UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

DAY 26 MORNINGRead Matthew 6:25-34

ECCLESIASTES: SEEKING HAPPINESS APART FROM CHRIST IS VANITY

Solomon a ruler of Israel noted for his great wisdom and his vast riches questions the meaning of life and concludes that all is vanity. Jesus said “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things would be added” Matthew 6:33. Solomon’s message in Ecclesiastes corroborates this. He disturbs the reader to think about his priorities in life. He concludes that all is vanity and is meaningless using the Hebrew word for vanity which is “Smoke” or “vapour.” Just as smoke rises up it can be gone in a second. Life can be so temporary and sometimes it can feel like it is slipping through our fingers. The Meaning of life sometimes feels like an arbitrary nothingness. A generation comes, a generation goes but the earth lasts forever. Life is fixed, bounded and temporal and has no bearing on anything else and on this basis he declares that he hates life and that “life under the sun” is just a chasing after the wind. With pleasure, the more a man hunts for it, the less he finds. Eating and drinking is referred to. People can have a hunger to get more out of life than they were designed to receive and when money itself becomes a god it ruins everything. The love of money grows by what it feeds on. He paints a moving picture of the futility of life without God, concluding that riches as well as wisdom are of no benefit without the gift of enjoying this gift, which comes from God.

God has put eternity in the heart of man, he says or in other words man is too big for this world, and he can’t find satisfaction in it. Solomon teases the reader with an encouragement to “enjoy life” but his real message is to “fear God” which is repeated several times. Ecclesiastes ends with a powerful conclusion, “Fear God and keep his commandments.” He highlights the truth that God is judge of everything, including every secret thing whether good or evil.  In Ecclesiastes 12:11, he says “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed.”  The command “to fear God and keep his commandments” is like a nail fixed to the wall is a powerful image of permanence that contrasts profoundly, with the vaporous image of meaningless. Solomon challenges, questions, provokes and disturbs throughout, but his real message of Ecclesiastes  is “to fear God and keep his commandments.”.. or using New Testament language, “to seek God first and his kingdom.”   

MISSIONARY MONKS:  DOMINICANS 1170-1221[1]

Dominic de Gusman was born in Castile in Spain and studied in a Cathedral school in Spain. He founded another major monastic coenobitic order, “the Dominicans” also known as the Friars Preachers or Black Friars. Dominic was part of a Spanish monastic community, that practised the rule of Saint Augustine, and he followed a more conventional pathway of a scholarly clergyman, which was very different from Francis. Like Francis, he was strictly ascetic and spent time in extended prayer. The Franciscans and the Dominicans differed in that Francis was concerned by the drift towards universities in the Catholic church, whereas Dominic was very committed to teaching, scholarship and preaching. As “mendicant” orders, both survived through begging from people they did not know. The fourth Lateran Council took place in Rome in 1215, and the Dominicans were given official permission to preach. Chapters of the Dominican order were established throughout Europe in France Italy and Spain and afterwards in England Germany Denmark Hungary Poland Greece and your wisdom. They were effectively bases for monastic mission.[2]

CLICK ON BOLD and you will be directed to Joshua Project website with more information for prayer.

PRAY for “the Arab, Moroccan in Germany the twenty-fifth largest unreached people group in Europe, whose  language is Arabic, Moroccan   and whose primary religion is Islam There are 237,000, 0.5% Christian and  0.05% evangelical.”[3]  Dominican orders were established providing a contemporary expression for mission all over Europe, including Germany in the 13^th century. Lord, raise up contemporary expressions of mission in Germany among the Moroccan Arabs, we pray.

DAY 26 EVENING Psalm 126-130, Re-read Psalm 130

PSALM 130: OUT OF THE DEPTHS I CRY TO YOU. LORD, HEAR MY VOICE.

Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” In the BBC wild life programme The Blue Planet, [4] there is a episode where  a submarine travels 4000 feet below the surface. Without the submarine the cameramen would have been crushed in an instant. Down at those depths, it is completely black, cold with no vegetation, a stark almost lunar-like landscape with very little life. When we say someone is in deep water we mean he is in trouble. The depths of the sea are like the depths of our troubles. Sometimes when we are in the depths, it feels very dark, very cold, under deep pressure. Many characters in the bible were in the depths, Joseph in prison, Daniel  in Lion’s den, King David on the run from Saul. The psalmist, in Psalm 130 is crying out to God for help.

John Wesley cried out to God in the depths and drew comfort from Psalm 130. On 24^th May 1738 John Wesley wrote in his Journal [5]: “In the afternoon I was asked to go to St Paul’s. The anthem was De Profundis, based on Psalm 130:1–8” The music and the words deeply touched John Wesley and a seed was planted. Later that day, in the evening, he met with a group of friends who were reading from Luther’s “Preface to Romans”,[6] which also spoke of the depths.  “God judges what is in the depths of the heart. Therefore his law also makes demands on the depths of the heart and doesn’t let the heart rest content in works; rather it punishes as hypocrisy and lies all works done apart from the depths of the heart.” Wesley suddenly saw for the very first time the extent of his sin despite having been to church, despite having been a missionary. He realised the extent to which God by grace and by grace alone saves us ‘out of the depths’. Wesley famously says in his Journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” Another Oxford man, Jonathon Aitken, drew comfort from Psalm 130, when in the depths. He was an Eton alumnus and Oxford graduate, who came close to becoming Prime Minister, but went to prison in the 1990s for libel. He wrote a book called ‘Psalms for people under pressure.’[7]Jesus knew what it was to be in the depths,, and we know that we have a God who can sympathize with us.

We face a desperate and deep place in the church in England today, with only 6% saying they are practising Christians. [8] When we are the depths, it is really easy to just give up and just sink into despair. C. Lewis in a letter to the Church Times wrote, “.. to a layman it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the ‘liberal’ or ‘modernist’ is something very clear and momentous, namely the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists,… perhaps the trouble is that ..whether  ‘low’ or ‘high’ Church  they lack a name. May I suggest “Deep Church’; or …‘mere Christians.’ These words, of 70 years ago, calling for ‘Deep Church’, may be just as relevant today. Hans Boersma says [9] Early church exegesis makes space for Deep church and retrieval of orthodox faith which makes possible healing of divisions between Eastern Orthodox and Western, Protestant and Catholic church and global awakening. Augustine said they are very deep in the deep who do not even cry from the deep.[10] Let’s cry out from the deep, and remember our future.[11]

PRAYER Lord we wait for you Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,  more than watchmen wait for the morning. We pray for another youth awakening from ‘the womb of the dawn’. Lord, hear our cry today!

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[1] Summary Latourette, R.S. A history of Christianity beginnings to 1500 volume 1, Prince Press, 2003,437-439.

[2] Smither, E.L.  Missionary monks, Cascade books, 2016, 153-160 (summary).

[3] Data provided by Joshua Project https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/13819/GM

[4] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL50KW6aT4Ugw65Ex89Z2XrBxQVZLdyOZ9

[5] Wesley, J. Journal, 103.

[6] Luther.M, Preface to The book of Romans, Benediction Classics, 2010.http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html

[7] Aitken, J. Psalms for people under pressure, Continuum, 2011.

[8] Talking Jesus survey https://www.hopetogether.org.uk/Groups/371503/Talking_Jesus.aspx

[9] Boersma, H. Scripture as Presence, Baker Publishing, 2017.

[10] Augustine, Expositions on the book of Psalms, Psalms 57-150, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2012, 497.

[11] Walker, A. and Bretherton, L. Remembering our future: Explorations in Deep Church, Paternoster, 2007.