Thursday 6th (Day #2) Reading: Matthew 3:1-12 Yesterday we thought about God speaking in a dream, breaking into our confusion and challenging lives. Today he speaks through a person, in an audible voice. “Change your minds. Turn around, and away from yourselves. God’s rule is within your grasp. A new way of being truly human. A new way of seeing others and yourselves. But you have to prepare yourself for it. It will be uncomfortable, for God will start to straighten out some crooked paths (and attitudes) if our lives!” We don’t like it when others challenge us do we? Those of us who are part of churches (or faith communities), we can simply make sure the leadership don’t invite such people back to our churches again, or are sidelined and silenced. Who do they think they are telling me I need to change my mind and turn around. How judgemental and conceited of them! But LENT is a season of change. It’s a time (for 40 days at least) when we start to silence such voices in our heads, and start listening to the voice of God (which often comes through the most unlikely source) and say to ourselves, maybe I’m not as perfect as I think I am. Maybe I need to change first. Maybe, just maybe the universe doesn’t revolve around me! Then we hear the voice again. “God has got an ax in his hand and he’s about to chop down an old dead tree, because it’s not been producing any fruit for sometime, and even the fruit which it occasionally does produce is not edible.” Could that be aspects and attitudes in my life that have become like dead trees? In Matthew (John the Baptist’s) context the “dead tree” is Israel and 500 years of exile and religious (often fervent) tradition is about to be cut down. The prophet Daniel had received an interesting vision near the end of his life (ch. 9:24-27) where God had shown him that Israel was coming home after 70 years of captivity, BUT a further 7x70 years of exile were just about to begin. Those 490 years (well at least 483, but that’s another story for another time) were about to end, in 26 CE with the appearance of Jesus (the redeemer), Emmanuel (the God-With-Us man). Sounds a bit violent, terminal and destructive doesn’t it? God is going to cut something down with an ax! But never forget who’s hands the ax is in: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love...The LORD is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear (know) him.” (Psalm 103:8, 13). God does nothing apart from his LOVE. Even God’s anger and apparently violent actions are rooted in and motivated by love. And so this season, let’s allow the compassionate and gracious one to cut away, remove with his shovel, and burn anything in our lives which is dead and fruitless. And watch what he replaces it with and he immerses us in his Spirit (his presence and his very life). A prayer: Gracious One, though it may be painful to watch, please cut away anything from me that is dead and barren. And take what remains and baptize it afresh in yourself. Help me be open to you this season of LENT and cooperate fully in what you are saying to me. And thank you that you do nothing in my life apart from love, which is your very being.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000
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