The Narrow Path

  Wednesday, January 1, 2025 Psalm 113 Genesis 17:1-13 Colossians 3:12-17 Observance: The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus Who’s In Charge? (Colossians 3:15) There’s an old prayer, a gift from our Christian ancestors, that I often find myself pulling out of the toolbelt. It comes from the prayers at the end of the day – a peaceful way to be tucked in bed by our heavenly Father. This is how it goes: Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness. We hear, in our worship services, and read, in our Bibles, a lot about peace. Here in St Paul’s letter to the Colossians we get an idea of how it works: peace – specifically, the peace of Christ – is to rule in our hearts. Our hearts are devilishly difficult to control. The slightest breeze can knock them off-course; comment, a side glance, a n...

  Tuesday, December 31, 2024 Psalm 83 Isaiah 31 John 2:13-25 Observance: John Wyclif, teacher and reformer (d. 1384) What Is In Man? (John 2:25) Some people enjoy hobbies like gardening, or model trains, or getting really good at a video game. One of my favourite past-times is ruining the fun of skeptic academics – particularly the type who like to find so-called “contradictions” in the Bible – by pointing out the obvious. Today’s reading from St John’s gospel is a classic. You may remember from other Gospels that Jesus went into the temple in Jerusalem with a whip just before his crucifixion, and that he was betrayed just after a Passover dinner. But here we read it happened at the start of his earthly ministry! Which is it? Is this one of those contradictions that mean we should not trust the pages of holy scripture that have been the bedrock of the church for millennia? Well, no. Let’s point out the obvious: Jesus did it twice. We know he had...

  Monday, December 30, 2024 Psalms 148; 149 Isaiah 30:29-31:9 John 2:1-12 Observance: Josephine Butler, social reformer (d. 1905) The Best For Last (John 2:9-10) This story, about Jesus turning water to wine, is a real head-scratcher. It is brilliant for people who write commentaries: every step of the story is loaded with meaning and symbolic references to the Old Testament. But for those of us who like to ask God “Why?”, it can really stump us. The conversation between Jesus and his mother is a reference to Easter: Jesus must go through his death on the cross before he can rise again and bring about the general resurrection and eternal life for his people. The jars of water for purification number six, one short of the perfect seven, reinforcing the fact that what is about to happen is only a precursor, not the main event itself. Then we have another reference to whispers of the good news before the event itself in the words of the master of the feast, “...

  Sunday, December 29, 2024   First Sunday After Christmas Luke 2:46-47 No Silly Questions! Nothing quite gets my guard up as when I am in a classroom and the teacher tells us that “there is no such thing as a silly question”. There I was, quite happy and in the learning “flow”, and suddenly the prospect of comparing myself to my fellow students comes into the picture. Sure, the specific words were “no such thing”, but my mind always seems to immediately jump to the terror of asking a silly question in public. We read today about the boy Jesus, and what his teachers thought about him. He wasn't afraid to ask questions, and they were amazed at his understanding as a result. The questions he asked demonstrated his amazing understanding. It makes me wonder about the questions I ask: the questions I ask God in my prayers for others, the questions for myself, and the questions I ask God about himself. Often they are along the lines of “Dear God, may I please...

  Saturday, December 28, 2024 Psalms 143; 146 Isaiah 30:1-14 John 1:19-34 Observance: Holy Innocents This Is He! (John 1:30) Yesterday we considered God’s story of life, the universe, and everything as if it were a movie. You cannot just come in halfway through and expect to understand everything that is going on. Today, we get an idea of who the main character is, and what role we play in this story. John the Baptist must have been an imposing figure. Sure, he lived in the wilderness, wore a camel hair shirt, and ate locusts and wild honey. But there is something about the type of man who can command such attention without even trying. You know the type – we have been fed enough movies from Hollywood to tell when the leading man in a movie was casted well or not. John the Baptist must have been the type of man who could enter a room and suck all the oxygen out of any muttering; he knew what was what, and wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is. A d...

  Friday, December 27, 2024 Psalm 140 Isaiah 29:13-24 John 1:1-18 Observance: John, apostle and evangelist In The Beginning… (John 1:1) The Bible has been described as a play. (I am not exactly a regular at the theatre, so I think of it as a movie.) Imagine you are watching a movie, and then halfway through someone comes in and starts asking questions “Who is that? Why did they do that? What’s all this about?” While not only being annoying for those who started at the beginning, it leaves the person confused about what’s going on. And when you get to the climactic conclusion at the end, the payoff is much better for those who were there for the whole story. We have just celebrated Christmas – the beginning of the climactic conclusion for the story God has written about his creation. It doesn’t make much sense if you don’t know what happened beforehand – and the payoff isn’t as satisfying, either. This story is a story that goes back into infinit...

  Tuesday, December 24, 2024 Psalms 19; 113 Isaiah 28:14-29 Galatians 3:23-4:7 Observance: At Evening Prayer: The Birth of Our Lord Wonderful in Counsel and Excellent in Wisdom (Isaiah 28:29) At the eve of the incarnation, when the eternal Word became flesh, condescending to veil his divinity and become like one of us in order to die for us, we consider our short Advent journey through his kingly virtues. This passage from Isaiah nicely encapsulates where we have come from: the Lord gives us instruction; his instructions are trustworthy; our attempts to follow them will be successful. Now we are left with the choice: will we set off on this adventure? Or will we make a “covenant with the place of the dead”? Isaiah makes use of a parable, or an allegory, or an illustration from every day life to make his point. The farmer knows how to work his crop. In the same way, the Lord knows what he is doing with his people. Another way of taking in the st...

  Monday, December 23, 2024 Psalms 123; 130 Isaiah 28:1-13 Mark 13:14-37 A Crown Of Glory (Isaiah 28:5) Gathering around the word of God, so very close as we are to gathering around the Word of God made flesh in a couple of days, we are now given a choice between two options. Two crowns are presented before us; we must make the choice of which we shall choose to wear. Over the past month of Advent, we have searched for instruction on kingly virtues. In the first week, we looked for where virtue is to be found – virtue that is becoming of knights and dames of King Jesus. Then we searched for assurance that, having found instruction for virtue in the scriptures, those are the only instructions worth following. Last week we ended with encouragement that, should we follow the Lord’s instructions on kingly virtues, then he will lead us to success in this endeavour. Now, with only a couple of days to go before the arrival of our Lord at Christmas, we must make th...

  Saturday, December 21, 2024 Psalms 120; 121 Isaiah 26:1-19 Mark 12:28-40 Observance: Thomas, apostle and martyr Awake And Sing For Joy! (Isaiah 26:19) As we close our third week of Advent, we look to conclude the answer to our question: where is the guarantee that our efforts to live virtuously will be successful? In this song we have our answer. I used to wonder why Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is set to be sung every evening in the old prayer book. The more one reads the Bible, the better an answer one gets to that question: it is everywhere. The sentiments Mary sings of are the same as Hannah, and Deborah, and Miriam; and Moses, David, and other voices in the Psalms; Job, far too melancholic to sing, instead soliloquises, but still on the same theme; and here in Isaiah, in this song. It is a song of faith, sung for thousands of years by faithful people. Humanity has always known that God will one day make all things right; that the wicked will be exp...

  Friday, December 20, 2024 Psalms 114; 115 Isaiah 19:16-20:6 Mark 12:13-37 A Highway To Heaven (Isaiah 19:23) All this talk of ancient empires can get a bit confusing in my head sometimes. Assyria, Egypt, Judah, Cush – as a kid from the suburban sub-tropics, sometimes I read these words so much that they become soup. Thinking about them as people helps me get a better picture of what we are reading about. It also might help us get a handle of what type of person they represent, and so better understand how God works in the human soul. Egypt is the tough guy. He has all the money, the looks, the power. He has some competition in Cush, but everyone (including the Cushites) know who the top dog is. Egypt looks at Judah to the north and is using them as a type of buffer-state: by looking after a little place that is nowhere near as strong or rich as they are, Egypt is made to look even more successful. But then comes Assyria from the north. Egypt thought th...

  Thursday, December 19, 2024 Psalms 110; 111 Isaiah 19:1-15 Mark 11:27-12:12 Drunken Staggering (Isaiah 19:14) Who knew that there was so much drinking in the book of Isaiah? We’ve only turned a couple of pages and we are back with more people staggering “as a drunken man staggers in his vomit”. This isn’t the only place we find stomach contents mentioned in the Bible. One of the most memorable Proverbs is 26:11, “as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly”. The Egyptians are not having a terribly good time of things. They continue to shun the Lord God, and so he has removed from them even the common grace of common sense. Their spirit has been “emptied out”; their deliberations and discussions “confounded”. No longer are they able to get some good old plain, straight thinking – they “inquire of the idols and the sorcerers, and the mediums and the necromancers.” The princes are “utterly foolish”, and Pharaoh’s advisers “give stupid counsel”. ...

  Wednesday, December 18, 2024 Psalm 144 Isaiah 17:12-18:7 Mark 11:12-26 Quietly Looking (Isaiah 18:4) Continuing our theme of kingly virtues and, more specifically, how we can know that God will lead us to success in our attempt to live virtuously, we get a message through Isaiah of the great Christian comfort. God is sovereign over all things, in all places, at all times. He reigns supreme over even the concept of things, places and time itself. There is nothing outside God’s control; nothing changes his mind, and nothing escapes his notice, for he himself is in all things, directing them according to his perfect purpose. “Go, you swift messengers,” he says, “to a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering” and tell them that they are not all that they are cracked up to be. Anything they achieve is because God decrees it to be so. And so it is with little old you and me. God gives us certain responsibilities; he places life circumstances...

  Tuesday, December 17, 2024 Psalm 86 Isaiah 17:1-11 Mark 10:46-11:11 Look To Your Maker (Isaiah 17:7) This week we are searching the scriptures to find out how God ensures our success in our attempt to live virtuously. The chivalric knight or dame of the Lord Jesus is not embarking on an easy journey; we should make sure we know that we will reach our destination before we set off (Luke 14:25-33). Today we discover one of the ways in which God brings us to that place. Damascus sounds like a pretty great place. For Isaiah to pronounce such a terrible woe upon them suggests that there must be something worthwhile being lost in its destruction. And yet, destruction is coming – there is also something terrible that needs to be removed. In and through this passage there is also the reason why this is all going to happen: “In that day man will look to his Maker.” For too long, the Damascenes have been looking “on what his own fingers have made”. Their virtue has c...

  Monday, December 16, 2024 Psalms 70; 75 Isaiah 10:33-11:9 Mark 9:2-32 Complete Coverage (Isaiah 11:9) Building on what we have looked at over the past fortnight, we move to the next phase of our chivalric training: that God guarantees us success in developing a soul framed by kingly virtues. Remember, in the first week we discovered that for all the noise clamouring to get our attention, it is only the Lord who can truly teach us. Then in the next week we learnt to trust that his teaching is certain. Now, we get a word of assurance from the Lord: that our efforts will not be in vain, that if we follow him and him only, we will grow into virtuous knights and dames worthy of our King. Today’s word from Isaiah is a prophecy of our King, and how he will come to us. In the midst of all the predictions of invasion and destruction, this image of a mighty tree being felled with an axe appears. The promise of God, made first at the fence-line of the Garden of Eden, that...

  Saturday, December 14, 2024 Psalms 108; 109:20-30 Isaiah 10:12-32 Mark 8:27-9:1 Observance: John of the Cross, mystic and teacher (d. 1591) A Boastful Axe? (Isaiah 10:15) As we come to the end of our second week in Advent, we should recap what we have covered. In the first week, we learned that, in order to live virtuously, we should look to the Lord’s instructions (and his alone). Now in this second week, we have learned the importance of trusting those instructions: they are right and true, and even if sometimes they don’t seem like the wisest option, the Lord will vindicate our decision. Concluding this week, we read Isaiah’s prophecy over the Assyrians. For context, Isaiah is talking about how the Assyrians (a foreign empire) will come and make life very miserable for the people of Israel and Judah. Throughout all this section of prophecy, Isaiah is sure to emphasise the fact that they are under God’s control; all their rampaging will be because God...

  Friday, December 13, 2024 Psalms 101; 102:1-11 Isaiah 9:18-10:11 Mark 8:14-26 Observance: Lucy, martyr and virgin (d. 304) Writers Writing (Isaiah 10:1) One of the biggest difficulties in keeping virtuous according to the Lord’s commands is that it so often seems that it is counter-productive. So many people have, to our eyes, gotten ahead in life by scheming injustice and wielding oppression. “If you want to make money”, goes one so-called ‘truism’, “take it off other people”. For those of us who try to keep to the narrow path of a virtuous life in the Lord’s eyes, we often find ourselves crying out with the saints of heaven “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10) In the first week of Advent, we were searching for assurance that true virtue is to be found in the Lord’s ways. Now we are searching for assurance that we can trust what we have found. And today...

  Thursday, December 12, 2024 Psalms 99; 100 Isaiah 9:2-17 Mark 8:1-13 The Authority Of The Son (Isaiah 9:6) Having spent last week learning that the only teacher of virtue we need is the Lord, we are spending this week learning to trust his teachings. For, so often, when we are faced with an opportunity to show Christian virtue, we find excuses not to. It may be something seemingly negligible – why stand when my elder enters a room? Or, it may be big – why expose a lie, or corruption? Yet in all things we should not only learn the virtues of our King, but to trust in them as the best way to live. The prophet is warning the people that, should they not turn from their wickedness, a judge will arise. He will gather his own people safely in his arms, but the rebels will be cast out. He speaks of this judge-to-come in words that the church has always understood to be referring to the Lord Jesus. And so, when looking for a good reason to trust God’s instr...

  Wednesday, December 11, 2024 Psalms 95; 96 Isaiah 8:5-9:1 Mark 7:24-37 Bind Up The Testimony (Isaiah 8:16) The wider theme for us this Advent is Kingly Virtues – that is, we are searching the prophet Isaiah for instruction on how we are to live in such a way as befitting our King, the Lord Jesus. For this, our second week, we are learning to trust the Lord’s instructions on how to live. Today’s passage from Isaiah is teaching us the great responsibility that comes with having those instructions on how to live. Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among the disciples! A great light has been given to us, in the words of the Bible, explained to us by Holy Spirit. This is no light thing we hold. Isaiah is speaking here in the context of the fact he is prophesying the coming invasion of the Assyrians, and he is to make sure the written record is kept safe so that it can be proved to have been true. For us today, seeking instruction from the Lord on how to li...

  Tuesday, December 10, 2024 Psalms 76; 82 Isaiah 7:18-8:4 Mark 7:1-23 Reliable Witnesses (Isaiah 8:2) A virtue that I am sure everyone will agree with is to speak the truth. No-one likes a liar, and they are soon found out, and when they are, great is the collapse. Today, Isaiah is making sure that everyone understands that his prophecies do indeed come from God. And so, he collects a couple of reliable witnesses so that when what he prophecies comes to pass, everyone will know he was speaking the truth. We have a more insidious attempt at lying floating around us today in matters of religion and spirituality. It concerns the truth of God: of who he is, and what he likes. For those of us who read our Bibles and pray to Holy Spirit to reveal its meaning to us, we gain an understanding of God. Of course, God is infinite, and we will spend not only this life, but our eternal life always learning more and more about God. But still, God wants to make himself kno...

  Advent 2, Sunday, December 8, 2024 Malachi 3:1-4 Give Him A Gift He Will Love Christmas is coming – have you done your Christmas shopping yet? I always find it difficult thinking of presents to buy for people. But I heard a good piece of advice recently: what you should do is walk around and pay attention to what is in the shops. When you notice something that makes you think about the person you love, get that for them. “I found this and it made me think of you” – the perfect reason for a Christmas present. Sometimes your loved ones will be helpful, and give you a wish list. I remember when we were kids, we would hoard the toy catalogues that would come in the mail, and go at them with a pen, circling which toys we liked the look of and writing our names next to them. All this gift-giving makes me wonder – what if the Lord has a wish list? Are we trying to give him something he doesn’t want? What if he wants us to say “look at what I found, Lord. It mad...

  M onday, December 9, 2024 Psalms 70; 75 Isaiah 7:1-17 Mark 6:30-56 Ask For A Sign (Isaiah 7:11) Welcome to our second week through Advent as we search the prophet Isaiah for kingly virtues. We start the week off well, with a prophecy about nothing less than Christmas Day! The enemy army is encamped around the city of Jerusalem, and the king, Ahaz, is shaking in his boots. Isaiah, along with his sons, is trying to get through to the king that if he would just ask God for help then he would get it. This introduces to us an important virtue that our King asks of us: bravery. Bravery is a difficult thing to have. It is difficult to get, and it is difficult to hang onto. So often in life we face wave after wave of adversity, and it is not easy to exercise patience and humility. What is easy is to give into the urge to just give up, to believe that God has abandoned us, and we are like the disciples in today’s gospel reading, buffeted on the waves of a storm – a...