The Narrow Path

  Wednesday, July 23, 2025 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 2 Samuel 5:6-25 John 7:14-31 Right Judgement (John 7:24) [Jesus said] “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement.” “Do what I say, not what I do” is a phrase certain to get groans and giggles in equal measure. We all know people who are like that, with results from the tragic to the farcical. Our Lord stands up in the assembly and says “do what I say, because of what I do”, and we turn to take notice, because no-one is like that. Sometimes we might like to ask other people to look at what we do, and not what we say. Speaking clearly and accurately can often be difficult, while just getting on with things is a more honest way of communicating. Other times we might plead for people to think about what we say in spite of what we do; for we all have memories that make us wince. Reflecting on this effect in ourselves can be helpful for how we relate to other people. We all know pe...

  Tuesday, July 22, 2025 Psalm 51 2 Samuel 4:1-5:5 John 7:1-13 Observance: Mary Magdalene The Festival Of Booths (John 7:2) Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. I love a good Harvest Festival. One particular fond memory was at a church whose minister had a background in poultry farming. Giving thanks to the Lord for all the good things of creation meant we had a sanctuary filled with fruit, vegetables – and a ton of eggs. Today, Jesus is talking with his unbelieving brothers about the Festival of Booths, which had another name: the Festival of Ingathering, at the first fruits of the wheat harvest (Exodus 34:22). It also got more flavour when it was related to the Exodus from Egypt, so that the generations would know that God made the Israelites live in booths when he brought them out of the land of Egypt (Leviticus 23:42-43). It is not yet Jesus’ time – that is, it is not the final Passover Feast, when he would be offered as the La...

  Monday, July 21, 2025 Psalm 50 2 Samuel 3:20-39 John 6:52-71 Noticing The King (2 Samuel 3:36) And all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them, as everything that the king did pleased all the people. I have noticed a certain trend (and because I am a clergyman, trends only come to my attention years after they have passed) where men will use the title “king” to affectionately describe a fellow man who does something they respect. As one who, as a child, got to wear a cardboard crown on my birthday at a certain American fast-food burger chain, I find something whimsically delightful about this. Not to mention the influence of Narnia – the idea that we boys and girls are kings and queens walking about God’s green earth as benevolent rulers, guided by our Biblically-inspired noblesse oblige. The reason I have the term “king” on the brain is because of how our two-volume book of Samuel has started changing the way it refers to David. Did you n...

  Saturday, July 19, 2025 Psalm 45 2 Samuel 3:2-19 John 6:35-51 I Will Never Cast Out (John 6:37) [ Jesus said, ] “ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” If the world’s worries were not enough to stress about, there are plenty of voices in the spiritual realm that want to make us worry, too. Are you good enough? Do you pray enough? Do you give enough? Is your love or faith strong enough? Is there enough? To all those questions and worries, Christ says: enough. If you come to me, I will never cast you out. Christ is enough. If you have come to Christ, then that is enough of your worries. Certainly, once we have come to Christ, he then spurs us on. There is always more he wants us to do; but there is never any more he needs us to do. We have been prepared for good works, but how and when and to what standard we complete those good works has no bearing on whether Christ will cast us out, b...

  Friday, July 18, 2025 Psalms 41; 44:1-9 2 Samuel 2:18-3:1 John 6:16-34 Glad To Take Him In (John 6:21) Then [ the disciples ] were glad to take [ Jesus ] into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. It feels like just recently we were reflecting on how the Bible treats the chaos of life poetically with the image of rough water. There was the Psalm describing the chaos of life as floodwaters; here in today’s second lesson we have the chaos of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. While it feels like a little bit of a stretch to interpret this passage as a direct one-to-one lesson about Christ’s presence in the storms of our own life, it is still striking just how similar an experience it is. Chaos in life can happen when there is just so much to think about, so much that needs to be done, and it all needs to be worked out and sorted yesterday. All that headspace becomes filled up with the problems of life, and w...

  Thursday, July 17, 2025 Psalm 40 2 Samuel 2:1-17 John 6:1-15 King By Force (John 6:15) Do you remember that strange time when certain voices tried to make the phrase “Christ is King” defined as hate speech? The internet certainly is a wild and wacky place. I wonder why, though, people may have felt that way. Do we say Christ is King as a call to action? Are we saying that our current rulers, celebrities, influencers and social commentators have proved themselves to be no good, and so we ought to make Christ our King? That is not so bad, I suppose. It is true that idolatry is a bad idea, and so we all should make Christ our King. Yet when Christ fed the people on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they tried to take him by force and make him king, which didn’t suit him one bit, and so he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. St John’s gospel is wonderful because it does such a good job of emphasising Christ’s independence. In every moment of...

  Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Psalm 38 2 Samuel 1:17-27 John 5:30-47 Who Clothed You Luxuriously (2 Samuel 1:24) “ You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,     who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet,     who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.” There’s a crude joke that is not worth repeating, it is about a New Zealander or a Welshman depending on where you live. The humour relies on the fact that things are funny because they are true. And it is true that, no matter how good and noble and generous and loving you are, if you make one mistake, then all the good you did is forgotten, and you are only known for that one mistake. It takes a certain level of self-reflection, self-control and wisdom to be able to see the good in someone who has done something awful. Saul was famous for two things: being the Lord’s anointed, and losing that anointing. Towards the end of his life, everyone had seemed to forgotten tha...

  Tuesday, July 15, 2025 Psalm 37:1-17 2 Samuel 1-16 John 5:19-30 Testifying By Your Own Mouth (2 Samuel 1:16) And David said to him, “Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the Lord 's anointed.’” Does anyone really do anything that they think is wrong? There might be a time of balancing pros and cons of any certain action, but does anyone actually go out of their way and try to do something they don’t like? Even when people commit objectively evil acts, there is still some formula they are working from that justifies their actions. We might disagree with their formula, and their actions, but there is still something inside that person that makes them feel justified. The infamous Amalekite who brought the news of Saul’s death to David was like this. He knew David and Saul weren’t getting along, and when he discovered Saul was dead, he pretended to be the one who had finished Saul off. There ...

  Monday, July 14, 2025 Psalm 34 1 Samuel 31 John 5:1-18 The Boasting Soul (Psalm 34:2) My soul makes its boast in the Lord ;     let the humble hear and be glad. I grew up during the time when video games consoles were starting to become commonplace in people’s homes. It wasn’t as widespread as it is now – plenty of people certainly had plenty of consoles, but it was still enough of a novelty that, while none of us were any good, we were all very excited about it. We would all want to talk about some new game coming out, or some new trick we had learned in a game everyone was playing at the time. And there would always be someone who wanted to be special and make something up. This person is so widespread there is now the famous line to describe them: the type of person that claims “my uncle works at Nintendo”. Success by association is not usually an admirable trait in a fellow human. There may be some passing interest to learn...

  Saturday, July 12, 2025 Psalm 31 1 Samuel 30:7-25 John 4:43-54 Into Your Hand (Psalm 31:5) Into your hand I commit my spirit;     you have redeemed me, O Lord , faithful God. Towards the end of John’s Gospel, after Jesus washes the disciples feet and before his arrest, we read what has been called his “high priestly prayer”; that is, a prayer Jesus offers in his role as high priest on behalf of all Christians. It is worth going back to whenever we feel disheartened, because it gives us a taste of the prayer that Jesus is offering constantly on our behalf right now in heaven. Yet it might not be the only prayer we have in scripture that he has made on our behalf. We have what is called the “words from the cross”, seven different things Jesus said when he was being crucified, collected from the four gospels. It is widely accepted that he quoted Psalm 22, which helps us understand why he cried out “My God, my God, why have you...

  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 ...

  Friday, July 4, 2025 Psalms 11; 12 1 Samuel 24:8-25:1 Acts 15:12-21 Not Trouble Them (Acts 15:19) [James said] “ Therefore my judgement is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God,” After all this drama about the Law of Moses, of circumcision and all the rest of it, the council at Jerusalem has made their decision. Do not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, and everyone stood up and clapped. But – and here it might get confusing. Is St James picking and choosing which laws to follow and which ones to ignore? Surely it should be a blanket command; either all or nothing. Let’s just have a closer look at which laws get included, though, and see if we can’t make sense of the apostles thinking. We are to abstain anything polluted by idols. We are to remember whose universe we live in; we are to remember to whom we belong. We are to abstain from sexual immorality; and if the Song of Songs has anything to teach us, it is that...

  Thursday, July 3, 2025 Psalm 9 1 Samuel 23:19-24:7 Acts 15:1-11 Observance: Thomas, apostle and martyr [ if not observed on December 21 ] The Grace Of The Lord Jesus (Acts 15:11) [Peter said] “But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” We say it all the time – but what do we mean when we talk about “grace”? We could mean it in the usual way, such as when someone is elegant we might say they hold themselves with a graceful deportment. This I like, because I think it adds an extra dimension to our understanding of the Lord, who is full of grace. The more usual way we use the word when considering the things of God is to describe an unmerited and free gift. This would seem more appropriate the specific text in front us from Acts, where St Peter speaks about the circumcisers as wanting to place a yoke on people’s neck that they themselves cannot bear. If a perfect life according to God’s la...

  Wednesday, July 2, 2025 Psalms 5; 6 1 Samuel 23:1-18 Acts 14:19-28 Strengthening The Soul (Acts 14:22) [Paul and Barnabas spent their time] strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. If you have ever interacted with an advocacy groups, you may have noticed that usually their leaders are personally involved with the issue in some way. Cancer support organisations are run by people who have cancer, or their families. Domestic and family violence groups are filled with people affected by that. Even community sports groups often have retired professionals involved in some leadership capacity. It seems that if one experiences a momentous life event, positive or negative, that event drives one to encourage others with similar experiences. St Paul certainly experienced several momentous life events. Today we read about the time he w...