Lent #26, prayers, peace and ransoms 27 March, 2009

Our Lenten Bible studies took us to the first letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy where, in chapter two, he instructs:

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time. And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.

I expected a long discussion about why we should pray for our leaders, given that even the youngest in the family can associate the word ‘corrupt’ with those who rule over us, but the kids seemed quite able to accept that you can distinguish a position created by God from the individual who sits in that position. The idea that, at the very least, rulers should create conditions in which we can all live out our lives in peace, is obvious to children – if not, usually, to our rulers.

What took us longer was the concept of the ransom.  Recently in north eastern Kenya some officials were kidnapped by a religious movement based over the border in Somalia.  The local news assumes ransoms will be demanded.

The Bible says we are all held captive by sin, to whom we have sold ourselves out.  As we are, ourselves, sinful, we do not have any of the currency needed to free ourselves, and certainly not enough of it to do so.  The one man who lived without sin, Jesus Christ, gave his life up to set us free – a complete and permanent payment to set us free and bring us back to our family in God.

Lent #25, meaninglessness 25 March, 2009

Joel woke up grumpy this morning, so our family Lented devotion resonated with him. Today we were looking at the opening 11 verses of the book of Ecclesiastes.
Here, ‘The Teacher’ outlines the thesis of a rich man with a jaded palate – everything, from philosophy to possessions to wisdom, is meaningless. It’s repetitive and stale. There is no joy in any of it.
“That’s right, that’s life,” says Joel, a teenager struggling with the idea that school and work and life all conspire to stop the young man from enjoying a life of unfettered play.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.” (v2)

We explain the jaded palate of the man who has explored every aspect of human living to excess – after all, this is supposed to be written by a man with 1,000 wives and concubines! It’s as The Teacher dwells more and more on God and man, and the latter’s responsibility to the former, that his message gets more rounded and hopeful. But the truth is that there is something very deep in Ecclesiastes, the stoic dissection of the world as it really seems to be when things aren’t going well. I remember a particularly dark episode in our lives when Ecclesiastes is pretty much all I wanted to read for several weeks.
Joel, unconvinced, went to school. During the day he won a school swimming competition, was commended for an impromptu play he and two friends conducted in English, scored the winning goal in a hockey match, and shared the honours of winning the term house matches.
On his return home, everything was very meaningful indeed. Life isn’t at all repetitive. There is joy to be found everywhere. Such is the pace of theological reformation in a teenage boy!

Lent 24, righteousness, prudence and discretion 25 March, 2009

Yesterday our family Lenten Bible study took us to Psalm One – today it’s to the first seven verses of the book of Proverbs.
These are a broad introduction to the rest of the book, explaining why it’s good to know the proverbs of the ancient and what they’ll do for you if you apply yourself to them.
Then the author – Solomon, at least at this point – gives the executive summary:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Our short discussion was hijacked by the semantics of the difference between wisdom and prudence. Ultimately, of course, the effect is the same, but the idea that prudence contains a sense of discretion, of being able to hold on to judgment until the facts become clear and the need to choose obvious, led us down an interesting path.
A later proverb, which notes that anyone can appear wise so long as they keep silent, seems a good outcome of this observation. Wisdom makes us hold our tongues, think and plan the consequences of what we say and – hopefully – not say most of it at all.