Faithfulness
Garry concluded his series on Joseph this morning, looking at Genesis 50:22-26. The story of Joseph starts with a dream, a promise. At times, Joseph was unable to do anything at all to fulfil this dream; he was (more often than not!) powerless. The one thing which becomes apparent as we look over his life, however, is God’s faithfulness. God’s plans, shaped by love, were brought about by His faithfulness. Paul reminds us that ‘God is faithful’ (1 Cor 1:9); He is characterised by consistency and reliability. If He has promised something, it’s as good as already done.
In the Bible, we see how others were promised things, but they did not necessarily wait for God to fulfil that promise (the most obvious example is Sarai, who persuaded Abram to sleep with Hagar in order to get the promised heir, see Gen 16.) God ultimately worked a miracle through her own body by giving Isaac as the promised son. Joseph could do nothing about the dream he had had, but he trusted God to do what He had said would happen.
Joseph’s life shows us what human faithfulness and consistency look like. He endured much over many years, but remained God-honouring in everythig he did. Paul reminds us that God’s people should be faithful (1 Cor 4:2). We are called to obey the last thing God spoke to us faithfully, as the faithful servant reminds us (see Matt 25:21). Faithfulness is more important than any apparent success or failure (after all, Joseph in prison did not look as though he was doing very well!) God requires faithfulness despite how things may look, despite setbacks and apparent failure. To be successful is ultimately to do the will of God and to be faithful. Joseph was a faithful man who followed a faithful God – may the same be said of us too.
Mitfreude
One thing I love about German is its ability to create new compound words out of separate words. The best known in English is probably ‘Schadenfreude‘ which has no English equivalent (it means taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, which is such a mouthful that there’s no wonder we have adopted their word!)
The word ‘Freude‘ means joy, and the Germans simply build on this by prefixing the noun with other words to describe why they are joyful. A friend of mine this week thanked me for her birthday present which had arrived early, increasing her ‘Vorfreude’. She didn’t know how to translate this into English, which was no reflection on her linguistic ability – there is no English equivalent! What she meant was the joy of anticipating opening her present.
German has a whole host of compound words connected to joy. If you’re fortunate to enjoy your work, that is ‘Arbeitsfreude.’ If you enjoy a particularly nice meal, this is ‘ Gaumenfreude.‘ If you like playing a game, that’s ‘Spielfreude.‘ If, like me, you love words and writing, that is ‘Schreibfreude.’
But my favourite joyful compound word is ‘Mitfreude’. ‘Mit’ in German means ‘with’, so ‘Mitfreude‘ means sharing your joy with someone else or being happy with someone else’s success. Ps 20;5 says, ‘May we shout with joy over your victiroy’ – I suspect this is ‘Mitfreude’ at its best.
I am currently preparing a Bible study on 1 Samuel 18, the chapter which looks at David’s friendship with Jonathan and Saul’s growing envy of David. Envy is the oppposite of ‘Mitfreude’. Envy corrodes us, causing us to feel resentful at other people’s success. ‘Schadenfreude’ is much closer to envy than ‘Mitfreude.‘ The Bible urges us to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.’ (Rom 12:15) Our natural tendency is towards selfishness, and it can be difficult to rejoice over other people’s successses if we feel threatened or intimidated by them. If we are secure in our identity as God’s loved children, it’s much easier (and certainly more Biblical) to choose the path of ‘Mitfreude’ over ‘Schadenfreude.‘ We need to choose to rejoice with people rather than letting envy or bitterness corrode our souls and destroy our relationships.
Interesting Facts About Bees
We learnt some interesting facts about bees tonight, including the fact that bees fly 55,000 miles to make 1lb of honey! Honey, known as the ‘food of the gods’ and highly beneficial in many ways, is made from nectar (produced by flowers and harvested by the bees) combined with enzymes secreted from glands in bees’ mouths.
We also had a go at tessellation – since the honeycomb is made of hexagons which fit together perfectly. It was much harder to try and fit other shapes together! A honeycomb is made of wax, and the bees start by making circules. The heat in the beehive softens the wax and makes it flatten into hexagons, which helps the bees to make the most honeycombs using the least amount of wax.
Such efficiency reminds us of the wonders of creation!
Bees & The Kingdom of God
Tonight, we looked at the fascinating subject of bees in our Little Big Church service and discovered that bees have a lot to teach us about the kingdom of God.
There are different kinds of bees (queen bee, worker bees, drone bees) and each bee has a different role to play. The queen bee has a longer life expectancy than the other bees and is responsible for laying eggs and maintaining the overall health of the hive. She is the only bee in the colony that can lay fertilised eggs which will develop into worker bees or new queen bees. The worker bees, on the other hand, are responsible for hive maintenance, pollination, and honey production. The drone bees have no reproductive role and are only present to mate with the queen.
In the same way, we are all individually important to God and all have different roles to play. We belong to a community, just as bees work together in a hive, and in the church, diversity and variety are important: unity is not uniformity! Paul likens the church to a body, where each part has a different function, but every part is necessary (1 Cor 12, Romans 12). We should never feel useless or unimportant, but should seek to find out what pleases the Lord and what our particular role in the church should be.
Just as bees work together to serve the queen bee, we need to remember that we must work together to serve the King of Kings. Greatness in the kingdom of God comes as we serve God, and we serve God as we serve other people (see Matt 25:31-46, Matt 26:25-28). The church may seem to be a poor reflection of God at times, but the church is God’s idea and He wants us to let His light shine through us so that others may come to know Him. (Matt 5:14-16)
The Burning Bush
On this Bonfire Night in the UK, Dave spoke this morning from Exodus 3:1-6 on the burning bush – the means that God chose to call Moses to set His people free. Moses, at this stage of his life, had possibly forgotten his calling to lead God’s people; he was in a dead-end job in Midian as a consequence of his murder years before. Sometimes, we feel our past holds us in chains, but Moses was about to discover that God had not forgotten him.
Often, we view good and bad as being like weights on a scale; we hope our good deeds will outweigh our bad and then God will forgive us and let us be with Him in heaven. Ultimately, our good deeds can never be enough to wipe the slate clean, however (even if we have not sinned as Moses did), but God is able to free us and cleanse us totally through Jesus because He wants to. Salvation is unearned and undeserved. Moses was told to take off his shoes for he was standing on holy ground; God’s holiness means that sin can never be ignored, but He has made the way for us to be holy.
Holiness means to be ‘set apart’ for God. We need to stop making excuses and depend on God to help us to live for Him. We need the Holy Spirit living inside us: the burning bush Moses experienced needs to be a fire inside us as God dwells in us by His Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is working in us, He will make us holy and enable us to live for Him.
Blu-tak thoughts?
I spend a good deal of time sticking posters up with Blu-tak. I don’t know the history of this amazing product, but I do benefit from it!
My husband, an engineer with infinitely more patience than I have, rolls a small ball of Blu-tak between forefinger and thumb before affixing a poster to the wall. It’s noteworthy that his posters tend to stay stuck to the wall much longer than mine do…
Attaching something to a wall sometimes requires more than Blu-tak, though. Sometimes we need a picture hook to hang a photograph. Sometimes we need screws and rawlplugs. It all depends on what we are attaching and how permanent we want the attachment to be!
Hebrews 3:1 says, ‘Fix your thoughts on Jesus.’ The word translated in the NIV as ‘fix’ means to ‘observe fully, to behold, to consider, to discover.’ It means to think decisively to a definite and clear understanding.
To fix your thoughts on Jesus is, I feel, a job for superglue, not Blu-tak! It requires effort, determination, a set attitude. What we think determines to a large extend who we are and what we do. The battle is won in our thoughts.
But the Bible goes on to tell us to fix our hearts and minds on things above, not just our thoughts (see Col 3:1-2). It’s not enough simply to think about God intermittently, as an optional extra in our lives that enhances us in moments of need. God must be the centre always. He must permeate every critical decision we make, our assessment of the world and our situations. The popular phrase ‘What would Jesus do?’ needs to penetrate our everyday thinking.
For this to happen, we need more than Blu-tak thoughts. We need the concentrated power of real glue, the fixed attachment of screws and rawlplugs, and an ongoing determination to look to Jesus in every situation of life.