Trajedy or Glory

Death - the ultimate statistic, the great taboo (at least in the West), the source of grief, loss, and tragedy.

Can there be any good in it?

Curiously there are times when God seems to actively bring it on. Exodus 14:4 records 'and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army'. That would be Pharaoh and his army heading out to a mass watery death. A tragedy for the rest of the Egyptian people.

And John 11:4 has Jesus saying, 'This illness will not end in death. No it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it'. Allowing the death to proceed - tragedy for Mary, Martha and others at the time.

Both stories bring death: both bring with them grief, loss, a sense of tragedy.

And yet through both 'glory' for God.

That seems odd to us, death doesn't sound that glorious. Yet both these stories show the power of God: over the threat of death in the Exodus example and literally over death in the case of Lazarus.

So these deaths bring a realisation by humans that God is God, He is in charge, above all, and that includes life and death itself.


In the Western world we now seem to keep death at bay for as long as possible. Yet even in death God's glory is manifest and can be seen.

The Call From, The Call To, and the Journey along the way

A typical understanding of salvation is what we are saved "from": from our sins, from spiritual death and so on. In proclaiming the gospel we are therefore calling people 'from' their old position, urging them to repent (turn) from that position to adopt the new that is freely available in Jesus Christ.

All good stuff.

Yet if we only ever concentrate on this 'call from', might we be missing something?

The writer to the Hebrews spends the best parts of chapters 3 & 4 talking not just about where we have come from, but also about where we are heading to. Yet note the real risk the author perceives of us not actually getting there, of not being able to enter the 'Sabbath rest'.

The Israelites had to cross the sea to leave the Eyptians behind and go forward towards their God intended destination. Yet even with such a dramatic departure, they later baulked at entering what was the promised land.

Biblically there is a very real sense of a call "to", to enter the restored land where things are brought to their God-intended perfection. We must therefore urge people on to what they are called to, to their restoration and being put back together. Before we even get there we can anticipate it, see examples of it forming now - just as the Israelites in the desert were able to start living a Kingdom based lifestyle.

For between the from and the to there is the journey along the way. Not always easy, in fact most likely tough and arduous. One in which we are going to have to work at and expend ourselves. An onward journey that will require continued faith that God can get us to the ultimate destination.

Prisoner in our own land?

Nehemiah 9 rehearses the story of Israel, complete with great ups and very down downs. Despite being written in a time of return from exile, it ends on a somewhat gloomy note. See v36 & 37 - 'we are slaves in the land you gave us' and the 'abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us'. It's not good.

It made me wonder - how much do we do things that lead us to be prisoners in our own land? What structures or things do we put in place that actually become in time our own prisons, so that all the goodness and potential that are available simply go elsewhere while we are still toiling away.

How many things do we have in the way we 'do church' that actually 'lock us in', distract us from following Jesus and working to His plans?

God is in it, but really its a bad plan II

My last post raises the questions of plans, and whose plans they really are. We saw that the desire to have a King of Israel was not really God's plan - at least in the way the Israelites at the time envisaged.

Yet the whole outworking of the prophetic insight for Saul to be anointed by Samuel would be enough to convince any of us that God was with indeed with us: after all, when things flow so well, events line up, and God-incidences happen, we naturally conclude that God is in it, working with us and for our benefit, and all is well. In fact we often see such 'lining up' of events as the test or proof that our intentions are indeed 'of God'.

So could it be that at least on some occasions God will enable things to line up and 'flow well' (allowing our plans to be realised) when in truth they are not actually the best thing for us? God goes with us, enables it, lines it up, somehow accommodating events to our 2nd rate aspirations.

This is the God of grace - enabling things to work out even when we are on the wrong track. 'Making it work', when on paper it should be unworkable and thus consigned to the scrap heap.

Yet it also means we should perhaps be a bit more humble the next time we see things flow and say 'see - I told you God is in it!'. God in His grace may have stooped down to our way of thinking, but there could have been a better way ...

Who knows? Well the bottom line is whether our intents are good or wonky, God is a God of grace who somehow accommodates us even in our inferior thinking.

God is in it, but really its a bad plan

I love the whole business of Saul being anointed king in 1 Samuel chapters 9 & 10. Particularly I like the prophecy element, with all the details which then just 'work out' simply and straight-forwardly.

For example Samuel is told in advance about Saul (9:15), and seems to know about the donkeys as well! Then there are the prophesied signs in 10:1-11, right down to the detail of the number of loaves of bread. It all just plays out, without a single hitch.

If God is in it, and wants it to happen ... then it will happen.

But of course the strange thing is that the whole episode is a bad deal - Israel should not be having a king in the first place (see 8:1f and 12:12f). So whilst God is in it, revealing through prophecy and having it all play out without setbacks, the whole thing is a big downer compared to what should really be going on.

It seems to me that God may well be in it, but really its a bad plan.

Qualified for Kingdom Preaching

We can all preach the Kingdom of God - I am confident of that.

But is our preaching matched by our own Kingdom living? Is God's rule welcome to whoever we preach to, but still kept at bay within our own lives.

I am struck by the connection between Jesus' testing in the wilderness (Matthew 4) and commencement of his Kingdom preaching in earnest (v17). The whole wilderness + temptation business 'qualifies' Jesus to preach the Kingdom. Not that he wasn't the person to do it anyway - he is the Son of God, the chosen Messiah, after all. Yet God's will in his own life is proven, lived out.

Compare Jesus' wilderness-track-record with the Israelites' version. It took them a while to get used to God's daily provision of manna in the desert, learning to trust God at His word was in fact worth more than the physical food (Dt 8:3). Naturally they got thirsty - they were in a desert duh! - but they turned their thirst into resentment of God's purposes, even wishing they could return to captivity. No wonder Moses saw them as 'testing God' (see Dt 8:3 cf Exodus 17:2). Towards the end of their journey Moses had to spell out to them the need to put God first - since once in the promised land they might just be tempted to think they had got there themselves (see Dt 6:1-5).

It is this Deuteronomy summary that Jesus is quoting in his reactions to the devil. The Israelites were supposed to establish a nation/land where God's rule would be manifest, a pre-cursor to the Kingdom of God maybe, but their lives fell so far short before they even got there.

Jesus, although fully qualified by virtue of who he was, proved his qualification in the realities of un-comfortable life. How do we measure up should our own qualifications ever be tested?

Tell the Story

In Ian Randall's article about early baptists in the UK he gives five points that characterised them, with point 5 being about telling the story. He explains how the gospel story and how the story of each believer aligned with it was a key focus of their shared life together as Christian disciples.

Ian calls for imaginative ways of telling the story, with which I thoroughly concur. Story-telling amongst other things seems to have universal power across cultures and ages - it is a tool we ignore at our peril. The Bible is full of story, in Old and New Testaments. God, it seems, chooses to reveal himself through the ongoing outworking of story.

As we seek to re-herald Gospel truths in today's culture it seems to me that we would do well to find, as Ian suggests, vivid ways of telling the story.