The Toilet

Feb 29, 2024

Today’s household object is the toilet and our Bible passage is John 1:29-33.

 

The modern toilet is taken for granted by most of us. John Harington invented the first flushing toilet in Elizabethan times and Josiah George Jennings developed the prototype with Thomas Crapper making the first commercial toilets. The toilet flushes all our urine and faeces away into sewers. I remember watching a children’s programme with ‘Auntie Mabel’ years ago with my son which explored what happens after we flush the toilet, and it was fascinating, even if it’s not something we really like to think about much!

In the same way, we prefer not to think about sin. We prefer to hide our failures and focus on the positive things we do, without understanding that our sinful nature separates us from God and is at the heart of all evil in the world. The good news is that Easter is the time when we see that God has dealt with sin once and for all on the cross. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (John 1:29) Because of Christ’s sacrifice for sin, we can know that our sins have been washed away; we can be forgiven and clean. (1 John 1:9)

Redeeming The Time

Feb 26, 2024

Our Bible reading for today is Isaiah 38:1-8 and our household object is the clock.
In the Bible passage today, we read of Hezekiah who prayed for an extension to his life when he was sick and was granted this with a sign, the miracle of the sun turning back on the dial ten steps. Clocks are there to mark time for us, and as the poem ‘Time’s Races’ by Revd Henry Twells remarks, the older we get, the more time seems to fly! Paul tells us to ‘redeem the time’, to ‘make the most of every opportunity’ (Eph 5:16), and this reminds us that we all have a limited amount of time on earth and need to use this wisely.
Ps 90:2 reminds us that God does not need time; He is eternal. (‘From everlasting to everlasting, You are God.’) ‘As we see the seconds, minutes and hours tick away, they connect us to the divine creator, and count down earthly time at the end of which we shall be called to eternal, resurrection life, brought and bought by Jesus Christ who crossed the boundaries of time to turn the clock back on sin and offer us a new, eternal future of faith, hope and love.’ (‘At Home In Lent’, Gordon Giles, P 57)

According To Your Faith

Feb 25, 2024

Tonight we looked at the subject of living by faith since it is according to our faith that so much happens in the spiritual life (see Matthew 9:29-30). Faith is what is needed to please God (Heb 11:6); it is a core ingredient to the spiritual life which cannot ever be omitted. To do the works God requires means we have to believe in the One He has sent (John 6:29); we have to be like Abraham who is our model in terms of faith (‘he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Gen 15:5)

 

Hebrews 11:1 gives us our definition of faith and the rest of the chapter lists many people as examples of how to live by faith. In the New Testament, many miracles involved people whose faith was commended by Jesus: not only the two blind men who were healed by Jesus but  also the paralysed men whose friends brought him through the roof (Luke 5:20), the centurion whose servant was ill (Luke 7:9-10), the woman who reached out to be healed (Luke 8:48) and the blind man who wanted to see (Luke 18:42). Conversely, where there was little faith, Jesus did not do many miracles (Luke 18:8), a sobering reminder of the importance of faith.

Faith is often tested by God, and there is frequently a period of waiting between God’s promises and their fulfilment, as Abraham and Sarah remind us. Joseph too had to wait to see his youthful dreams fulfilled and suffered much in the intervening years. Faith grows in the soil of desperate situations where we learn to wait and to trust in God. We need to belong to those who do not shrink back but who have faith and are saved (Heb 10:39); we need to press forward and stay with God, no matter what.

Friend of God

Feb 25, 2024

This morning Dave spoke from John 15:9-17, where Jesus spoke to His disciples about being more than servants, about being friends. All of us need friends; we need to know we are important to someone else and that we are loved.
Often, we need self-acceptance first, for we can think that others would not wish to know us or be friends with us if they truly knew us. God knows everything about us; He knew us before we were even born, and He has chosen us to be His friends.
Jesus has chosen us not for what we can do or even what we might do! He has not chosen us simply to ‘make up the numbers’ or because He was forced to. He has chosen us because He loves us and wants to be friends with us.
Friends have ready access to each other: we don’t gaze from afar but are called to be close to Jesus. We are called to intimacy and to be with Jesus at all times, no matter what. In these verses He reminds us that He trusts us and works for us, forgives us and opens the gates of heaven to us.
Friendship with Jesus is not exclusive to us, however. He wants others to be His friend too and for us to be the means to them meeting Him. He is the best friend anyone could ever have. Let’s be friends with Him and introduce our friends to Him too!

Best Clothes

Feb 24, 2024

Our household object for today is our ‘best clothes’ and the Bible passage is a parable about a wedding banquet (Matthew 22:2-14).

Most people wear their best clothes to a wedding, perhaps even buying a new outfit for the occasion. Dressing up is something many people enjoy. Our toddlers at the Parent & Toddler group at church enjoy the roleplay costumes we have bought, where they can pretend to be a princess or superhero. There’s something special about looking your best! The sparkling costumes on Strictly Come Dancing or the ballet costumes we see when we go to the theatre are other examples of clothes which thrill us and impress us.

We cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, however, just because we wear nice clothes. The Bible talks about God clothing us with ‘garments of salvation… and a robe of His righteousness.’ (Isaiah 61:10) We need the righteousness of Christ in order to stand before God. Paul tells us ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ (2 Corinthians 5:21) Easter reminds us that we must clothe ourselves in humility and gratitude and receive Christ’s righteousness instead of relying on our own.

 

Freedom

Feb 21, 2024

Our household object today is a hat, and our Bible passage is 1 Corinthians 11:14-16. Nowadays, hats are both practical (keeping us warm in winter and cool in summer) and fashionable (worn at weddings and other special occasions, especially for women), but they have frequently been seen to be a measure of respect and honour. In the past, women used to wear hats to attend church services; convention tells us that a man wears a hat outdoors only and a woman wears a hat whenever she wants!
The idea of hats being linked to freedom may seem strange to us today, but in the past, this topic has aroused much controversy. An emphasis on the outward trappings (what we wear) seems pointless to us today, but the concept of having to become a Jew before you could become a Christian is something Paul had to fight against; an outward sign of conformity (circumcision) is no longer needed because of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. Standing firm for freedom without offending others is something we still wrestle with today, and will look different for different people and cultures. We have to remember that Christ died to bring us into a relationship with God; relationship and not simply rules are what matter now. (Rules can be really helpful, but relationship gets to the heart of the matter!)