What do you see?

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine upon us,
that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.

The first verse of this couplet is often used in our services, words of blessing, even greetings cards. It has a lovely ring to it:

May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine upon us.

There is no question that it is a great blessing, with a warmth to it. But, if we cut it off there, it is incomplete.

Why does the Psalmist ask for Gods’ grace and blessing? Is the request made so that the Psalmist and God’s people can enjoy life having made the most of their divine contacts? No. The blessing of God is sought after, so that God’s ways may be known on earth and God’s salvation to everybody.

I do want to be a bit careful here. I believe that we have a generous God, who loves to give us good things because we are loved. I don’t believe that God blesses us to make God look good. God blesses us because God loves us, and we are encouraged to bring all our needs to God and trust God with them.

Having said that, I also believe that we seek the giver, not the gift. We seek the giver, not the gift. We see beyond the gift to the giver. Having experienced the love of the Giver, expressed in the value of the gift, we want others to appreciate the Giver’s generosity and to receive the gift as well.

Continued here...

Shape Up For Summer

Shaping up for summer. Is it just me, or has the frequency of the Weight Watchers ads on the TV increased recently? It’s that time of year, isn’t? Christmas came and it was great and we tucked in to turkey and all the trimmings. New Year came and we made resolutions and took out Gym memberships, but then it was Easter and all those Easter Eggs. Now, it’s April, the summer is looming and we really do want to get into shape.

Which is great, but as Paul wrote to Timothy, “Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

I’ve been given the task of introducing what, as far as I can make out, is a 4 month sermon series, leading into the summer and giving us plenty of time to work on getting into a much more important shape, a Godly shape. I am, in effect, the text scrolling up the screen at the beginning of a Star Wars movie. I’m going to do the same job as that text. We’ll have a look at a bit of the background to the story, introduce ourselves to some of the language, and set ourselves up to make the most of the next 16 weeks.

Continued here ....