To be quite honest, folks, when I initially took on the Christian faith--or more accurately, Christ Jesus--as an adult, I found the Christian life and all that it encompassed, to be quite daunting, and really, quite impossible. My record ‘up at bat’ (to use a baseball analogy) was more characterizes with strike outs than with runs--much less home runs! In fact, my attempts left me quite frustrated and quite depressed. I did not realize that what I was attempting was--quite frankly--impossible. I was trying to live like Christ, without the power, the power of the Spirit, that He possessed and that animated and empowered His life.

It was not until I discovered the reality of that same Spirit, the presence and the power that He alone can give, that I experienced anything by way of a change. I found that I was much more ready, and much more able, to carry out the duties and be that kind of person that Paul describes in today’s passage. Today’s little spiel is much too short to go into my discoveries of what the Spirit meant to me, but I would be quite happy to share more of that with anyone who is interested.

I have a surprise for you today, not one but two meditations. It comes about from the fact that I misread my devotional guide today, a guide put out by the Forward Movement in the United States. Whatever Scripture the day’s author chooses is normally the one that I use for my meditation. This way I can’t give in to the guilty pleasure--or bad habit--of just choosing passages or themes that I particularly like but have to sometimes subject myself to passages that I would never choose, not in a million years.

Well, today the selected passage was Psalm 40, but I didn’t ready the page correctly and got Psalm 50. It wasn’t until later that I realized that it should have been something else, so I ended up reading and meditating on both of them.

Both of the passages have a curious interconnection, namely how we are to please God. Psalm 40 talks about us trusting God with our needs and actions, and obeying Him, and Psalm 50 suggests that we put this trust and obedience into practice by giving God thanks. Indeed, as the apostle Paul was to say later on in Philippians (Philippians 4:6) what better way is there to express our trust in God than thanking Him even before we see the results.

I have a surprise for you today, not one but two meditations. It comes about from the fact that I misread my devotional guide today, a guide put out by the Forward Movement in the United States. Whatever Scripture the day’s author chooses is normally the one that I use for my meditation. This way I can’t give in to the guilty pleasure--or bad habit--of just choosing passages or themes that I particularly like but have to sometimes subject myself to passages that I would never choose, not in a million years.

Well, today the selected passage was Psalm 40, but I didn’t ready the page correctly and got Psalm 50. It wasn’t until later that I realized that it should have been something else, so I ended up reading and meditating on both of them.

Both of the passages have a curious interconnection, namely how we are to please God. Psalm 40 talks about us trusting God with our needs and actions, and obeying Him, and Psalm 50 suggests that we put this trust and obedience into practice by giving God thanks. Indeed, as the apostle Paul was to say later on in Philippians (Philippians 4:6) what better way is there to express our trust in God than thanking Him even before we see the results.

Today’s Scripture and meditation raise some very important questions, namely how we view life and reality--in other words, how we see. Even among people of faith how people view things can vary widely--just consider the varied views on Covid, or on government and government regulations, or on medical advice and information, or on the press and social media, or on pretty well anything. And that isn’t even touching on the really contentious issues like gender or race or sexual orientation.

Anglicans have typically looked to three things as a basis for authority, Scripture, tradition and reason, with Scripture being primary. But, even here, we can have issues, for not everyone interprets Scripture similarly or takes the same ‘lessons’ from tradition or reason. I think that I can truthfully say that probably most of us, myself included, tend to rely on or turn to sources that apply these authorities in the same way that we do. We tend to turn to sources we agree with and shy away with ones we don’t.

So, all of this incredibly affects the way that we see. In my meditation I suggested some ways that we might counter these tendencies. I guess, when it comes down to it, we just have to take a humble attitude, recognizing that we don’t have a stranglehold on the truth and being willing to listen, and take seriously, what other people have to say. Not very definitive. Sorry.

Today’s passage and meditation form a timely and much needed reminder, namely that our work as Christians is never finished, either in spreading and propagating the Gospel, or in living it. Both of these require diligence and our constant attention.

Yesterday we talked about being found in Christ. However, there is something of a problem with this: we don’t quite fit. We have a few rough corners that get in the way, and a few bits and pieces--these may be something as obvious as sin, or as ordinary and unnoticeable as few bad habits or faulty attitudes or not so nice personal agendas--that don’t quite jive with the character of Christ.

So, what does God do? He does a bit of pruning, a bit of refining--what today’s passage and meditation call disciplining. And, of course, as you might well guess, this isn’t always pleasant--or welcome either. But, it is done in love and for our own sake, and it is most necessary.

The ancient mystics often talked about ‘being found in Christ’ and such similar things, but, if you are like me, you dismissed them as hopelessly impractical and totally removed from our real world, our everyday world. And yet, we find this similar thing all through the New Testament, repeatedly suggested as the only way to live the Christian life.

Now, I have steered away from such talk because, for me, it conjured ideas from eastern religions where the believer is taken up or subsumed in the Almighty, becoming one with that deity, but also losing their identity and personality. But that is not the way with us and Christ. Indeed, just the opposite. In Christ, we become more completely ourselves, more the persons that God made us to be, more free to be that person because God’s life and power now lives in and through us.

And so, for me, in that vein, living in Christ, ‘being found in Christ’, becomes wonderfully attractive. What do you think?

Psalm 78 enjoins those who know and follow the Lord to tell their story, their story of what God has done for them, to their children and children’s children. and is this not key to how our faith will continue to spread and be preserved through the generations. Years ago a certain Christian educator posed the question, ‘will our children have faith?’ It is a good question, and one that will probably be given the answer ‘no’ unless we decide to share our story with others. And so, it is essential that we both remember what God has done and share that with others around us.

Here, in today’s account of Jesus’ calling of His first disciples, we have something truly remarkable--and if you are at all like me--also quite challenging, and even, to a certain extent, a bit frightening. Here are four disciples who decide to leave everything to follow Jesus, and who do so, after daring to trust Jesus in something that they ‘thought’ they knew backwards and forwards. In other words, they were willing to let Jesus take them out of their comfort zones. Does that sound challenging, even scary? It certainly does for me. But then, who are we following but the very one who has conquered the very worst that life can throw at us, even death itself--and who did so, simply out of His love for us! So it means that we have a Saviour who is quite capable, and certainly worthy of our trust.

I don’t know about you, but the whole idea of accountability is one that has often engendered feelings of uneasiness, and sometimes, even feelings of fear. Writing exams, for instance, in high school or university, were never pleasant times for me, as they were bound to show up where I had not studied enough. And likewise, the yearly performance reviews that I ‘endured’ as a social worker filled me with dread, as there were always areas where I had fallen short, and my examiners were not always known to be that sympathetic to one’s failings, no matter what the reason.

We are also called to be accountable to God, but fortunately, in Him we have a much more sympathetic ear, for He knows perfectly well what it is like for us. Today’s meditation touches on that issue of accountability, in particular in the areas of the gifts that God has so graciously given us. It asks whether we have made use of those gifts, and if so, whether we have used them to the glory of God and the increase of His kingdom--and not for some personal ends or goal or glory. It is something well worth looking at.

Today’s passage and meditation really ‘set me on my ears’ so to speak. I am certainly interested in seeing revival happen in Lloydminster, and indeed, throughout Canada and elsewhere. And, I would certainly like to see our churches renewed and revitalized. So, the incident that happened on that epic Pentecost day so many years ago certainly piques my attention. Was it simply the preaching, or the circumstances? Or was it the Holy Spirit? Remember that the assembled Christians had prayed for days and days--for ten days at least-- for the coming of the Spirit, as they awaited His arrival (the ascension happened 40 days after Easter and Pentecost 50 days, and they tarried in prayer during the interval--see Acts 1:14). So my question for myself initially, and for everyone else as well, is this? Am I willing (are we willing) to devote ourselves to prayer as they did? I’m afraid that far too often I am rather reluctant to do so, and find plenty of other things to occupy my time and attention. Just something to ponder.

Here, in today’s Scripture and meditation, is a situation that most, if not all of us, know all too well, that is, the reality of temptation. What is absolutely great is that we have a friend, indeed, an ally, in our battle with them, namely Jesus. He has been through all of this before us, and probably in ways that were far more trying and far more excruciating. Just think of the temptation He faced, when on the verge of being arrested, He could have avoided the Cross by calling upon legions of angels to help Him (see Matthew 26:53). I must say that even the worst of our temptations pale in relation to this one. And so, we have an advocate and helper like no other, one that is readily available to help us whenever needed.

In today’s psalm, Psalm 16, David claims to have put God above all else in his life, follow and obey Him completely, and have him as his chief object and goal of his life. But, of course, David, for all his good intentions, failed to carry that out, just as do all of us. Sadly, David, like all of us, stumbled and fell--and yet, was forgiven.

Of all the humans that have ever lived on earth, only Jesus was absolutely faithful to God, absolutely obedient, and absolutely unswerving in His trust in God. For that reason, He alone is fit to be our Saviour, advocate and guide, and absolutely alone in being the adequate solution for our sins. And, of course, His death and subsequent resurrection prove Him to be God’s chosen one--and God’s designated meditator. So, no wonder we are to choose Jesus above all else.

Of course, we all fail to do this. The good news, however, is that we can always choose otherwise, and come back to God, come back to our allegiance and trust in Jesus Christ. And surely, in all this, we have a wondrous example in Jesus who, armed with the very same resources as are available to each of us, was consistently faithful to God.

Usually we think of John the Baptist--and the whole notion of getting things ready for Jesus--immediately in the run-up to Christmas, or perhaps, occasionally, in the weeks leading up to Easter. So, with both of those celebrations clearly in the past, why are we picking up on this theme once again? It is because it is always appropriate to make sure that our lives are ready for Jesus, and that our lives and actions coordinate with what He wants for our world and wants to do in our world. And to be sure, if you are of the same opinion as I am, our world desperately needs Him to act--and not just our world, but our society, our communities, our churches and ourselves as well. So, anything we can do to help Him the better. After all, do we not pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. May we, each of us, be part of the movement that assists that in taking place.

Someone once said that the Gospel, and particularly the Scriptures, are God’s love letter to His people. And, accordingly, it is a letter that we all need to read, to read repeatedly, and to take to heart. That is, because we are all too prone to listen to other messages, that messages that come from our society and from other people that we are ‘not good enough’, or that we need to buy this or that, or do something--or, in this age of political correctness, not say or do certain things. We need to remind ourselves that we are loved regardless of any of these things, loved unconditionally by God.

Someone once said that the Gospel, and particularly the Scriptures, are God’s love letter to His people. And, accordingly, it is a letter that we all need to read, to read repeatedly, and to take to heart. That is, because we are all too prone to listen to other messages, that messages that come from our society and from other people that we are ‘not good enough’, or that we need to buy this or that, or do something--or, in this age of political correctness, not say or do certain things. We need to remind ourselves that we are loved regardless of any of these things, loved unconditionally by God.