Your life will be bound in the bundle of life with ADONAI your God.

 

Monday, July 10, 2023


Psalm 25

1 Samuel 25:23-44

John 3:1-21


Your life will be bound in the bundle of life with ADONAI your God.


We take a short excursion from following the adventures of the apostles in the book of Acts to spend some time with Jesus in the Gospel of John. Don’t worry, the reading cycle will bring us back there in a couple of weeks, but for now, we will follow Jesus in what has been described as the “gospel of signs and wonders”.


The account of the meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus is a well-worn track for those of us who love to read the Bible; it contains both the world’s most famous Bible verse (sixteen), as well as this wonderful phrase “born again”. But the verse chosen to reflect on for the day comes from our other reading: 1 Samuel 25:29. Because doesn’t it bring to mind the idiom that describes a newborn baby as a “bundle of joy”?


In another place, Jesus describes the rejoicing in heaven when the lost sinner is brought home to God (Luke 15:7). There, Jesus is talking about how we are like sheep, and in our state of separation from God, we are like the sheep who has wandered off. The Shepherd who seeks out that lost sheep and brings them home is just a different way of describing what Jesus says to Nicodemus about being “born again”. The rift in the relationship between human and God is healed. The lost sheep is brought home. The lost coin is found. The unrepentant sinner is born again as an adopted child of God. And all of heaven rejoices.


When you and I – in our own way and in the time God decided personally for us – were born again, heaven indeed erupted in joy to see us. We might think it funny to think about ourselves, with all our nobbly bits, sore joints, weird blotches of skin, worries, fears, and all the rest, being the centre of attention of the angelic host in the throne room of heaven. But that just goes to show how loving our heavenly Father is. Look at this little bundle of joy, He says, holding us up for all creation to see. He is my Son’s friend. This Christian is now to be forever held in the bundle of eternal life.


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