The Narrow Path

  Wednesday, 1 October, 2025 Psalm 74 1 Kings 18:1-20 Matthew 9:27-38 Is He Able? (Matthew 9:28) When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” When it seems like the Lord is not responding to our requests, what do we think? Do we think that he is unwilling? Or that he might be unable? “ Of course he is able!” responds the faithful Christian. But let us commune with our hearts in honesty and truth. Is there the temptation to think that perhaps what we have asked is beyond the ability of the Lord? He makes the blind to see and the mute to speak; he even has the authority to forgive sins. Are our temporal difficulties beyond his ability? When the blind men affirmed that they believed that Jesus could have mercy on them, they must have been speaking the truth, because Jesus did indeed have mercy on them. And so we, with our child-lik...

  Tuesday, 30 September, 2025 Psalm 72 1 Kings 17 Matthew 9:14-26 Observance: Jerome, priest and biblical scholar (d. 420) The King’s Name (Psalm 72:17) May his name endure forever,     his fame continue as long as the sun! May people be blessed in him,     all nations call him blessed! The prophetic nature of Psalms as pointing to the King of God, Jesus Christ, is widely understood. But isn’t it interesting that in this Psalm, a clear hymn of praise to a king yet to come, ends with the line that this is the last prayer of King David? That after all was said and done, even David, the greatest king of all time, finished by pointing to his divine successor? All our angst is calmed when we consider who the true king is. He delivers the poor. He has pity on the weak, and saves lives. He redeems the needy from oppression and violence, and their lives are precious to him. None are more worthy, or more qu...

  Monday, 29 September, 2025 Psalm 69:1-16 1 Kings 16:8-34 Matthew 9:1-13 Observance: Michael and All Angels Authority To Forgive (Matthew 9:8) When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men. What are some common symbols of authority we have? Our politicians wear suits with little flag pins on the lapel; as noble as their intentions may be, it is a little less romantic than something like a crown, or a really big sword. But whether it is the ability swing a really big sword, or work the electoral system to one’s own advantage, their authority comes from their ability to climb on top of others. Jesus wields a different type of authority and it makes people afraid, and leads them to glorify God. It must be a pretty impressive authority, and it is: the authority to forgive. What a curious concept, that to forgive requires authority. The plebs, the lumpenproletariat, those with no aut...

  Saturday, 27 September, 2025 Psalm 68:1-20 1 Kings 15:25-16:7 Matthew 8:23-34 Observance: Vincent de Paul, priest and worker with the poor (d. 1660) What Sort Of Man? (Matthew 8:27) And the men marvelled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” Our Psalms this week seem to have been preparing us to today’s second lesson. There has been a little here and there spread throughout of the relationship between the God of heaven, and the waters of the earth. Now we read about Jesus, and his authority over the winds and the sea. We might be tempted to get carried away and start thinking about all the different imagery associated with water. The depths of the ocean are like physical death; the placing and removing of water is a sign of God’s providential sovereignty; watery storms are like the ups and downs of life; and plenty more besides. It might not be such a bad thing to give in to that temptation. The story...

  Friday, 26 September, 2025 Psalms 65; 70 1 Kings 15:9-24 Matthew 8:5-22 Observance: Lancelot Andrewes, bishop of Winchester (d. 1626) Earth Shouting For Joy (Psalm 65:8b) You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. One really has to appreciate why so many Christians feel an affinity with St Francis of Assisi, a saint known for his love of God’s creation. Whenever one needs a pick-me-up, one only has to go out into God’s universe and join in the rejoicing. If the Japanese call it “forest bathing” – when you leave the office and go spend time in nature – what might a cross-cultural, Christian version be called? David covers just about every part of the human condition in his Psalms, all the way down to the depths and lower, and all the way up to the highest heaven. And quite often on his journey up to God, he finds himself stopping to enjoy the view. We really have to admire this musing in today’s verse for the d...

  Thursday, 25 September, 2025 Psalms 62; 63 1 Kings 14:19-15:8 Matthew 7:24-8:4 Observance: Sergius of Moscow, abbot and teacher (d. 1392) One With Authority (Matthew 7:28-29) And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. I love this line. Maybe it’s because I’m a Queensland native, and try as I might, there is always going to be some latent anti-intellectualism in me. But isn’t it wonderful to hear that our Lord is not worth hearing because of some letters after his name! It always makes me think of the difference between the Biblical scholar in his big university and the faithful parish priest out in the bush. Who would you rather have preach at your funeral? Of course there are wonderfully faithful scholars and non-spiritual priests. But the common people who heard Jesus preach his Sermon on the Mount were astonished at...

  Wednesday, 24 September, 2025 Psalms 56; 57 1 Kings 14:1-18 Matthew 7:6-23 The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) [Jesus said] “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” I think it must have been an Enid Blyton story about a little girl who made friends with some Christian children. The Christian children were telling her that whatever you ask Jesus for, he will give. She learned pretty quickly that Jesus will not, in fact, grant you a pony for your birthday just because you ask. And so there was an opportunity for her friends to disciple her in how Jesus gives you what you ask for in accordance with the Scriptures, which is, Jesus gives us what is best for us, even if we don’t recognise it at the time. When we come across today’s verse, which is also known as “The Golden Rule”, we ought to remember who it is that is saying it. Because, wouldn’t it be nice that if I were to give my neighbou...

  Tuesday, 23 September, 2025 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 1 Kings 13:20-34 Matthew 6:25-7:5 More To Life (Matthew 6:25) [Jesus said] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” There is a certain saying, “if you are a capitalist when you are young you have no heart; if you are a communist when you are old you have no brain”. As a reformed political agnostic, I love this saying, because it offends everyone and no-one, and is perfect for the court jester among us. But I think there is some truth to this, in that when we are young, probably around the age of puberty, we get a rude shock when we discover the world is not up to our standard. I have heard a theory that suggests that this is a good instinct for Christians to have, that we should take that youthful aspiration and use it in the pursuit of blessin...

  Monday, 22 September, 2025 Psalm 51 1 Kings 13:1-19 Matthew 6:16-24 Wash Me Thoroughly (Psalm 51:2) Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,     and cleanse me from my sin! This Psalm has captivated the Church for a long time. Two verses at least are still used today in our public worship. Our verse for today, the second, is what the Priest prays as he washes his hands before presiding over the Lord’s Supper. Meanwhile, the 17 th verse is found at the very start of the Prayer Book, as part of the invitation to confession and absolution. We read in the superscript that David composed this Psalm after he had committed the horrific crime involving Bathsheba: a woman who was not his wife, so desperate to sleep with her, he sent her husband to fight a doomed battle to get him out of the way. Going by the tone of this Psalm we see the truth of the ancient saying “after coitus, the Devil’s laughter can be heard”. Yet in spite o...

  Saturday, 20 September, 2025 Psalm 48 1 Kings 12:18-33 Matthew 6:5-15 Observance: John Coleridge Patteson, first bishop of Melanesia, martyr (d. 1871) Walkabout (Psalm 48:12-14) Walk about Zion, go around her,     number her towers, consider well her ramparts,     go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation      that this is God, our God forever and ever.     He will guide us forever. When I was a child I used to love walking down the aisles of the toy section in shops, pushing all the buttons on the battery-powered toys. So many toys would be entombed in their bright plastic sarcophagus, promising fun only if mum brought it home for your birthday. But some of the toys would have a little gap in the plastic, calling out for little hands to “Try Me!” Push the button, and lights would flash, and a noise made that children love and parents...

  Friday, 19 September, 2025 Psalm 45 1 Kings 12:1-17 Matthew 5:43-6:4 My Heart Overflows (Psalm 45:1) My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;     I address my verses to the king;     my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. Some things in life you can only truly understand if you go out and do it yourself. The wonder of books (and the mixed blessing of the internet) has given us such wonderful insight into people and situations we would never have otherwise encountered. But even though I have, for example, seen inside a nuclear reactor, or watched a space walk, or read memoirs of the ancient Roman conquest of Gaul, I am still missing out on something. We might call it the X factor, or the special sauce; that unknown yet recognisable “something” that makes the thing really real. When, then, we come across a Psalm like today’s, we have to recognise this. The author’s heart overflows just thinking abo...

  Thursday, 18 September, 2025 Psalms 41; 44:1-9 1 Kings 11:26-43 Matthew 5:27-42 Observance: John Ramsden Wollaston, priest & missionary of Western Australia (d. 1856) The Extra Mile (Matthew 5:41) And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. If one could sum up our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – this great chunk of teaching on living the holy life – we could perhaps take today’s verse of the day: go the extra mile. Like a series of lightning bolts, the Lord Jesus says “you have heard, but I say”, and each time he says to go over and above. So if we are using common idioms as rules for living, “go the extra mile” has the benefit of originating with none other than the Lord Jesus himself. We have been set free to go the extra mile. Christ does not say these things to us in order that we may therefore live; rather, through him we already have life. Therefore, go the extra mile. What is the bare minimum of love that God ...

  Wednesday, 17 September, 2025 Psalm 40 1 Kings 11:1-25 Matthew 5:13-26 Observance: Hildegaard of Bingen, abbess & spiritual writer (d. 1179) Making The Lord His Trust (Psalm 40:4) Blessed is the man who makes     the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud,     to those who go astray after a lie! I heard once somewhere that one of the reasons for the effectiveness of the American military is that they have a procedure for just about everything. Whether it is cooking potato gems on a nuclear submarine, or deciding on a specific tactic in the midst of battle, there is a manual that says “if this happens, do that”. While we Christians are not American Navy cooks or Special Forces operatives, we are soldiers in God’s army. And so often there are circumstances where it would be nice if God would just tell us exactly what to do. Yet God works in a different way. He is sovereign and in compl...

  Tuesday, 16 September, 2025 Psalm 38 1 Kings 10:14-29 Matthew 4:23-5:12 Observance: Ninian of Galloway, bishop and missionary (d. c. 432) He Opened His Mouth (Matthew 5:2) And he opened his mouth and taught them. I wonder how many times you have gone over the Beatitudes – Jesus’ list of those who are blessed. And I wonder if it still gets to you every time that you do. It’s placement in St Matthew’s Gospel gives it a special sense of importance: the only other things Jesus has said so far are his rebuttal to Satan and his calling of St Peter. The narrative, having the anticipation built, moves up to this point: Jesus sat down, and opened his mouth, and taught them. If it were an American TV show, the moment would be artificially extended. We would hear tacky music designed to get the heart racing. The camera would jump between people’s faces, showing various expressions as the tension builds. Finally, the music stops, and all eyes are on J...

  Monday, 15 September, 2025 Psalm 37:1-17 1 Kings 10:1-13 Matthew 4:12-22 Observances: Holy Cross (transferred from September 14); John Oliver Feetham, bishop and bush brother (d. 1947) The Half Of It (1 Kings 10:6-7) And she said to the king, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard. To be pleasantly surprised is one of those little joys in life that make the living that much better. Pleasant surprises are lurking around every corner, ready to pounce if we have a heart prepared to receive them. I’m not sure if we could describe the experience of the Queen of Sheba as a pleasant surprise. She seemed a little more enthusiastic. But to be fair, she had just met King Solomon at his height, in all his typological glory. And so when...

  Saturday, 13 September, 2025 Psalm 35:1-17 1 Kings 9:15-28 Acts 28:17-31 Observance: Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr (d. 258) They Will Listen (Acts 28:28) Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen. Poor St Paul, so dedicated to the idea of his people, the Jews, coming to faith in their Messiah. Having reached the beating heart of the Roman Empire, he finally gets his chance to preach in the synagogue there, but comes to the realisation that the ancient prophecies were right all along: God’s salvation is not just for them, but for the whole world. And aren’t we lucky that this is the case! As we read this alongside the historical account of 1 Kings, with all that stuff about the Gentiles being slaves under the people of Israel, who themselves were the soldiers, officials, commanders, captains and so on, we can get an idea of where St Paul might have been coming from. Th...

  Friday, 12 September, 2025 Psalm 31 1 Kings 9:1-14 Acts 28:1-16 Hidden Under Cover (Psalm 31:20) In the cover of your presence you hide them     from the plots of men; you store them in your shelter     from the strife of tongues. Secret gossip is always used for nasty information. But what would we call it when it was used for sweet words and comforting things? Reading through some of these Psalms makes one wonder if God keeps some of his redeeming work on the down low just so that it is more impressive. There is something about understated and unstoppable power. And when that power is the love of God and his protection of his people, it becomes almost elegant, or noble. Yes, our lives fall into trouble almost endlessly. Everywhere we turn there are problems that we cannot solve ourselves, and need to God to sort out for us. And God does sort them out for us – but he does them with finesse, in an u...

  Thursday, 11 September, 2025 Psalms 28; 29 1 Kings 8:54-66 Acts 27:33-44 Observance: Mother Esther CHN, founder of the Community of the Holy Name (Melbourne) (d. 1931) Carried In His Arms (Psalm 28:9) Oh, save your people and bless your heritage!     Be their shepherd and carry them forever. It is a reliable thing, that when two or more clergy are gathered together, they will begin talking about funerals. Don’t ask me why, we just can’t seem to help ourselves. A common theme in these discussions is the fact that we get so many funeral requests from people who have a faint yet persistent cultural memory of Christianity, meaning that even if the family hasn’t ever read the Bible, they still know “that poem about the shepherd” – Psalm 23. This idea of God as our shepherd is such a comforting concept, and the Bible is flush with it. Even in a Psalm like the 28 th , where the Psalmist is crying out to God for deliverance not only fr...

  Wednesday, 10 September, 2025 Psalm 25 1 Kings 8:37-53 Acts 27:13-32 Eyes That Are Open (1 Kings 8:52) Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. If there is any consistent theme across the Scriptures when it comes to what we should do, it is that we should turn to God. There is this idea of a relationship, where God calls to us, we call to God, God listens to us, and we listen to God, just soaked throughout. King Solomon, in his dedication of the Temple, is eerily prescient when he talks about Israel sinning, being carried off in exile, calling to God, and being returned to the land. (And you can read it pretty much word-for-word in Daniel 9:1-19.) If we are to understand St Paul’s rule for Old Testament interpretation, that all these things happened by way of example, and was written down for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11), then we can be encouraged by the...

  Tuesday, 9 September, 2025 Psalm 22:1-22 1 Kings 8:22-36 Acts 27:1-12 God On Earth? (1 Kings 8:27) [Solomon prayed] “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” I think I have mused before on an idea that we have about God, where we are little fish in a big sea, and God is a really big fish that we have to swim in a certain direction to try and find, where in reality, it is more the case that God is the ocean itself. King Solomon seems to have a similar idea as he dedicates the Temple, with almost Jewish humour, remarking that this amazing building is ridiculous when compared with the immensity of God. The fact that God is really big is something I think we all learn pretty early on in our Christian journey. And even now I am falling into the same linguistic trap as Solomon: God is more than just “really big”; behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot ...

  Monday, 8 September, 2025 Psalms 20; 21 1 Kings 7:51-8:21 Acts 26:19-32 Observance: Birth of Mary, Mother of the Lord Your Heart’s Desire (Psalm 20:4) May he grant you your heart's desire     and fulfil all your plans! Sometimes we just a need a good blessing to get us moving on with our day. We can spend a bit too much time worrying over the finer details of God’s providence and plans for us, or the problems of the world, or that new ache in our body that is making us a little uneasy. God seems to know us inside and out, and so in the midst of everything else that he has packed into the Bible for our understanding, he has included little pick-me-ups like Psalm 20. I don’t think we need to overthink this Psalm too much. The last line about the king leads us back to the start of the Psalm, re-reading it in the light of the fact that we are the covenant people of King Jesus. If that is enough for us to read the assurances ...

  Saturday, 6 September, 2025 Psalm 18:1-31 1 Kings 6:1-14, 6:37-7:1 Acts 26:1-18 Saved From My Enemies (Psalm 18:3) I call upon the Lord , who is worthy to be praised,     and I am saved from my enemies. Apparently Mel Gibson is making a sequel to The Passion Of The Christ, the movie he made about Christ’s passion and crucifixion. In interviews he has said that there were two scripts: one fairly reasonable, and the other completely out-of-this-world. I suppose it depends from which perspective we look at Christ’s resurrection: from human eyes, there was a quiet grave, and then it was empty. But what about from another angle? What was happening in the realm beyond our perception? I bring this up because while Psalm 18 has a pretty explicit blurb at the start telling us the what, who and why of it (“ A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord , who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered h...

  Friday, 5 September, 2025 Psalms 15; 16 1 Kings 5 Acts 25:13-27 Fullness Of Joy (Psalm 16:11) You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Surrounded as we are with such luxury (for even the poorest in Australia have more than most others), I wonder if this line from today’s Psalm perhaps escapes our understanding. Material things, while not inherently bad nor good, can, if we are not careful, distract us from the fullness of joy that comes from communion with the Lord. We can take the good things God has given us and give him thanks for them – and we should. Warm blankets, a car that works, the little trinkets we accumulate over time are all wonderful examples of how God is good to us. But even then there is the natural inclination to favour the gift over the gift-giver. When I was preparing for entering forma...