The Narrow Path

  Saturday, July 1, 2023 Psalms 1; 2 1 Samuel 20:35-21:7 Acts 13:42-52 Observance: Coming of the Light: First missionaries to the Torres Strait (1871) And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Consider these two men, David in our first reading, and Paul in our second, and how similar their situations are, and yet how different their responses. Paul, preaching in the synagogue to his own people, and rejected; David, anointed king-in-waiting, rejected by his liege. Yet while Paul is filled with joy, David falls on his face and weeps. Both have been put in this situation through circumstances designed by the Holy Spirit: Paul has been sent specifically to Antioch, and David is discovering what it means to fulfill his mission as God’s anointed. There is no criticism of either man’s response here. Personally, I don’t think I would be half the man either were in their situations. Looking at these passages in parallel gives us a warning a

  Friday, June 30, 2023 Psalms 148; 149 1 Samuel 20:12-34 Acts 13:26-41 He loved him as he loved his own life. Faithfulness; loyalty; charity; courage: all these noble ideals that we are taught to uphold should we wish to follow the way of Christ – they are attitudes that we can will into existence. They are the outward manifestation of that beautiful thing we call love, yet they are not love itself. Love drives us to act in these ways, and they are often against the grain of our fallen nature. The fact we sometimes need to grit our teeth and roll up our sleeves and push ourselves very hard to show charity to others, or get the courage to stand up for truth, or anything else our walk of discipleship requires of us is not a poor reflection on our love for Christ; it is very noble to do something we would rather not for the sake of someone we love. Let’s cast our minds into a place where the possibility of the desire of the heart and the actions of the will are perf

  Thursday, June 29, 2023 Psalm 145 1 Samuel 19:18-20:11 Acts 13:13-25 Observance: Peter and Paul, apostles and martyrs Whatever you say, I will do for you. Raising a young boy means I get to go back to the old classics and meet all my old friends from when I was growing up. Enid Blyton’s series of tales describing the exploits and adventures of Robin Hood and his Merry Men is, I am bemused to admit, one of the best pieces of narrative writing I have read in a long time as an adult. What today’s reading from 1 Samuel, digging into the relationship between David and Jonathon, has brought to mind, is the twin concept of honourable loyalty. Whether Blyton was writing the Merry Men as a reflection of her time, or as a lesson for little boys and girls to learn from, is a reflection for another time. But the attitude of those Merry Men towards their master Robin is something only a Christian could write. Decrying the evils of modern individualism is cliché. There i

  Wednesday, June 28, 2023 Psalms 143; 146 1 Samuel 19:1-17 Acts 13:1-12 Observance: Irenaeus of Lyons, bishop and teacher (d. c. 200) Answer me in your righteousness. It would be fair to say that God hates sin more than we know. If we were to be aware of how much our sin offends God’s holiness, our shame would utterly consume us; it is truly the grace of God that keeps us partly ignorant of our darkness. But if we were to compare attitudes towards how confident we should be in approaching God in prayer, it is plainly obvious that God is far more sure that we should speak to Him than we are. Because if our sin is more offensive to God than we could ever know, we are still aware of it to some degree. In these Psalms we have been looking at, there has been a fair amount of comparison between the humble receiving God’s favour, and the wicked receiving their just desserts. It is too easy for us to look at our sin and worry that we fall into the second catego

  Tuesday, June 27, 2023 Psalm 140 1 Samuel 18:17-30 Acts 12:12-25 Observance: Cyril of Alexandria, bishop and teacher (d. 444) I know that the LORD maintains the cause of the needy. It seems to be the season for Psalms about honest human emotions. Sitting with a Psalm like today develops layers of difficulties in our meditations. Initially, it is nice to hear about God rescuing those who are done wrong by, and having evildoers get their just desserts. But then, is relishing the prospect of the violent being “hunted down” by evil a necessarily Christian attitude to have? For the sake of our devotion, let’s agree with church history and acknowledge David as the author of this Psalm. In our reading from 1 Samuel, we have just gotten to the bit where things start to really go sour between David and Saul. Over the next part of the narrative, their relationship will deteriorate into a cat-and-mouse game, where Saul will do his best to hunt down David in his incoher

  Monday, June 26, 2023 Psalms 137; 138 1 Samuel 17:55-18:16 Acts 12:1-11 The LORD will fulfill His purpose for me. Whenever Psalm 137 comes up in the lectionary, we are told we can omit the final three verses, should we wish. Understandably so; it is difficult to reconcile a God of “steadfast love” (Ps 138:8) with a God who would inspire a writer to wish the violent death of his enemy’s babies. But we don’t skip over the fact that the evil spirit that rushed upon Saul came “from God” (1 Sam 18:10); what gives? First of all, let’s remember the second golden rule of Biblical interpretation: that just because something is written in the Bible, doesn’t mean that we should do it (this will come in handy later when we read about King David’s exploits with women). Another helpful point of remembrance is that the Bible is very human: these words were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they were written by people, and this cooperative authorship is why these words still liv

  Saturday, June 24, 2023 Psalms 130; 131; 133 1 Samuel 17:41-54 Acts 11:19-30 Observance: Birth of John the Baptist When he came and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced. An American women’s softball team was interviewed recently after winning an important game. Four of the women and their coach sat behind the desk, in front of the wall emblazoned with sponsor's logos, and gave me the most singular response to a certain question they were asked by a sports journalist. They had been asked about the fact that they had managed to pull through and snatch a victory at a critical point in the competition, vindicating all their hard work in the season preceding. Each of the four players, one after another, without fail, looked straight at the crowd and told them that their joy came from the Lord Jesus. Whether they had won or lost was immaterial to their joy in the Lord. (Winning was, of course, great – but not the source of their joy.) It is a testament t

  Friday, June 23, 2023 Psalms 124; 125; 126 1 Samuel 17:24-40 Acts 11:1-18 The snare is broken, and we have escaped. Today’s first Psalm, if we allow our imaginations to give it some legs, is more than a little terrifying. The anger of which humanity is capable – that uncontrolled, frothing rage – is better at keeping one up at night than any horror story. What kind of power this is, that can take such a hold of the human heart, and draw others down into the same madness, leading to mobs of insanity; and what destruction this has caused to God’s good creation! When David looked out at the opposing armies, he did not see this type of anger. Battles are won when one army loses courage and routs in fear. Riots and pogroms, on the other hand, is where this type of anger is found. This is the ugliness of civil unrest. It is the ugliness of domestic violence. It is the worst side of humanity brought out and given permission to destroy. Classical paganism contains

  Thursday, June 22, 2023 Psalm 118:1-18 1 Samuel 17:1-23 Acts 10:34-48 Observance: Alban, first British martyr (d. c. 209) Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. Let’s stop for a moment and make an honest assessment about our spiritual strength. Have we all been a good girl or boy since we last did our prayers? What about the “hidden faults”, the unwitting sins? (Ps 19:12) I suppose we cannot know what we do not know. Such is the power of our enemy: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Sin is a nine-foot-tall monster wielding a four-be-two, standing out in no-man’s land, shouting taunts up the mountain at us. Are you going to go down and kill him? I am afraid to say I am no match; someone will have to go and do it, though. But this raises another issue. Because if we are to say that Goliath the Philistine is a “type” of sin (in the sense that the narrative contains themes that point to Jesus and the New Testament) then how could we say that

  Wednesday, June 21, 2023 Psalms 121; 122; 123 1 Samuel 16 Acts 10:17-33 The LORD looks on the heart. Such simple words! And yet they proclaim death and life. Should I stand before the Lord and plead nothing but what He sees in my heart, I am doomed. Innumerable moments of shame and anguish, times where I have fallen short of God’s perfection, all line up to jeer and heckle my conscience. Even worse are those times when it seemed I could not help it: an instinctive reaction to the driving of someone else, or a look someone gave me; even watching the news is dangerous for a pilgrim. The Lord looks on my heart and I tremble, because He knows even more than I. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24) That black heart was broken. The stone was replaced with flesh. The Lord, in His infinite goodness and loving mercy knows how much I need a Saviour, and so came and joined His life to my death, swallowing it up, because noth

  Tuesday, June 20, 2023 Psalms 114; 115 1 Samuel 15:17-35 Acts 10:1-16 Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice. The Christian life is not easy; but it does not have to be difficult. In light of the revelation of Jesus, fasting is not self-inflicted punishment, but a gift from God to help us get closer to Him. All foods have been made clean, as Peter has been told: the Lord made the earth and everything in it, blessed it, called it good, and gave it to us to enjoy. “Be fruitful and multiply” is the oft-repeated commandment of the Old Testament, a forceful reminder from God that His objective in making this universe is to grow His family, of which we are a central part. Jesus’ new commandment to love one another just as He loves us puts the personal touch on that ancient message, and teaches us that intimacy with each other and God is the ultimate aim. As a child, I was told to do what my mother asked “because she loves me, and I love her”. Perhaps my father

  Monday, June 19, 2023 Psalms 110; 111 1 Samuel 14:52-16:16 Acts 9:32-43 All that was despised and worthless they utterly destroyed. These are hard words in 1 Samuel. They are completely out of line with our modern sensibilities. But in the context of God’s grand plan of redemption, where we can see rather more clearly how God is working through human history to reverse the curse we brought upon ourselves in Genesis 3, it starts to make sense. God is in the midst of burning away the chaff of sin from His good creation. He has chosen a people – the Hebrews – and chosen a land – Israel – in which they will live and be forever blessed. Since God likes to use us humans to work out His plans in the world, He has commanded His chosen people to be the instrument of His righteous judgement. But we humans keep doing things wrong. A complete destruction of an evil people was not carried out by Saul and his army. Let’s not get sentimental about this: they would have d

  Saturday, June 17, 2023 Psalm 106:1-24 1 Samuel 14:36-48 Acts 9:19b-31 Living in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church increased. Having had my fill of dry, technical, theological documents, the biggest relief of the freedom from academic work probably comes from being able to jump back into some well-written prose. Trying to find the correct word seems to be a different set of problems for the novelist than it does for the academic. Where academic works contain words with plenty of syllables, they aren’t very pretty words; they lack entirely any sense of dexterity or grace. Novelists (or at least the good ones), by contrast, jump deep into the ocean of verbiage and dig up all sorts of lovely and pleasing terms for the rest of us to enjoy. Trying to find the correct word to describe something about the relationship between humans and God is on another level entirely. God is so expansive that any words we come up with only scratch th

  F riday, June 16, 2023 Psalm 105:1-22 1 Samuel 14:16-35 Acts 9:10-19a Now Saul committed a very rash act that day. The freedom we have in Christ is a security to be reckless. A recklessness to behave in the manner that our loving Father would have us behave; recklessly loving, recklessly holy. It is not, as St Paul would teach, a freedom to sin. Jesus spoke about being as innocent as doves and shrewd as serpents. When it comes to the knowledge of doing evil, we are to be amateurs, and when doing good, masters of our craft. The reason Jesus needed to teach this to us is because it goes against our natural inclination; we need to be taught, because otherwise we would not do so. Annanias knew to stay away from the Saul of the New Testament; in order to be an innocent dove in his walk of discipleship, he needed to be the shrewd snake and keep out of trouble. But God told him to go and help the future apostle to the Gentiles, and Annanias trusted God’s word, an

  Thursday, June 15, 2023 Psalm 104:1-25 1 Samuel 13:19-14:15 Acts 9:1-9 Observance: Evelyn Underhill, spiritual writer (d. 1941) It may be that the LORD will act for us… Modern philosophical trends are funny in how they seem to be trying to solve problems that God has already solved in Jesus Christ. Take for example mindfulness: the idea that even when we are brushing our teeth, we can mentally stop and take note of what is going on, and thereby put our minds at ease. The idea behind mindfulness is, effectively, if we stop performing actions by instinct and instead be thoughtful and deliberate about everything, then the “noise” in the brain will go away and we will be at peace. The providence of God over all time and space, combined with our knowledge of Emmanuel – that God is with us – is like setting mindfulness on fire. God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. And Christ is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Ev

  Wednesday, June 14, 2023 Psalms 108; 109:20-30 1 Samuel 13:1-18 Acts 8:26-40 How can I understand unless someone guides me? It seems to be an unofficial rule in Australian schools that every senior English class must, at some point, read a novel predicting a dystopian future. Most get assigned 1984 or Animal Farm; some get the (arguably more appropriate) Brave New World. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano doesn’t seem to get much of a mention, even though it manages to be a bit more cheerful than its famous fellows in spite of the heavy subject matter. It describes a world of automation, in which everyone, by necessity, must be referred to a specialist: it is the dystopian future where engineers run society. In today’s world, where the line between “free thinker” and “Google scholar” has vanished into the mists of scornful laughter, a dystopian future of specialists running the world actually has a good chance of causing goosebumps. But reading the Bible is diff

  Tuesday, June 13, 2023 Psalms 101; 102:1-11 1 Samuel 12:1-18 (19-25) Acts 8:14-25 Observance: Antony of Padua, missionary and preacher (d. 1231) The LORD will not cast away His people, for His great name’s sake. Who is this great Person we love and serve? Does God hold us tight because otherwise we would embarrass Him? Is it one of those situations where God ran His mouth and now, having seen just how much work we are, He keeps us around in spite of His great holiness, an unpleasant reminder of rash promises? One of the amazing things about God is just how closely related His word is to His attributes. God loves; God is love. God speaks the truth; God is truth. In the same way, God shows great loving faithfulness to His people, and this is because of His pure and unbreakable nature as the One who is faithful and loving. Do not be ashamed of your own personal deceptions and transgressions against God; take them to the cross where they were put to death i

  Monday, June 12, 2023 Psalms 99; 100 1 Samuel 11 Acts 8:4-13 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. It’s a bit difficult to get up for in time to watch during these cold winter mornings, but those minutes before dawn feel like this opening line from Psalm 100. All the nocturnal animals have returned to their holes in the ground, the evening feast over for another night. The land goes silent, just for a short while, being still for the presence of the Lord. Then, in a tree on a hill, a bird wakes up – one cries out to another, and soon the land itself is singing as the first rays of light beam through the darkness. All the earth is making a joyful noise to the Lord. The morning symphony is an easy example of this. Spending some time watching insects around a body of water is another one: some bugs swim along the surface, others buzz up and down over the air just above it, other critters dive right in. The best word to describe it is a dance. Magpie

  Saturday, June 10, 2023 Psalms 92; 93 1 Samuel 4:1b-22 Acts 6:1-7 A man full of faith and the Holy Spirit… Being part of a church means you get to go to plenty of funerals. These are very humbling and precious affairs: as you sit there and be a part of the service, it is as if the person you are saying goodbye to is being remade in front of you. There are photos, sure. But as people get up and give eulogies, and you hear the prayers and hymns selected for the occasion, and notice how different people deal with their grief, you get a really good idea of who the dearly departed was. It is one of the most special ways you can meet someone. But this is all second-hand information. The person in the coffin is not getting up and telling us all what they want us to think of them. We are all remembering the impression they gave; our own interpretation of who they were. In a way, it is like you get to see a side of them they never would have let anyone else see. St

  Friday, June 9, 2023 Psalm 89:39-53 1 Samuel 3:1-4:1a Acts 5:27-42 Observance: Columba of Iona, abbot and missionary (d. 597) They rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the name. A few years ago, when Donald Trump was the President of the United States, there was a bit of an outcry from some old punk rockers when John Lydon of the Sex Pistols was seen wearing some Donald Trump merchandise. The fans were confused; they thought being alternative was to be politically progressive, but the rock legend was making the point that to be alternative was to transcend politics altogether, and to be punk was to make as many people upset as possible. Being a Christian in a society like ours presents similar possible problems. We are not different simply for the sake of being different. If we suffer dishonour for the sake of the name of Jesus, it is not about the people who dishonour us. Rather, we are always keeping our eyes lookin

  Thursday, June 8, 2023 Psalm 89:1-18 1 Samuel 2:27-36 Acts 5:12-26 Observance: Thanksgiving for the Holy Communion I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed one forever. Spending a lifetime reading the Old Testament and trying to discover the application travels along a bell curve. At first, we read all these promises from God to the different characters along the way and apply those promises to ourselves. Then we get a little bit of education under our belt; we read a few theological books (the short ones), and think that it might be presumptuous to take those promises out of context and dump them into our own lives. At the last, however, we see the beautiful harmony of all those different books that make up the Bible and truly understand that these promises are not just for those to whom they were first spoken, but to us, and our children. Jesus promised His disciples that He was going to prepare a room for them in His F

  Wednesday, June 7, 2023 Psalm 90 1 Samuel 2:12-26 Acts 4:32-5:11 But if someone sins against the LORD, who can make intercession? When we first enter the workforce as a pimple-faced teenager, scrubbing dishes or filing music records in alphabetical order, it is simply a job. One clocks in, completes the work, and clocks out. At a certain point the job turns into a career, and alongside better pay and more stimulating work comes the added pressure of responsibility. One no longer simply convinces customers to buy the nice piece of jewellery; they are also the one who has to complete the stock take to make sure no diamonds have gone missing down the back of the desk. Eli seems to have an interesting theology of sin and forgiveness in this passage. If we sin against one another; that is, do something wrong by our neighbour, then we can turn to the Lord for forgiveness. But, Eli argues, should we do wrong directly against the Lord, then there is no-one left to appea

  Tuesday, June 6, 2023 Psalm 86 1 Samuel 1:21-2:11 Acts 4:23-31 My heart exults in the LORD. My brain likes a good book, where the author adds a couple of obscure words that you know to make you feel smart, and a couple more that you don’t, so that you learn something. But my heart exults in the Lord. My body likes a good long time in the yard, digging out thickets of weeds and giving the jungle a good trim. There is something spiritual in fulfilling the vocation given to our first ancestors to tame the wild earth. But my heart exults in the Lord. My senses like a proper sit-down meal; picking out some really good ingredients, taking them home and cooking them just right. Sharing the experience with company is the bow tie that brings it all together. But my heart exults in the Lord. Take everything away and my heart will exult in the Lord. Curse me with riches and my heart will exult in the Lord. The Lord gives everything meaning, and makes ever

  Monday, June 5, 2023 Psalms 82; 84 1 Samuel 1:1-20 Acts 4:5-22 Observance: Boniface of Mainz, bishop and martyr (d. 754) How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! Recently we were thinking about the fact that heaven seems to not just be a state of mind, but an actual place in space and time, somewhere crafted and created by God, invisible and undetectable to our senses the way they currently are. It is the place where Jesus told the disciples He was going after their Last Supper, where He would prepare a place for them each in the Father’s house of many rooms. It is also the place that was revealed to Stephen, the first martyr, as the stones rained on him and he looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, welcoming him home. But Jesus also spoke about heaven as somewhere here and now; or to be more precise, the kingdom of heaven being among us. Paul seems to secure the point when he taught us that the physical body of the Chr

  Saturday, June 3, 2023 Psalm 78:16-38 Ruth 4 Acts 3:17-4:4 Observances: Week of Prayer for Reconciliation; Ember day; Martyrs of Uganda (d. 1886); Janani Luwum, archbishop of Uganda, martyr (d. 1977); John XXIII, bishop of Rome, reformer (d. 1963) Until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago… Isn’t the little side note in Ruth about the sandal a funny inclusion? We don’t get an explanation like that for the covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 15. Nor did the author decide it was necessary to explain the business with putting hands under thighs in Genesis 24. In fact, the Bible is full of various cultural idioms that are specific to the time and place of the people involved. This explanation about the sandal really draws into focus the fact that there are some universal consistencies in human behaviour. Today, we might not give each other our shoes to prove how serious we are. But we do have the option to be serious about importan

  Friday, June 2, 2023 Psalm 77 Ruth 3 Acts 3:1-16 Observances: Week of Prayer for Reconciliation; Ember day The man will not rest, but will settle the matter today. There is an idea of a holy and godly honour that every Christian would like to observe. Boaz reflected this in his actions towards Ruth, and Ruth and Naomi could only have gone to Boaz in the way that they did if he acted in accordance with a sense of holy and godly honour. What a symbol of Christ-like innocence in Boaz’s action of bringing Ruth under his doonah simply to give her a good night’s rest! Boaz is almost other-wordly in his self-control. Then in the morning, Ruth is sent off with her sleeping linen filled with barley; is this not Christ-like generosity, in thinking not of how much could be kept back, but rather how much can be given? The final echo, or shadow, or signpost pointing to Christ is the haste with which Boaz moves to settle the matter. Dear Christian, our situation is