you anyone else here? Your sons, your daughters and all your people in the city, take them away,
13 for we are about to destroy this place, since the outcry to Yahweh against those in it has grown so loud that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.’
14 So Lot went off and spoke to his future sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters. ‘On your feet!’ he said, ‘Leave this place, for Yahweh is about to destroy the city.’ But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15 When dawn broke the angels urged Lot on, ‘To your feet! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.’
16 And as he hesitated, the men seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters — Yahweh being merciful to him — and led him out and left him outside the city.
17 When they had brought him outside, he was told, ‘Flee for your life. Do not look behind you or stop anywhere on the plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away.’
18 ‘Oh no, my lord!’ Lot said to them,
19 ‘You have already been very good to your servant and shown me even greater love by saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, or disaster will overtake me and I shall die.
20 That town over there is near enough to flee to, and is small. Let me flee there-after all it is only a small place — and so survive.’
21 He replied, ‘I grant you this favour too, and will not overthrow the town you speak of.
22 Hurry, flee to that one, for I cannot do anything until you reach it.’ That is why the town is named Zoar.
23 The sun rose over the horizon just as Lot was entering Zoar.
24 Then Yahweh rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire of his own sending.
25 He overthrew those cities and the whole plain, with all the people living in the cities and everything that grew there.
26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.
27 Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before Yahweh,
28 and looking towards Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole area of the plain, he saw the smoke rising from the ground like smoke from a furnace.
29 Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he did not forget Abraham and he rescued Lot from the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities where Lot was living.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Hebrews 11:1-12
1 Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of realities that are unseen.
2 It is for their faith that our ancestors are acknowledged.
3 It is by faith that we understand that the ages were created by a word from God, so that from the invisible the visible world came to be.
4 It was because of his faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain, and for that he was acknowledged as upright when God himself made acknowledgement of his offerings. Though he is dead, he still speaks by faith.
5 It was because of his faith that Enoch was taken up and did not experience death: he was no more, because God took him; because before his assumption he was acknowledged to have pleased God.
6 Now it is impossible to please God without faith, since anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and rewards those who seek him.
7 It was through his faith that Noah, when he had been warned by God of something that had never been seen before, took care to build an ark to save his family. His faith was a judgement on the world, and he was able to claim the uprightness which comes from faith.
8 It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance given to him and his descendants, and that he set out without knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he sojourned in the Promised Land as though it were not his, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
10 He looked forward to the well-founded city, designed and built by God.
11 It was equally by faith that Sarah, in spite of being past the age, was made able to conceive, because she believed that he who had made the promise was faithful to it.
12 Because of this, there came from one man, and one who already had the mark of death on him, descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore which cannot be counted.(New Jerusalem Bible)
John 6:27-40
27 Do not work for food that goes bad, but work for food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of man will give you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal.
28 Then they said to him, ‘What must we do if we are to carry out God’s work?’
29 Jesus gave them this answer, ‘This is carrying out God’s work: you must believe in the one he has sent.’
30 So they said, ‘What sign will you yourself do, the sight of which will make us believe in you? What work will you do?
31 Our fathers ate manna in the desert; as scripture says: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’
32 Jesus answered them: In all truth I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, it is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread;
33 for the bread of God is the bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
34 ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘give us that bread always.’
35 Jesus answered them: I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever hunger; no one who believes in me will ever thirst.
36 But, as I have told you, you can see me and still you do not believe.
37 Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me; I will certainly not reject anyone who comes to me,
38 because I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.
39 Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but that I should raise it up on the last day.
40 It is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise that person up on the last day.(New Jerusalem Bible)
2 Samuel 15:13–14,30
13 A messenger came and told David, ‘The men of Israel have shifted their allegiance to Absalom.’
14 David said to all his retinue then with him in Jerusalem, ‘Up, let us flee, or we shall not escape from Absalom! Leave as quickly as you can, in case he mounts a sudden attack, overcomes us and puts the city to the sword.’
30 David then made his way up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, his head covered and his feet bare. And all the people with him had their heads covered and made their way up, weeping as they went.(New Jerusalem Bible)
2 Samuel 16:5–14
5 As David was reaching Bahurim, out came a man of the same clan as Saul’s family. His name was Shimei son of Gera and, as he came, he uttered curse after curse
6 and threw stones at David and at all King David’s retinue, even though the whole army and all the champions formed an escort round the king on either side.
7 The words of his curse were these, ‘Off with you, off with you, man of blood, scoundrel!
8 Yahweh has paid you back for all the spilt blood of the House of Saul whose sovereignty you have usurped; and Yahweh has transferred the sovereign power to Absalom your son. Now your wickedness has overtaken you, man of blood that you are.’
9 Abishai son of Zeruiah said to the king, ‘Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut his head off.’
10 But the king replied, ‘What concern is my business to you, sons of Zeruiah? Let him curse! If Yahweh has said to him, “Curse David!” what right has anyone to say, “Why have you done so?” ‘
11 David said to Abishai and all his retinue, ‘Why, the son sprung from my own body is now seeking my life; all the more reason for this Benjaminite to do so! Let him curse on, if Yahweh has told him to!
12 Perhaps Yahweh will look on my wretchedness and will repay me with good for his curses today.’
13 So David and his men went on their way, and Shimei kept pace with him along the opposite mountainside, cursing as he went, throwing stones and flinging dust.
14 The king and all the people who were with him arrived exhausted at . . . . . . and there they drew breath.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Psalm 3
1 [Psalm Of David When he was fleeing from his son Absalom] Yahweh, how countless are my enemies, how countless those who rise up against me,
2 how countless those who say of me, ‘No salvation for him from his God!’Pause
3 But you, Yahweh, the shield at my side, my glory, you hold my head high.
4 I cry out to Yahweh; he answers from his holy mountain.Pause
5 As for me, if I lie down and sleep, I shall awake, for Yahweh sustains me.
6 I have no fear of people in their thousands upon thousands, who range themselves against me wherever I turn.
7 Arise, Yahweh, rescue me, my God! You strike all my foes across the face, you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 In Yahweh is salvation, on your people, your blessing!Pause(New Jerusalem Bible)
Mark 5:1–20
1 They reached the territory of the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake,
2 and when he disembarked, a man with an unclean spirit at once came out from the tombs towards him.
3 The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him any more, even with a chain,
4 because he had often been secured with fetters and chains but had snapped the chains and broken the fetters, and no one had the strength to control him.
5 All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.
6 Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and fell at his feet
7 and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? In God’s name do not torture me!’
8 For Jesus had been saying to him, ‘Come out of the man, unclean spirit.’
9 Then he asked, ‘What is your name?’ He answered, ‘My name is Legion, for there are many of us.’
10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the district.
11 Now on the mountainside there was a great herd of pigs feeding,
12 and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us to the pigs, let us go into them.’
13 So he gave them leave. With that, the unclean spirits came out and went into the pigs, and the herd of about two thousand pigs charged down the cliff into the lake, and there they were drowned.
14 The men looking after them ran off and told their story in the city and in the country round about; and the people came to see what had really happened.
15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there — the man who had had the legion in him — properly dressed and in his full senses, and they were afraid.
16 And those who had witnessed it reported what had happened to the demoniac and what had become of the pigs.
17 Then they began to implore Jesus to leave their neighbourhood.
18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed begged to be allowed to stay with him.
19 Jesus would not let him but said to him, ‘Go home to your people and tell them all that the Lord in his mercy has done for you.’
20 So the man went off and proceeded to proclaim in the Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him. And everyone was amazed.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Monday, 30 January 2012
Monday of the Fourth week in Ordinary Time
Saint(s) of the day:St. Bathildes, Queen (c. 634-680)
Commentary of the day:
Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), hermit and missionary in the Sahara
Meditations on the Gospels, no.194
“As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him.”
The only true perfection is not that we should be leading this or that lifestyle but doing God’s will; it is to lead the kind of life that God wants, where he wants, and to lead it as he would have done himself. When he leaves the choice to us then, yes, let us try to follow him as closely as possible, step by step, to share in his life just as his apostles did both during his life and after his death. Love presses us on to such imitation. If God leaves this choice, this freedom to us then it is precisely because he wants us to trim our sails to the breeze of pure love so that, blown on by it, we might «run after him in the odour of his fragrance» (Sg 1,4 LXX) in perfect imitation as Saint Peter and Saint Paul did…
And if one day God wishes to take us out of this beautiful and perfect way, whether for a while or for always, let us not be troubled or surprised. His designs are without fathoming. He can do for us, in the middle or at the end of the course, what he did for the Gerasene at the beginning. Let us obey him, let us do his will…, let us go wherever he wishes and lead the kind of life his will purposes for us. But let us everywhere draw close to him with all our might and, in every state, in every condition, let us be as he would have been and acted if his Father’s will had placed him as it has placed us.
1st Thought for Today:
My Utmost for His HIghest
Reading for Monday 30th January 2012
THE DILEMMA OF OBEDIENCE by Oswald Chambers
And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision.(1 Samuel 3:15)
God never speaks to us in startling ways, but in ways that are easy to misunderstand, and we say, “I wonder if that is God’s voice?” Isaiah said that the Lord spake to him “with a strong hand,” that is, by the pressure of circumstances. Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking. Do we discern His hand or only mere occurrence?
Get into the habit of saying, “Speak, Lord,” and life will become a romance. Every time circumstances press, say, “Speak, Lord”; make time to listen. Chastening is more than a means of discipline, it is meant to get me to the place of saying, “Speak, Lord.” Recall the time when God did speak to you. Have you forgotten what He said? Was it Luke 11:13, or was it 1 Thess. 5:23? As we listen, our ear gets acute, and, like Jesus, we shall hear God all the time.
Shall I tell my “Eli” what God has shown to me? That is where the dilemma of obedience comes in. We disobey God by becoming amateur providences – I must shield “Eli,” the best people we know. God did not tell Samuel to tell Eli; he had to decide that for himself. God’s call to you may hurt your “Eli;” but if you try to prevent the suffering in another life, it will prove an obstruction between your soul and God. It is at your own peril that you prevent the cutting off of the right hand or the plucking out of the eye.
Never ask the advice of another about anything God makes you decide before Him. If you ask advice, you will nearly always side with Satan. “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.”
Reflecting God-Green With Envy
Monday, January 30, 2012
Scripture-Psalm 73:1-12
1 [Psalm Of Asaph] Indeed God is good to Israel, the Lord to those who are pure of heart.
2 My feet were on the point of stumbling, a little more and I had slipped,
3 envying the arrogant as I did, and seeing the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For them no such thing as pain, untroubled, their comfortable portliness;
5 exempt from the cares which are the human lot, they have no part in Adam’s afflictions.
6 So pride is a necklace to them, violence the garment they wear.
7 From their fat oozes out malice, their hearts drip with cunning.
8 Cynically they advocate evil, loftily they advocate force.
9 Their mouth claims heaven for themselves, and their tongue is never still on earth.
10 That is why my people turn to them, and enjoy the waters of plenty,
11 saying, ‘How can God know? What knowledge can the Most High have?’
12 That is what the wicked are like, piling up wealth without any worries.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Green With Envy by Ed Forster
Eny is quite often described as being green. It is a most sickly green, indeed. Being envious can even make us ill. It’s one of life’s heaviest burdens to carry.
The temptation to continually compare what we have with what others have can become an obsession. It can also lead us to be judgmental of others, causing us to believe that they are evil and less worthy to have the things they have than we would be to have them.
The psalmist reflects on what th wicked have and also on the burdens they seemingly do not have. These reflections cause him to be discontented in his spirit. His comparisons cause him to lose focus on the goodness of God which he had affirmed at the beginning of the psalm, “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart” (Psalm 73:1).
The clouded vision which envy brings can lead to our downfall, especially if we take actions based on our own wrong assumptions and our jealousy. Having a spirit of gratefulness to God gives us wonderful contentment and it spares us the miseries that being envious can bring our way.
Hymn for Today:
“Pass Me Not” by Fanny J. Crosby
1. Pass me not, O gentle Savior,
hear my humble cry;
while on others thou art calling,
do not pass me by.
Refrain:
Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry;
while on others thou art calling,
do not pass me by.
2. Let me at thy throne of mercy
find a sweet relief,
kneeling there in deep contrition;
help my unbelief.
Refrain:
Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry;
while on others thou art calling,
do not pass me by.
3. Trusting only in thy merit,
would I seek thy face;
heal my wounded, broken spirit,
save me by thy grace.
Refrain:
Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry;
while on others thou art calling,
do not pass me by.
4. Thou the spring of all my comfort,
more than life to me,
whom have I on earth beside thee?
Whom in heaven but thee?
Refrain:
Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry;
while on others thou art calling,
do not pass me by.
2nd Thought for Today:
“While we have little reason for confidence in ourselves, we can always count on God”(Neil B. Wiseman).
Prayer Needs:
Developing Christian leaders in Iraq.
3rd Thought for Today:
Sunday January 29, 2012
Healing Our Memories
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.
Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories. by Father Henri J. M. Nouwen
ALBAN Weekly for Monday, January 30, 2012
A Question of Growth by Stephen Chapin Garner , Jerry Thornell
Cultivating a lively community of faith is not rocket science or brain surgery. I am well aware that people attend church for some very basic reasons. People go to church to hear a consistent word—sermons are as essential to the life of a church today as they have ever been. People go to church because they love the music—faith has been powerfully conveyed through song and stanza for generations. People go to church because their children are well taken care of—they receive assistance passing on the Christian tradition within their families. Dynamic sermons, music, and children’s programming can certainly propel growth. With only one of these components in place, a community can experience increase. In truth, it would be hard to avoid growth if a community had all three working together.
But what propels exponential growth? What allows a church to grow out of a staid and stable program-based model of ministry into a transformative, life-altering community of believers? How does new and innovative ministry take hold within a community whose historical strength has been its resistance to change and its ability to endure against all odds? I did not know, but after only a couple of years into my pastorate at the United Church of Christ Norwell I began to witness a pattern of growth that was as surprising as it was unsettling. We seemed to be growing in spite of ourselves, and in the most unplanned of ways . . . and I suspect that deep down I was still hoping for an approach to church growth that involved following a list of well-defined steps toward success.
Over the last decade, we at UCC Norwell have engaged in numerous visioning processes, and none of them have turned out the way we had imagined they would. We would pull together a task force to address some issue of concern, meetings would be held for weeks on end, recommendations would be generated and presented to the church, resolutions would be voted on, and new programs and structures would be put into place, only to discover that we missed the mark and growth was occurring in an entirely different location than that which we had expected.
One of the earliest examples of this frustratingly wonderful pattern occurred within the first couple of years we spent working together. I had been working with the Alban Institute in an effort to gain clarity about the dearth of young clergy in mainline Protestant denominations. After gathering statistics from across the country, we confirmed that the lack of young people entering ministry in mainline denominations threatened the long-term health and viability of our brand of church. The math was as simple as it was disheartening. The trickle of young clergy entering pastoral ministry could not meet the great wave of ministerial retirements that could be anticipated on the horizon. Even with an increased number of second-career pastors, the impending pastoral vacancies were going to dwarf the pool of available applicants.
Armed with this irrefutable evidence of the demise the church I loved, I convinced UCC Norwell that we needed to begin to prepare ourselves to be a church without clergy. Even though I believed we were still ahead of the curve by a few years, we needed to get the church ready for the impending clergy crisis. We began by convening a task force to examine how we could more fully establish ourselves as a lay-led congregation. The result of an extensive period of discernment was to establish a new model for pastoral ministry that deemphasized the role of ordained clergy. No longer was the program life of the church going to be created and driven by professional religious leaders. If a program was going to be implemented in the life of our church, it needed to be generated by the efforts and initiative of church members. Pastors were no longer to engage in ministry unless they were helping to train lay members for the ministerial tasks before them.
We created a Teaching Pastorate model for ministry that stressed preparing the laity to take on the work of the church. The idea was expansive. Fully implemented, the people of the church would do the pastoral care, the teaching of children and adults, the preaching and worship leadership, and the visioning of the future. We didn’t plan to make immediate and radical adjustments, but we knew we needed to slowly shift aspects of pastoral ministry to the laity. For example, the members of the church wanted a comprehensive adult education program that the church had never really established before. Our pastoral staff could have simply jumped in and started offering classes. However, with the desire to have the laity lead, we created an adult Christian education ministry team that, with a modest amount of pastoral support, would design, promote, and teach the educational offerings for our adults. Within a relatively short period, we not only increased the number of lay members in leadership roles, but we also took a gigantic leap forward in the number of adult educational offerings we provided for the congregation. The energy the new group possessed was impressive, and it was clear they not only appreciated how they had been empowered to engage in ministry, but they also stepped up and did amazing work—work many trained pastors would not be capable of achieving.
Efforts like this were made with the intention of crafting a community that could one day move forward without having the need of professional clergy. It was a compelling idea. We were already seeing signs that strong lay leadership could replace pastoral leadership in certain instances. We seemed to be on our way to being a church that could thrive without clergy. That had been the plan and we were prepared to make an attempt to implement it. However, that was when the Holy Spirit began to upend our plans.
Soon thereafter, church members began making appointments with me to talk about the possibility of entering seminary. One after another, church members were sensing a call to pastoral ministry. In a period of four years we sent seven church members to seminary. We had set out to create a model for ministry that would allow the church to survive without clergy, and we unwittingly created a model of ministry that prompted people to choose to pursue pastoral ministry as a career. We had a plan, we had a goal, we had an end result in mind, and our efforts had an effect that we never intended. In an attempt to create a clergy-free church, we wound up creating clergy that are now serving local churches in our area.
So many times in UCC Norwell’s ministry together we have done what we believed to be faithful discernment—we set our sights on a goal, we began our work, only to have the Holy Spirit produce growth in an entirely different direction than we intended. It has happened with such frequency that I have begun to think that any attempt to be strategic in the life of the church is fraught with peril. And yet, perhaps the effort to grow, no matter how misguided, uniquely opens us up to the possibility and potential of the Holy Spirit. When we give the Spirit an opening to work in our churches, that is when growth takes root even in the most unexpected of ways. To this day, I am amazed at how getting it wrong has turned out to be just right.
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Excerpted and adapted from Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality by Stephen Chapin Garner with Jerry Thornell, copyright © 2012 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
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The Upper Room Daily Devotional
Monday, January 30, 2012
God Is Able
Suggested Bible Study:
Read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
1 Now when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with any brilliance of oratory or wise argument to announce to you the mystery of God.
2 I was resolved that the only knowledge I would have while I was with you was knowledge of Jesus, and of him as the crucified Christ.
3 I came among you in weakness, in fear and great trembling
4 and what I spoke and proclaimed was not meant to convince by philosophical argument, but to demonstrate the convincing power of the Spirit,
5 so that your faith should depend not on human wisdom but on the power of God.(New Jerusalem Bible)
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.(1 Corinthians 2:4-5 (NRSV))
Today’s Devotional
In August 2010 in Chile, the walls of a mine collapsed with a loud noise. Confusion and panic followed — then, total silence, total darkness. Underground, 700 meters down, 33 miners were trapped in a copper-and-gold mine. Above ground, the families of the miners took up a vigil. Camps were set up and the waiting turned into 69 days — families sharing the wait and the hope that the miners would be found alive.
Living outside of relationship with God is similar to being trapped far underground without light, sound, communication, food, or water. The families of the miners were determined to wait for their loved ones for as long as it would take. How much more is God willing to wait for us to turn from our sin? And when we do, we are forgiven through grace and drawn close to God.
Massive human effort and a great deal of money were spent to rescue the miners. But, as impressive as these efforts may be, they are limited. God our Creator has the power to rescue us wherever we are, in whatever darkness, silence, despair, abandonment, illness, or need. God’s power is unlimited. by Mila Roxana Guerrero Jaramillo (Biobio, Chile)
4th Thought for the Day: Our rescue is the blessing of finding Christ.
Prayer: Dear God of hope and grace, help us to place our confidence in you, not on what humans know or can do. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Miners and their families
The scripture quotation, unless otherwise indicated, is from the NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2012 by The Upper Room, a ministry of GBOD. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce or redistribute without written permission from the publisher.
Daily Meditation: Living a Whole Life — January 30, 2012
Center for Action and Contemplation
LIVING A WHOLE LIFE
To live in the first half of life is largely a matter of survival. All it takes is what some call the reptilian brain, and like any good reptile it is largely concerned with reproduction, food, and survival. All that is important at this stage is my private, moral superiority which was supposed to make me pleasing to God for some reason. First half of life morality is largely concerned with various “purity codes.” As one monk said to me, you could be “pure as an angel while still proud as a devil.” I am afraid that is as far as first half of life values can get you.
Identity, security, and boundary questions are basically concerns of the ego. That does not make them bad, but they are just a starting point. The soul has different concerns. Our politicians continually assure us that they will keep us safe, and this is usually enough to get them elected, because most people are not yet asking higher questions in the hierarchy of needs—things like education, affordable housing, earth care, justice, the arts, immigration, penal reform, and the morality of war itself. Adapted from Loving the Two Halves of Life: The Further Journey
(CD/DVD/MP3). See also Fr. Richard’s latest book,
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Starter Prayer:
Help me grow up by going down. by Father Richard Rohr
5th Thought for Today:
Monday January 30, 2012
Choosing Joy
Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently than the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.
What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice. by Father Henri J. M. Nouwen
1.30.12 – Faithfulness from The Church of the Resurrection-United Methodist in Leawood, Kansas, United States
Daily Scripture: Matthew 5:27 ‘You have heard how it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
28 But I say this to you, if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye should be your downfall, tear it out and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of yourself than to have your whole body thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand should be your downfall, cut it off and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of yourself than to have your whole body go to hell.(New Jerusalem Bible)
Reflection Questions:
Whatever your relationships, whatever issues they face, wouldn’t it be great to learn about stronger relationships right from Jesus? His Sermon on the Mount (as recorded in Matthew’s gospel) offered much wisdom in that area. Using “prophetic hyperbole,” Jesus taught the too often ignored truth that faithless hearts (and not just bodies) deeply hurt relationships.
Adultery = sex with someone other than your spouse, right? Jesus expanded the idea of betrayal (as he did several other areas of life). He said our heart (our emotions and thoughts) can be faithless to our spouse’s needs, even without an overt act. How might a deeper commitment to be faithful to your spouse change you at the heart level?
Jesus didn’t favor literally tearing out your eye or chopping off your hand. His hyperbolic images showed how strongly he felt about us living up to our pledges of faithfulness. Has a friendship or situation ever drawn you away from faithfulness to your spouse or to God? What did you learn about yourself? In what ways did it affect the relationship?
Weekly Prayer:
Lord Jesus, when you were on earth, you were a real human being, not a sort of plastic figurine who never got angry, tired, frustrated or disappointed. You showed us how to live a truly human life of honesty with yourself and with others. Without hiding or repressing, you always sought to build relationships that were ultimately redemptive. Strengthen and guide me to be more and more like you in my most important relationships. Amen.
Monday 1.30.12 Insight from Jeanna Repass
Jeanna Repass serves as the Kansas City Missions Program Director at Resurrection.
The brain is a wondrous thing. When I was growing up people were fond of the saying that we only use 10% of our brain’s actual capacity. I have no idea if that is the truth, but I do know that the brain is capable of some really amazing things. For example, people on a diet can sniff a marker that has a certain smell like chocolate or potato chips and the human brain translates the smell into a sensation of satiation. I also learned in my college Anatomy & Physiology class that when you are cooking a meal, you tend to eat less of it than others who sit down to a meal that some one else cooked. While you are cooking, your brain takes the smells of the food and spices and it has the same effect as the food scented markers – you get the sensation of being satisfied even though you haven’t actually eaten anything. Yes – the human brain is a mysterious and miraculous thing, I’m sure there is a reason we only use 10% of it’s capacity!
I love that in today’s scriptures from the sermon on the mount Jesus is talking about our brain and nacho cheese scented diet markers. What? You didn’t read that part? Let me refresh for you… Matthew 5: 28: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” See – right there Jesus was telling us that what we perceive in our brains, is actuated in our physical sensation. If we can get satisfied by the very smell of bacon on a marker, then how much more are we engaged by our brains playing out a lustful fantasy about another person? Wanting to eat something that is bad for us or lusting after some one whom is not our spouse has the same affect on our brains. So what do we do about it? Jesus has an answer – CUT IT OUT!
Matthew 5:29 – 30 tells us that it’s better to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands than to cause the rest of our bodies to go to the fiery pit. So when I really want to put my whole face in a bag of Brach’s chocolate covered peanuts, I should cut my tongue out and the problems all solved? Not exactly. What Jesus is telling me is that when I sit around at 10:00pm and obsess about the double chocolate cupcakes in the kitchen, I am already sunk. The more I think about them, the more I’m tempted to give in. But an amazing thing happens when I stop thinking about those cupcakes and start thinking about the 5:30am workout that is waiting for me. I weight the consequences. I start picturing myself on my yoga mat in tears from the pain in my legs during the “chair pose”. Then all I want to do is to go to bed so I can actually get up and make it through that work out. Double chocolate cupcakes – you are defeated!
I’ve beaten this whipped-cream of an anology to a frothy pulp. But I think what Jesus is saying is that you end up with the negative consequences whether you’ve eaten the whole cake or just obsessed about it. So – think about that painful chair pose when you want to eat that pile of nachos. Or better yet – don’t think about those things at all. Place your hearts and especially your minds on things that are holy, good and honorable. Then we can be filled and satiated abundantly, exceedingly more than we ever imagined by Him whom loves us more than 100% of our brains can ever begin to imagine. Amen.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, TODAY’S NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society®. Used by permission of International Bible Society®. All rights reserved worldwide.
Thought for Today:
Monday 30 January 2012
Finding Happiness
The beauty of human beings lies in their capacity to accept who they are, just as they are; not to live in a world of dreams or illusions, in anger or despair, wanting to be other than they are, or trying to run away from reality. They realize that they have the right to be themselves. And there, they discover that they are loved by God, that they are unique and important for God and that they can do things for others. We may not all be called to do great things that make the headlines, but we are all called to love and be loved, wherever we may be. We are called to be open and to grow in love and thus to communicate life to others, especially to those in need. by Jean Vanier, Seeing Beyond Depression, p 86, 88
