Faithfully living a hidden life

Jul 4, 2024

I come from a family which valued academic knowledge and education. My mother and aunt were primary school teachers; my parents paid for me to go to a private school from the ages of eleven to eighteen. I was academically intelligent and won a place to Keble College, Oxford, at the age of eighteen; I became a teacher myself. Education and academic attainment have been a ‘normal’ way of life for me.
Yet I soon learned that emotional intelligence is at least as important as a good I.Q. (if not more so!) and that contentment has little to do with academic knowledge. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Living among people is the part of life which requires skills ‘book knowledge’ cannot teach.
Over the years I have learned to value diversity and practical skills, understanding that we all have different personalities and qualities and skills, and that there is room – indeed, necessity – for us all. The Bible makes this plain when describing the church as a body (Romans 12/ 1 Corinthians 12), and for me, true skill in life must understand and value community. No man is an island, even an introvert like myself, for whom people are, by and large, still a mystery!
Another valuable life lesson I have learned is the importance of the ordinary and the role of faithfulness in people’s lives. George Eliot wrote,
“The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.” (“Middlemarch”)
Many people live dissatisfied lives because they feel their lives lack achievement, fame or fortune. I would argue that to live faithfully a hidden life is in fact a significant achievement. To live well among people, to love faithfully and to be the person God made you to be is surely the definition of success.

Repetition and Growth

Jul 4, 2024

I love reading the ‘Hairy Maclary’ series of books to my grandchildren. The illustrations of dogs and cats in these books are beautifully detailed, but it is the language which captivates. Written in rhyme, the stories use repetition, alliteration and metre to carry their animal adventures to toddlers who are still unable to talk. The rich vocabulary (including words like ‘bumptious’, ‘skedadlle’, ‘hullaballo’, ‘frolicking’) enchants from an early age. The books are wonderfully crafted and appeal to children of different ages; their language means an adult can read them without falling asleep too, which is always a bonus!
Repetition in children’s boooks is clearly a valuable teaching tool. Repetition embeds language in us until understanding emerges. It provides an anchor in a story, a familiar point which helps the child to learn. Repetition is a valuable literary device – because so often, we fail to grasp things that are mentioned only once!
Psalm 80, a psalm written during the dark times of invasion and exile, uses repetition. The refrain ‘Restore us… make Your face shine on us, that we may be saved’ occurs three times (Ps 80:3, 7, 19) It’s not wrong to pray the same thing more than once! Repetition reminds us of what’s important in the story (God’s favour and help being important things to remember!)
But the refrain is not mere repetition. The way the psalmist addresses God changes. In verse 3, he prays to ‘God’; in verse 7, to ‘God Almighty’; in verse 19 to ‘Lord God Almighty.’ His request may be the same, but his understanding of who God is has been enlarged.
This is what happens as we pray. Our woes may stay the same. Our pleas for help may stay the same. But our understanding of who God is, the revelation of God’s nature and power – these change as we pray. Gradually, God fills more of our vision and we become more attuned to Him. The important thing is to keep on praying!

Apprenticeship

Jul 2, 2024

Apprenticeship – a period of time when a person learns an art, trade or job under the supervision of a skilled worker in that field – seems to me to be one of the best ways to learn. It also seems to be the Biblical way of training leaders. Joshua was Moses’s second-in-command for years. Elisha spent time alongside Elijah, and Jesus took a group of twelve men and worked with them for three-and-a-half years before His death.
Apprenticeship combines the theory (teaching) and the practical (actually doing the job) and is worked out in the real world over a period of time, acknowledging that it takes time to master skills (practice makes perfect!) Experience and wisdom can be passed on in this method.
Yesterday I mused on Elisha’s apprenticeship (pouring water on the hands of Elijah), and pondered the menial, unglamorous nature of ministry, commenting that service is the key to greatness in God’s kingdom. Today I read of the miracles Elisha subsequently saw: feeding a hundred with minimal food (2 Kings 4:42-44), ensuring poisoned food did not harm anyone (2 Kings 4:38-41), healing Naaman of leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-14). I read about his extraordinary prophetic gift in knowing what kings were planning in secret (2 Kings 6:8-23) or knowing what his servant did in his absence (2 Kings 5:24-27). The miraculous seems almost commonplace in the life of Elisha, proof that the double portion of Elijah’s spirit which had been his one request of his master had been fulfilled.
Proverbs 18:12 says that ‘humility comes before honour.’ There is nothing glamorous about apprenticeship; the apprentice must learn to do all the jobs, even the ones he would prefer to avoid. An attitude of humility can’t be exchanged for pride or arrogance even when the apprenticeship is over. But there is a clear Biblical precedent that we must learn humility before ever we can know honour. Elisha clearly learned this lesson well, and so must we.

Qualifications in God’s Kingdom

Jul 1, 2024

When we compose a C. V. or job application, we expect to list our achievements and accomplishments; we aim to impress potential employers with our past prowess. When a person dies, an obituary tends to focus on achievements and accomplishments, defining a person’s worth and value by these things. It comes as something of a shock, then, to realise that God’s recommendations are very different and the job specifications in His kingdom tend to focus less on our prowess and more on our heart attitudes.
When the kings of Israel and Judah were debating wars, Jehoshaphat stopped to ask if there was a prophet of the Lord through whom they could seek God’s will and mind. (2 Kings 3:11) He was told, ‘Ellisha son of Shaphat is here. He used to pour water on the hands of Elijah.’ (2 Kings 3:11)
We know Elisha to be a prophet of God, mightily used by God in a host of miracles. To hear him described as the one ‘who used to pour water on the hands of Elijah’ is not the recommendation we would have expected (or given.) It’s a qualification for wisdom and godliness which seems odd to us. After all, what has pouring water on a man’s hands – the menial task of a servant – got to do with hearing God’s voice and proclaiming His will to kings?
The job was a servant’s. It implied closeness, yes (and Elijah was probably the greatest prophet in Israel after Moses), but there are plenty of servants mentioned in the Bible who were not qualified for their master’s role simply by propinquity. Nonetheless, Elisha’s job description in this instance perfectly marked him out for his role as Elijah’s successor.
Because servanthood is at the very heart of greatness in God’s kingdom. Jesus said that whoever wants to be great in God’s kingdom has to become as a lowly child  (Matt 18:4), has to become a servant of all. (Mark 9:35) He demonstrated the principle of serving when He washed His disciples’ feet (John 13), and made it plain that even He did not come to be served, but to serve. (Mark 10:45) The ‘qualification’ for a disciple of Jesus is not how much theology we know or how many miracles we have performed. It is the mark of loving service.
I’m sure most of us would have resented this description of Elisha if it had been applied to us. We don’t really want to be known simply as ‘the one who made cups of tea at church’ or ‘the one who smiles at people when they come in.’ Such descriptions seem insignificant. We don’t value servants and never have.
But God does.
We do ultimately remember Elisha for far more than his role as Elijah’s servant. His words to the kings and their fulfilment in 2 Kings 3 show his closeness to God and how God was able to use him in miraculous ways. But it all starts with a servant’s heart, where no job is too lowly, where personal aggrandisment is simply not a part of our mindset. If we want to be great, we must learn to serve.

Living The Wise Life

Jun 30, 2024

Garry spoke tonight about living a wise life (see Eph 5:15-17). It’s easy enough to live like the world, but to go against the flow is much harder, yet this is what is required of believers, because the world is at odds with God. 1 John 5:4 in the Message version says, ‘every God-begotten person conquers the world’s ways’, but this can only be done as we carefully consider God’s ways. Just as we ought to read the small print in contracts before signing, we need to examine God’s ways so that we can learn how to live wisely.
Wisdom is not simply knowledge or experience; it’s what we do with those things. We can learn from others, but ultimately, we must learn from God, developing flexibility in how we adapt what we know to given situations. The Beatitudes (Matt 5:3-12) show us God’s ways and these remind us that the attitudes we need to adopt are radically different to the world’s norms.
God calls us to be peacemakers and to value peace (see Matt 5:9, Rom 12:18, Matt 5:38-42). We are called to love even our enemies (Luke 6:27-30). To do what God wants is not hard to understand – it’s just hard to put into practice! To be godly, though, we must do things God’s way and grow in wisdom (see Luke 2:52). We need to depend upon the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in situations (1 Cor 12:8, James 1:5). God wants us to grow and develop and mature, which includes growing in wisdom, whether that is the wisdom gained from studying God’s word or the wisdom given as a gift of the Spirit, dropped into situations unexpectedly.

A Lady And A Leader

Jun 30, 2024

Dave spoke this morning from Luke 13:10-17, the account of Jesus healing a woman crippled for 18 years and the backlash this provoked because the healing was carried out on the Sabbath. The woman in the incident is not named; in fact, she is defined for us by her disability. We feel that she was acutely aware of her infirmity and did not feel like a ‘normal’ person, a bitter reminder that we often label people according to how we see them (and how we see only the visible, not the heart.)

The woman’s disability meant she was bent over, unable to straighten up, able only to look downwards. C. H. Spurgeon says of her, ‘she lived in a posture of forced humility’, and Luke makes it clear that she was ‘bound by Satan.’ Not all infirmity and disability comes directly from the devil, but the despair these things breed in us is typical of his tactics. In this encounter with the Lord, the lifting love of Jesus transforms her situation. She met Jesus in the synagogue (demonstrating a persistent faith even though she was disabled) and was set free by Him. We do not know if he crouched down to speak to her, but we do know that he gave this nameless woman a new identity, calling her a ‘daughter of Abraham.‘ She was no longer a victim, but was to be a blessing, and must have felt like the psalmist in Ps 40:1-3!

The leader in this story was outwardly physically whole, but his attitude was as bent and crooked as the woman’s spine. He had a legalistic bent, living by the rules, and was outraged that Jesus chose to heal the woman on the Sabbath. Jesus’s words to him showed him that God’s love has a greater purpose: if the Pharisees could care for animals on the Sabbath, this woman deserved to be loosed too. In a similar incident in Mark 2:27-28, we see that Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, and not the other way around.

This incident shows us that we all have a tendency to get bent. Familiarity with God’s law can easily lead to indifference. Traditions become more important than the things they symbolise and we can be cut off from the life of God by our very religiosity. Humility is needed if we are to encounter Jesus. We must let go of the things that keep us bound and bent, be that worry and anxiety, or abuse, or shame or poverty or grief or heartache. We all need God’s loosing, so that we can stand tall.

Jesus took the initiative with this woman. He called her to come to Him. He lavished His love and mercy on her (see 1 John 3:1). We too can know the call and mercy of God, but we need faith to believe that God rewards those who earnestly seek Him. (Heb 11:6) The lady emerged from this encounter whole and able to go forth in blessing; the leader remained bound by prejudice and legalism. Will we heed the call of Jesus and be set free by Him?