The Narrow Path

  Friday, July 11, 2025 Psalms 28; 29 1 Samuel 29:1-30:6 John 4:27-42 Observance: Benedict of Nursia, abbot (d. 550) Enthroned Over The Flood (Psalm 28:10) The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;     the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. The ancients knew what they were doing when it came to language. If you wanted to describe the ups and downs of life, of the utter chaos that is human existence, you could not do much better than describe it as floodwaters. It is such a good description; consider how we try and control our destinies in so many little ways. We brush our teeth in order to control our gum health. We drive sensibly to control our road safety. This is not an indictment against self determination, nor is it a call to fatalism. But the idea of floodwaters as a way to describe the chaos of life stands up against human experience. Chaos can come from our interactions with others. Nowhere perhaps is chaotic ...

  Thursday, July 10, 2025 Psalm 25 1 Samuel 28:3-25 John 4:16-26 True Worship (John 4:23) [Jesus said] “ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” Yesterday we mused on the idea that when Christ spoke of living water he might have been referring to the Holy Spirit. As he continues his conversation with the woman at the well, he develops the theme of the spiritual nature of true religion. There is a difference between the type of worship that is from the head, and the type that is from the heart. To any Christian who has spent more than thirty seconds reading their Bible this much is obvious. Performing the outward signs of religion is fine, but God looks to the heart, and searches for people who love him honestly, rather than just do what they think they ought to and leave it there. But while this is easy to say, it is not so easy t...

  Wednesday, July 9, 2025 Psalm 22:1-22 1 Samuel 27:1-28:2 John 4:1-15 Springs of Living Water (John 4:14) [Jesus said] “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Our Lord speaks often about giving. Specifically, giving things to us. And quite often, when he speaks of giving us something, he speaks of the Holy Spirit. We have some concepts of the Holy Spirit. He is spoken of as wind, in that he moves without consulting us, but we know when he has. He is referred to as breath, as the source of life, moving (like the wind, in his own time and by his own intentions) into and from his creatures. If we take the “holy” part of his name, we think of the holiness of God, which always involves fire; and when he came down onto the disciples at Pentecost, they had something like flames of fire on their heads. Could we th...

  Tuesday, July 8, 2025 Psalms 20, 21 1 Samuel 26 John 3:22-36 All Things In His Hand (John 3:35) The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Such a little word with so much packed into it: “all”. The Father has all things – in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. The sky and the land and the water and all the things that dwell therein, the Father has. There is nothing outside our heavenly Father; from that annoying stain to the hearts of world leaders, from the farthest star to the ants crawling under our feet, the Father has them all. He has given all things – all of them – into the hand of the Son. The fullness of God is in Christ Jesus, in whom all things live and move and have their being. All things are in the hands of Jesus. These things have been given by the Father to the Son in love. The love that the Father has for the Son inspired the giving; the love the Father has for all things is held by the lov...

  Monday, July 7, 2025 Psalm 19 1 Samuel 25:23-44 John 3:1-21 How Can This Be? (John 3:9) Nicodemus said to [Jesus], “How can these things be?” I love watching movies and TV shows. The ones I like most are the ones that ask me, the audience, a question. Often they will suggest an answer, but I like to think as someone who reads their Bible I have a better one. Even still, the best questions really push us to reflect, and make us recognise that in spite of how much God has revealed to us, there is still a lot of mystery to this thing we call life. One TV show I have been watching recently has been posing the question about control; specifically, control over our own lives. It is a good question, or at least I think so. Because there is so much political and social unease going on around us, maybe we should be asking the question about control. Who is in control? Are we in control? Can we be in control? Should we be in control? This passage we read ...

  Saturday, July 5, 2025 Psalms 15; 16 1 Samuel 25:2-23 Acts 15:22-35 Rejoicing At Encouragement (Acts 15:31) And when [the church] had read [the letter], they rejoiced because of its encouragement. Who doesn’t love a bit of encouragement? Have you ever been going through a tough stretch and perhaps read a certain passage of scripture, or had a particularly spiritual moment of prayer, or had someone say some uplifting words, and found the difficulty decrease and your heart lighten? I personally have found myself in several occasions where the Lord has put a word of encouragement in just the right place at just the right time to keep me going. And where it says in today’s reading from Acts that the church rejoiced as a result of their encouragement, I found myself nodding along, because that’s what encouragement does: it brings joy. Dear Christian, I want to encourage you. I am just reading out some words that I have typed up, but the Lord has done more ...