Every Knee Shall Bow

I sometimes wonder what the 'every knee shall bow' moment in Philippians 2:10 might look like.

Perhaps a clue lies in the extraordinary episode recorded in 1 Sam 19:20 - 24. Saul sends his men to capture David, but they end up prophesying rather than laying hands on David. This in fact happens three times, and then culminates with Saul going down and finding himself prophesying as well!

The story seems to reinforce the fact that God will have his way and that people, despite their plans, will have to knuckle down and get on board with them. The men get to declare God's words/wonders, presumably whether they like it or not.

As we follow God in His mission, there will be times when people are simply swept off their feet, as it were, and caught up in Gods words & wonders. I guess such moments are hints of the ultimate moment when all & everything is similarly swept up, much as Paul wrote about to the Philippians.

[Note an interesting aside here: we typically teach that people who prophesy remain in full control, and yet here it seems like it could be involuntary, especially when we get to Saul going naked in v24. However, this does seem to be very unusual circumstances rather than your average church meeting!].

Supermarket Sabbath

Lev 25:1-7 describes the 'land Sabbath' every seven years, where working the land stops and reliance on God's provision is heightened. For us townie-types, it can be a bit difficult to relate to this kind of agricultural stuff.

In the West we typically consume way more than we need, with the regular supermarket shop being something of a cornerstone to this state of affairs. How much do pack our fridge, our freezer and our cupboards each week, pushing existing stuff to the back to be forgotten and probably eventually wasted?

So here's a whacky idea. How about every seven weeks deliberately not doing a supermarket shop, and instead try to live off what is already in the fridge, freezer and cupboards? I'll call it the 'Supermarket Sabbath' - for some it will be a challenge. Can we get through the week? Perhaps it will make us think more about our food provision and consumption. Maybe it will make us think more about God's provision.

So start counting the weeks, and in 6 weeks time declare a Supermarket Sabbath!

Beyond Hawking

So Stephen Hawking has plumped for the 'no God' explanation of creation. He has shifted his position, since previously he had room for the possibility of God.

Without understanding all the physics his argument can still be undermined, for example is the 'nothing' in the newspaper reports of his book really 'nothing', or was it an amount of energy or the collapse of a previous universe? And why the law of gravity in the first place? All these questions immediately make room for God because they imply a prior 'something'.

But Christians don't believe on the cosmological argument alone. They believe because of experience in their own lives of something beyond ourselves, beyond the mere physical ... and thus out of reach of physics altogether.

Science and religion do not have to be ever in conflict. We just have to recognize the merits and limits of each, and then go forward with the combination that seems to provide the best explanation. As Christian we seek to do just that, and we can encourage others to do so as well.

Presence Junky

In Mission Purpose Over-ride II I noted how important the presence of God was. Moses of course got lots of it, seen in both the accounts in Exodus and Deuteronomy. In fact you could argue he was a bit of a junky, with the extraordinary request of Ex 33:18 where Moses asks to see God's glory proving the point.

Yet coming back to God for more of His presence should not be down-played or written off as eccentric. I know of some modern day missionaries who are seeing extraordinary works of God in their field who also talk of the need to keep going back to God and being in His presence. They seem un-ashamed to admit that they hunger and thirst for it.

In Ex 24 Moses and his leadership team have an experience of God. Then Moses goes further on up the mountain at God's bidding. Moses had to wait around up there a whole six days before he could enter the cloud.

It seems to me it was worth the climb, and worth waiting for. In fact even sticking around in the desert and only going with God's leading was much better than just ploughing on regardless. God's presence and its effects cannot be under-estimated. Perhaps we should all be Presence junkies?