Photos and thoughts by Daniel Owen, Anglican minister and amateur photographer…
I’ve read of ‘thin places’, a term originally used by Christians in the Celtic-speaking world of the early Middle Ages to describe places where it seemed the veil between heaven and earth was ‘thin’.
This all came to mind recently as we were walking along Harbour View Beach (off the R600 between Timoleague and Kinsale).
We have walked there many times, but it felt particularly ‘thin’ that day… 
(All photos taken on my phone and processed with Instagram)
Blogging seems to have deserted me for the last while. I think it has been good to step back, to not be so obsessed (as is my want) with taking lots and lots of photos (and in so doing ironically miss out in appreciating that which I am photographing).
Here’s a picture taken at Dinas Cross, near Fishguard shortly after Easter. It was a beautiful spring day…
(Nikon D7000, Nikkor 35mm dx lens, ISO 220, f16, 1/125 sec)
Oh, the title is from Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
Photo: A Rainbow from our garden, November 2010
Sermon for Sunday 3/2/13
Text – Revelation 4
I remember as a ten-year-old the mixture of fear and curiosity as I waited outside the headmaster’s study, I had been summoned to see him but I did not know what it was about. He was Scottish, he had no sense of humour (at least as far as I could discern) and he had the temper of a hungry polar bear that had just been hit with a stick…
What’s the most important meeting to which you have ever been summoned? Can you remember what it was like; the mixture of emotions that were going through your mind and how time seemed to pass by either so quickly or so slowly, depending upon how you felt?
In our second reading today, John, the disciple of Jesus has an important meeting, but it is not one that he had been expecting or could have planned for. John was a prisoner on the Island of Patmos, about 35 miles off the coast of south-western Turkey. The authorities put him there, in exile, as a punishment for being a follower of and such effective witness for Christ. Of course, rather than stopping John from being effective for Christ, the exact opposite happens; he has the chance to pray and to reflect and he receives the most explosive vision of God’s power and love, written down in this incredible last book of the Bible called ‘Revelation’.[1]
John has a vision in which he sees a door, but it is no ordinary door, this one opens up into heaven! No doubt John is aware of his surroundings, the sky is still blue (remember, this vision is not happening in Ireland), he can still hear the waves crashing on the shore nearby and he can still feel the wind on his face, but nevertheless there is a door that is clearly from a different realm and it is open. And a voice, like a trumpet speaks to him saying,
‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ (1)
The voice belongs to Jesus, John recognised the voice, it was loud, clear, penetrating, (like a trumpet), this was the voice of the risen Jesus. Different but perhaps similar to Jesus’ voice with which John would have been so familiar from the three years they spent together during Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Once Jesus has spoken the vision becomes deeper, John now tells us that
‘at once I was in the spirit.’ (2)
What John sees next could not be seen with ordinary eyes, what he sees is the throne of God in heaven, yet he sees a highly symbolic view, perhaps an ‘actual’ or ‘real’ view of God’s throne would be too overwhelming to even approach, let alone describe. He writes:
‘… and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. (3)
Then in verse 5 we see that:
‘Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God;’
Last Wednesday night do you remember the thunder and lightning we had? Together with the howling wind and driving rain it was quite a night of weather! On Thursday morning I opened the back door and I could see that we had a visitor – it was next door’s dog, he’s quite an old fella and he was cowering in the corner of the porch looking frightened. The cat was there too, looking quite pleased with himself, thinking that he was the cause of the dog’s terror, but no, the dog had escaped from his own enclosure during the night because of the thunder and lightning.
Why is it that as John looks at the place where God is, it is terrifying? Why is there lightning and thunder and flashes of fire? Perhaps this is to remind us all that God is holy, He is powerful and mighty and awesome and scary – He is not some cuddly granddad figure floating on a cloud! In the Old Testament for an Israelite to even touch the mountain where God had come down to meet Moses would mean certain death (Exodus 19:12,13,21). God in all His glory is utterly unapproachable, He is so incomparably perfect in every way and we are so sinful and imperfect that the gulf between us is too big. Yet His love for us is far greater than our sin. He is determined that we should be able to approach Him and to know Him and love Him as our heavenly Father. The good news is that He has made a way for us to approach Him and that is through Jesus. As well as the thunder and lightning, John also tells us that there is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. Perhaps the most famous rainbow in the Bible is the one God showed to Noah and his family when they came out of the Ark. That rainbow was a promise from God that never again would there be a flood like the one Noah and all in the Ark had to be rescued from. Every time a rainbow has appeared in the sky ever since it is a reminder to humankind that God always keeps His promises. Yes we imperfect people will break promises and go back on our word, but God never has and He never will. So the rainbow here in the vision that John is seeing in heaven is a reminder to us all of God’s faithfulness; He will never betray us and His love for us is perfect and holy and total and that love has been fully expressed to us in Jesus. It is a love so great that it allowed His own Son to be nailed to a cross in our place, to die the death that we deserved (Isaiah 53:5).
There’s a lot more going on in this vision; we see that around God’s throne in the centre are twenty-four thrones and seated on those twenty-four thrones are twenty-four elders. There were twelve tribes that made up the nation of Israel and there were twelve Apostles at the birth of the church, so put the two twelve’s together and you have ‘ta daa’ … twenty-four! So this represents all God’s people through the ages; through the time of the Old Testament and through the age of the Church (which is where we are to this day).
Then we come to what are called ‘four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind’. (6) Often when you talk to someone who has a group of rowdy children to look after they will say something like ‘you need eyes in the back of your head with this lot’! Of course, what they mean is that it is really difficult to see everything that is going on and they are afraid that they might miss something, such as a child injuring themselves or another child during the course of play. So these four living creatures being covered in eyes is symbolic of the fact that they see everything, there is no pulling the wool over their eyes, they don’t miss a trick! As well as all the eyes, each creature has a different appearance; the first one has the appearance of a lion, the king of the untamed animals and who represents power. The second creature has the appearance of an ox, the greatest of the tamed animals, representing strength. The third creature has the face of a human, representing intelligence and showing the importance of the human race in God’s creation. The fourth creature is like a flying eagle, the undisputed king of the birds, representing swiftness. These creatures appear elsewhere in the Bible (Ezekiel 1, Isaiah 6) and they are called Seraphim, high ranking Angelic beings, they are the ones who surround the throne of God and who lead worship – and what worship it is!
I’ve sometimes heard grumpy people complain that in some other churches they sing too much (indeed I know I have sometimes moaned about it too); whether it be charismatic praise lasting twenty minutes or more, or choral evensong in a Cathedral taking far longer than we think it should. If we think that is bad we might be in for a bit of a shock in heaven, where in this vision of John, the four angels around the throne of God never stop singing, day and night! Of course this would be no ordinary singing; this would be the most beautiful noise and well beyond the scope of our earthly ears to fully appreciate… and what do they sing?
‘Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ (8)
The thing that happens next is so beautiful that I had tears in my eyes as I was typing the words at the computer – the twenty-four elders join in the worship too. We as the church of God are included; the day will come when we are around the throne of God, there are absolutely no words to describe what that will be like; it will be beyond spine-tingling, it will be the most beautiful and awesome thing beyond what we could ever imagine and with countless numbers of others we will join in the worship and we will sing, with beautiful new voices:
‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’ (11)
All Creation exists because of God the Creator and all creation exists to worship Him. God made us as the pinnacle of His Creation and the whole point and meaning of our lives now and that new life which is to come finds its purpose and meaning only in worshipping Him who made us. Let us worship him now and never let us stop worshiping Him in the way that we live our lives for Him who gave His life for us. Worship is indeed a way of life and we will never be fully content or find peace and joy until we realise that God is worthy, more than worthy of our worship, not just singing worship but to worship Him with all of our lives, every moment, with all that we are and everything that we have… Amen.
Bibliography:
Tom Wright, ‘Revelation for Everyone’, SPCK 2011 (Kindle edition)
William Hendriksen “More than Conquerors”, Tyndale Press, 1962
John Richardson, “Revelation Unwrapped”, MPA Books, 1996
[1] Tom Wright, ‘Revelation for Everyone’, SPCK 2011 (Kindle) Location 315
Photo: Sea Thrift flowers at Inchydoney, on the side of the small cliffs there.
Sermon for Sunday 27/1/13. Text Luke 4:14-30
Many of you have I’m sure lived away from home for a time and if you have, can you remember what it was like coming home? Perhaps you were nervous, perhaps you were excited about seeing your family and friends again and revisiting those places that were so much a part of your upbringing. Think too of what it was like going back to the church in whose pews you sat as a child…
The Lord Jesus had been away from His home town for a while; He had been down in the south of the country and there he had been baptised by John in the river Jordan and then he had been in the desert wilderness and Samaria. Now he was back in the North, back in Galilee and was returning to His home town of Nazareth, to his Mother and family and to the houses and streets and Synagogue with which He would have been so familiar from his growing up years.
Luke tells us that Jesus was ‘filled with the power of the Spirit’ (14) There was something different about Jesus now, of course, he had always been different, he had after all never sinned (2 Cor.5:21), and as fully man and fully God, he had always been full of the Holy Spirit. Now though there is a new power about him, his ministry has fully begun – He has been baptised and filled anew with the Spirit and he has overcome the devil in the desert. He has a new focus, a new passion and commitment. He has been going around the synagogues in the area and everyone has been really impressed with him and sung his praises.
So, the Lord is back in Nazareth and on Saturday morning, the Sabbath, he goes to church (I mean synagogue, but it really was quite like church). The Synagogue in Nazareth would have been small, it would have been traditional, they wouldn’t have had the latest worship songs. I think it’s safe to say that Mary and perhaps Jesus’ younger brothers and sisters would have been there and it’s not hard for us to imagine the anticipation in the air as the Lord stood up to read from Isaiah. He unrolls the scroll and reads the words:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (from Isaiah 61:1,2).
As he rolls up the scroll and hands it back to the attendant you would have been able to hear a pin drop, all the eyes are fixed upon Him. This is Jesus, the local boy made good.
It all starts off very well. Jesus says in response to the reading from Isaiah:
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (21)
Now this is a very bold statement, these words from Isaiah are part of a prophecy about the Messiah, that He will be the one sent to Israel to set them free from oppression and captivity and to usher in a new era of God’s blessing and favour. Jesus’ audience like what He has to say; Luke tells us that, ‘All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.’ (22)
But the honeymoon doesn’t last long. The awe of the people in the ‘pews’ doesn’t linger, they say, ‘hang on a minute, isn’t this Joseph’s son, we’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper?’ It is always easier for the outsider to be listened to; we take them at face value and give them the benefit of the doubt. But when it is one of our own, one whom we have known since they were a child then it is much more difficult for us to accept them and what they have to say. So for these people of Nazareth it is a difficult thing to accept that this child of Joseph as they thought, (see 3:23) is the Messiah.
The people are confused and that confusion will very soon turn to anger. They had heard about the miracles that Jesus had been performing and His reputation was growing all the time, but could He really be the Messiah?
Perhaps any ordinary preacher would have snuck out the back door by now, but Jesus is no ordinary preacher, and He will certainly not let anyone get in the way of God’s Word. There is more to say and He is going to say it:
‘…there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine all over the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.’ (25, 26)
The citizens of Nazareth were just like their fellow countrymen and women throughout Israel, they were a proud people. As far as they were concerned, they had the monopoly on God. Their history showed that they were God’s chosen, special and blessed people. They would have treasured the promise of Deuteronomy 7:6, which says:
For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
The Lord Jesus is saying that God also loves the other nations; Jesus will die not just for the sins of Israel but for the world: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ (John 3:16) Jesus reminds them of how God sent the prophet Elijah to a foreign widow for food and shelter when he was on the run from king Ahab (1 Kings 17,18). In case the point has not hit home, Jesus gives them another example, of the Syrian army commander Naaman, who was healed of leprosy through the ministry of Elisha. In other words yes God loves Israel, but He also loves the rest of the world and He wants to reach out and save them too.
For the people of Nazareth this was a great insult, it wounded their national pride and conceit. It would be like God saying to the flag-waving Unionists that He also loved and deeply cared about their Roman Catholic neighbours and wanted them to do the same. How outrageous, how insulting, how blasphemous! We don’t mind hearing that God is great and just and holy and pure, but when we are told that he will have mercy on people who we don’t like and with whom we strongly disagree, we cannot stand it.[1] To find out that God loves those whom we hate will make us furious and so it was with the people in church that morning.
‘They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.’ (29)
What drove the people to fury was that God was rescuing the wrong people. It would be someone in Britain or France during world war two speaking about God’s healing and restoration for Nazi Germany[2].
One of the beautiful things about the unity service we shared in the Roman Catholic Church last week was the joy of just being able to be together, free of the past, the past where we were suspicious of each other, the past where each saw themselves as the ‘real’ church and the other somehow not part of God’s true church on earth. The joy was not ours alone but a joy that, I believe, was and is a gift given to us by God. Generations of mutual suspicion and mistrust are, all over the country coming to an end. None of us know what God has in store for His united Church on this Island, but the Spirit is leading us and it is wonderfully exciting. Yes, there will always be those who will cling on to the past, who are able to give lots of reasons and examples as to why this cannot be God’s will, but so long as we keep focusing on the Lord Jesus, we will not fall into that trap. We don’t want to find ourselves unwittingly in that angry mob as they bundled Jesus out of the church and marched Him to the cliff edge. Jesus had returned to the town and to his home church full of the Holy Spirit and they did not like it. God was in their midst, it should have been the start of a wonderful revival, there should have been many conversions and healings, it should have been a time of wonderful blessing and joy. But what did they want to do when God showed up in power? They wanted to kill Him, to kill God! No longer was God in the box they wanted to keep Him in, so they wanted to hurl Him off a cliff.
What on earth must be going through Mary’s mind at this point? Luke doesn’t tell us; instead we are left to ask ourselves the question, ‘What would I have done had I been there? Would I have gone along with the crowd, would I have tried to stop them? Am I angry at Jesus for loving the people that I don’t like, the people I disagree with and the person I can’t forgive?’ It’s OK to be angry, but in that place of rage let’s not push Jesus away, rather let us fall on our knees and surrender. Remember that He loved us even though before we gave our life to Him, we were God’s enemies (Colossians 1:21). Let us surrender ourselves now and always to the one who loves even us, loves us so much that He gave His life in our place. Not only does He love us, He loves our enemies too and He wants us to do the same (Matt.5:44)… Amen.
Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8 G DX, (1/250 sec, f8, ISO 400) Processed in Instagram.
It was Sunday morning. As usual I was in a hurry to get myself ready and get out of the door, into the car and on my way to church to make it in time for the 9.00am service. To make matters worse when I did get to the car it was coated in ice! I quickly dashed back inside and filled a large jug with warm water to defrost the windows. I was really running late now (or so I thought). I drove reasonably quickly whilst taking care to be on the lookout for patches of ice on the road. The sun was just coming over the low hills on the Eastern horizon, it was spectacular. I had the camera in my bag and I started to think about how I would find the time to take a photo.
Much to my surprise I arrived in Timoleague in good time, I was early. At the entrance to the village I pulled over and got out with my camera to try to get a picture of the Abbey ruins with the sun rising behind it, but there was a problem – I only had a 35mm lens, which meant that the Abbey was too far away and there would have been too much junk in the foreground of the picture – I really needed 150mm or more to get the right shot. A voice in my head said ‘drive on, keep going’. I got back in the car and drove to just beside the Abbey, facing the estuary, the tide was high. I got out of the car and walked over to the water’s edge. As I was lifting the camera to my eye I heard a flapping noise to my left; my presence had alerted a duck and he was now flying low across the water. He came into the viewfinder and I waited until he was in just the right spot and then I pressed the shutter release. I had my photo, but much more importantly I was now relaxed and ready for worship, my stress had gone. Somehow in that moment by the water’s edge I connected with God, with His Creation as a means, a platform for holy enchantment.
Photo: Glencar Lough, Co. Leitrim, January 2013.
Sermon for Sunday 13/1/13. Text: Isaiah 43:1-7
Have you ever been in that place where you just want to give up? The pressures of your work, your family situation, your finances or whatever sphere of life you are concerned with just becomes too great, too overwhelming? You wish that you could get on a boat or a plane and find a desert island somewhere where there would be no telephone, only the sound of lapping waves, no bank statements, only leaves falling from the trees and no one to be cross with you or gossip about you, only the feeling of the warm sand running through your fingers…
All of us who have lived for any length of time know that life can be great but it can also seem like hell at times too. Sometimes as Christians we think that we cannot get emotional with God, we have to keep a stiff upper lip and pretend that everything is alright. Really what we want to do is find somewhere where we can shout and something that we can punch, but instead we think that God would not approve of such behaviour so we bottle it all up somehow until it bursts out of us in some other way, such as during an argument with a friend or when we beep the horn ferociously at someone who cuts us up at a roundabout!
Martin Luther King Jr. was perhaps the leading light of the movement in the United States in the 1950s for racial equality through nonviolent resistance. I doubt any of us could imagine the pressure and stress he was under; he received as many as 30 to 40 threatening phone calls a day. One night in January 1956 he returned home late after a long day of meetings. His wife and young daughter were in bed and he was eager to join them, but then the phone rang; it was yet another threatening call. He wanted to go to bed, but he could not shake the menacing voice of that phone caller that kept repeating the hateful words in his head. He made some coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. With his head buried in his hands he cried out to God. There in his kitchen in the middle of the night, when he had come to the end of his strength, God spoke to him. King later wrote: “I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on … He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone, no never alone.’ In the stillness of the night the voice of Jesus was greater than the voices of hate and it gave King the courage to press on, to press on for the rest of his life[1]. That is what each of us needs, the voice of Jesus speaking into our lives, into our situations. It is a Voice that is greater than anything or anyone that can come against us. If we are a Christian, then we have a relationship with God. In our reading from Isaiah, God says of that relationship:
But now thus says the LORD, he who created you … he who formed you … Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Aren’t those phenomenal words? God created us, he knitted us together in our mothers wombs (cf. Ps.139:13), He knows us completely and He speaks to us as He spoke to the people of Israel and he tells us not to fear, he has redeemed us (in other words he has freed us from blame, we are forgiven), and not only has He redeemed us through the cross of Christ, he also calls us by name. I remember in the equivalent to National School that I went to all the girls were referred to by their Christian names but all the boys were simply called ‘boy’. It was wonderful then in my next school to hear my new teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, call me by my name. I felt like a real person, I felt valued and it made me want to do my best work for this kind teacher. God knows us by name, He knows us intimately and He cares about us and we matter to Him. I love the bit at the end of the verse where God says, ‘you are mine’. Can you imagine God punching the air, saying your name and going ‘yes, you are mine’? We are not an afterthought for God, He is passionate about us.
Verse 2 has appeared in lots of songs, the words are poetic and beautiful:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
There’s a magnificent song by U2 called ‘drowning man’ about a man drowning in the “winds and tides” of life. As you listen to the song you can imagine him being swept down a fast moving river and he is about to be carried away out of sight when suddenly out of the darkness comes a voice saying “Take my hand … hold on tightly … hold on and don’t let go of my love … hold on tightly to this love which will last for ever…” All of us go through troublesome waters in life and if we try and swim in our own strength we are more likely to fail. But God’s promise is that the waters shall not overwhelm us.
When I read the words ‘walk through the fire, I am reminded of the event recorded in Daniel chapter 3, where Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are thrown into the Fiery Furnace for refusing to worship a 90’ high gold statute. But rather than be burnt up in the flames they were completely unharmed, with even their hair left unsigned! When King Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace he exclaimed to his soldiers:
Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire? They replied “Certainly, O king,” To which he replied:
Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.
God sent a heavenly visitor to help the three men during a time of great trial. God will help us too. Perhaps some of you have stories of how God has helped you through great trials and difficulties in ordinary or extraordinary ways. Perhaps we would be amazed too at all the times and in different ways God has saved us in different situations which we have no idea about…
Fire and water represent the totality of trials, of whatever sort and however they come – in all things, the Lord is with us[2]. As I was thinking about this I remembered the story of Terry Waite, a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury who went to the Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages but ended up being held hostage himself for four long years. In his autobiography he writes much about his faith in the midst of intense difficulty. One of the bits I remember is where he used to save a little bread when it was given to him and together with a little water in a plastic cup he used to recite the Communion Service from memory. In solitary confinement, far from home, frightened, he nevertheless drew great comfort and support from the fact that God was with Him in the midst of his great trial, He did not allow Terry Waite to be overwhelmed or drown in despair, God carried him through until he was released.
In the next few verses, God shows His people how much they mean to Him, by naming the nations he has saved them from and punished in their stead, Egypt (remember Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea) and Ethiopia and Seba (countries beyond the borders of Egypt). Then Isaiah plunges forward in time to a regathering of God’s people from the ends of the earth at a time far removed from the day of writing. Some people say that the modern day nation of Israel is a fulfillment of this prophecy, with Jews from all over the world leaving the countries of their birth and setting up a new home in the land of their ancient ancestry.
In the past God gave nations in exchange for His people, with Christ though He did much more than that. Isaiah himself would give a clear indication of this in chapter 53 when he wrote of the Messiah, the suffering servant:
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
In Christ we have the ultimate fulfillment of all that Isaiah wrote. Through Him, we have a special relationship with God; we are His children, called by name, knitted together by Him in our mother’s womb. He is with us before we were formed; he is with us through life and through death. Certainly we are his if we want to be. Often I come across people who are going through trials of one kind or another and it breaks my heart to see them trying to cope without God’s help. For different reasons people try to cope on their own – but it really doesn’t have to be like that. He calls your name, He tells you not to fear, He has redeemed you and you are His now and always… Amen.
[2] Alec Motyer ‘The Prophecy of Isaiah’, Inter Varsity Press, 1995, p.331
Photo: Sculpture by Seamus Murphy in the Crawford Gallery, Cork: “Virgin of the twilight” (1941)
Yes I know that this isn’t really a Christmas picture, the Lord Jesus is a bit too grown up! But it was the closest I could find to a “real meaning of Christmas” picture that I had taken in the past few months. I love the tender expression on Mary’s face and the resolute expression on the Lord’s face, as if, even at this age he knows what lies ahead…
To all of you reading this, a very Happy Christmas and may you know even more of God’s plan and purpose for your life in the coming year.
(NOTE APRIL 2013 – for some reason this got deleted – so reinstating it now)
(Photo: St. Brendan the Navigator, Bantry, perhaps rejoicing at the discovery of distant new shores.)
Sermon for Sunday 16th December, text: Philippians 4:4-7
Rejoice is not a word we use much, it seems quite old-fashioned sounding; we are not used to seeing it in a text message, or hearing it said on the nine o’clock news. Yet it is a beautiful word. It means ‘to delight in God’s grace’, to express our joy at the experience of His undeserved favour and to be conscious of His unconditional love for us[1]. See, I told you it was a beautiful word. As followers of the Lord Jesus, we have good reason to do a lot of rejoicing and our reading today from Paul’s letter to his friends in Philippi should help us rediscover the urge to rejoice that we may have lost somewhere along the way of our everyday lives.
Paul writes:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
It seems that the Philippians needed a reminder about rejoicing too, as Paul thinks it is worth repeating; “again I will say, Rejoice.”
In this season of Advent, let us rejoice in God’s love for us in sending Jesus, God born a baby to show us how much He loves us. God doesn’t keep his distance; He does not want or need us to work our way up to Him (we couldn’t anyway, even if we tried). God has come down to us in Jesus, and that is something to greatly rejoice about. Let us be like the wise men, who rejoiced when they saw the star leading them to Jesus (Matt. 2:10).
I saw something recently, which reminded me of Christmas and what it’s all about; it was at the swimming pool, where one of our boys was having a swimming lesson. The teacher was standing on the edge of the pool while her class were splashing away in the water beneath her. Everything was going fine except that there was a little girl who was getting increasingly frustrated; she just couldn’t keep us with the others in the class and she had started crying. So the teacher, wearing a tracksuit, got into the pool and held the little girl and spoke encouraging words to her and walked with her up and down the pool along with all the other children. Soon the little girl was smiling again. It reminded me of how God came down to us, to help us, to show us the way but of course Jesus did so much more than that; He was not only born for us, but as we know, he died on the cross for us too and rose again for us as well. What a God we have. Rejoice we must.
Next Paul wrote:
Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
The word ‘gentleness’ (ἐπιεικής), means to be gentle in terms of being fair and reasonable, not to judge by the ‘letter of the law’ but by the ‘spirit of the law’[2]. So when Paul says “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” He is talking about the way that the Philippians (and us) should live our lives everyday. What kind of reputation do we have outside of the walls of this church? Are we known as a hard-nosed businessman, as a ‘chancer’ or ‘cute hoor’? When people think of us do they think of someone who is gentle, someone who is fair and kind-hearted? We are to live lives where we reflect Jesus. Are people drawn towards Jesus or away from Jesus when they encounter us?
We have another link with Advent when Paul writes the four-word sentence:
The Lord is near.
There is a clever double meaning here. Yes the Lord is near to us, closer than we would think and there is nowhere we can go in this life where the Lord would not be near to us (Psalm 139:7-10). There is also the sense that the Lord is near as in the second coming. So the point is that we should be encouraged to let our gentleness be known to everyone because Jesus is with us and He will help us, but also that we should let our gentleness be known to everyone because time is short, we need to seize the opportunities that God gives us because we never know when time will come to an end. We could die tomorrow, the person we are trying to show God’s love to could die today. The Lord could return at any moment, so for God’s sake and for the sake of those around us, let our gentleness be known to everyone.
Next comes the bit we’ve all been waiting for; they are some of the most famous and popular verses in the whole Bible. Paul writes:
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Q. What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A. A nervous wreck.The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. (George Muller.)[3]
I heard a good definition of worry recently, that it is ‘meditation but without the prayer!’ I really hope that we all make time to meditate on Scripture, that is why we have our ‘memory verses’ in the Service Guide each week to help us get started. The idea is that you read the verse or verses over and over, again and again and you let the words sink into you and soak into your soul. You absorb them so that they become a part of you. Have you ever seen a professional wine taster at work? The way they breathe in deeply as they sip the wine and let flavours wash back and forth over their tongue and they savour the different nuances and characteristics of the grape is amazing to watch. Meditating on Scripture is a bit like that, though of course we do not spit it out at the end! When we worry about something, we let it roll over and over in our mind and it can be so bad that it can stop us eating or sleeping properly (or worse). Worry is self-destructive, but meditation is something that builds us up and gives us strength, it is nourishing and life-giving. Paul tells us not to worry about anything at all but instead to turn what is on our minds into a prayer. It is very easy to turn a worry into a prayer is it not? We just have to direct what is on our minds towards God; give Him a list of all the things that are worrying or concerning us. As we do this, we are to be thankful, thankful that we have a God who hears and answers our prayers. When we post a letter into the letter box, we don’t think that it is going to disappear into a hole in the ground and never be seen again, we have faith that it will arrive at its intended destination and that the person will read it. In a much greater way, when we pray we know that without delay our Heavenly Father hears us and that our prayer is answered even before we have finished praying.
When we realise this, it should fill us with a peace that can only come from God, a peace which is beyond all human understanding. The word used for peace (εἰρήνη) includes the idea of being whole or complete; when you have your shoe-laces undone the laces are all over the place and you may well trip over them, but when they are tied, they are whole and complete and as they should be. Similarly our minds are not at peace when we have thoughts all over the place, but in the place of prayer, where we lay all before God, He takes our thoughts, concerns and worries from us and onto Himself. Remember the Lord Jesus said:
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:29)
Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)
It’s funny isn’t it how often we seem to want to hold on to our worries, fears and anxieties, it is almost as if we find that they give us purpose and something to live for. But God wants us to be free (John 8:36), Has has a wonderful plan and purpose for our lives, He longs for us to trust Him; trust Him with our hearts, our lives, our family, trust Him with our past, trust Him now and trust him for the future. He wants us to trust Him with our parents, our children our spouse and all our relationships. He wants us to take a hold of His outstretched nail-pierced hands and let Him lead us through the fullness of a life lived not for ourselves, but for Him, who made us for that very purpose, to have a relationship with Him.
If you are still awake at this point you might very well ask me: How can I have this life that you are talking about? I go to church, I pray, I pay all my taxes but I just don’t know God the way you are describing. What do I need to do?
It’s all about passion. How much do you want to know God? Do you hunger after Him, thirst with longing, or are you just content with an on-off relationship without real commitment? What if you were to say to your wife or husband: “Well I can see you this Sunday morning for an hour and maybe one evening a week for another hour or two, but that’s all.” They probably wouldn’t be too impressed would they! In fact you couldn’t have a marriage like that, so what makes us think we can have a relationship with our Creator like that?[4] We need to be in relationship with God ALL THE TIME, and if we only limit God to a couple of slots a week, then that is why our relationship with him is lukewarm at best. In Jeremiah 29:13, God says to His people:
When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.
If we seek God with all of our heart, we really will find Him.
May we pray: … Amen
[3] both from http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/a/anxiety.htm
[4] Idea from an Andrew Wommack sermon I heard once.
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
(Isaiah 26:3)
I found it very helpful recently when I heard this Bible verse quoted in a sermon I was listening to. Staying or fixing or focussing our minds upon God, whether in the quiet place of prayer or in the midst of a hectic day results in peace. God is the fixed point of focus when everything else is all over the place, it is great to remember that He is the God of peace…
Something that I find hard to do (and I know I’m not alone in this), is to be still. To be able to just sit or stand and listen, listen to the noises around me; traffic in the distance, birds in the tree outside the window, the sound of my breathing, even my heartbeat, is a wonderful thing to do now and again. One of my favourite quotes from the Bible is from Psalm 46 where the LORD speaks and says:
Be still and know that I am God.
It seems that in all our rushing around and in all our busyness we can miss something that is very important – connecting with God and hearing his ‘still, small voice’. God taught this lesson to Elijah a long time ago and to this day His voice to us is often no more than a ‘gentle whisper’:
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. (1 Kings 19:11,12)
If I am reading the Bible and am surrounded by noise and busyness then it is a lot harder to hear God ‘speak’ through the words I am reading. Similarly, in the place of prayer, how much do I rattle on to God about this and that, say ‘Amen’ and then jump back into hectic hurry once more? It is important to be still, to listen, to connect with God, to receive His word, blessing and strength for that which lies ahead.
Stillness is good.
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Photo notes: Kinsale Harbour on the morning of the 29th November. Nikon D7000, Nikkor 35mm f1.8. (ISO 400, f11, 1/350 sec) out of camera jpeg with no post processing, (part of my ‘one camera, one lens, one year’ project).
