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View of Bennachie, Aberdeenshire

Monday

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation,

O my soul praise him for he is thy health and salvation

The first lines of a hymn usually set the tone for all that follows. This is one of the great hymns of praise that immediately lifts our eyes beyond our preoccupation with ‘me’ to the one we call Lord, whose might is uncontested, and who is the Creator of all that is – including the me who is singing this. Praise is the outward expression of gratitude and gladness. “He is thy health and salvation” is an all-inclusive phrase that speaks of our wellbeing, our reverent ease in God’s presence because in mercy and grace we are made welcome in Christ. Praise is an act of self-forgetfulness, the mind turning to God, and the heart inclined towards God and ready to sing.

St Nicholas Kirk in May, Aberdeen

Tuesday

O worship the King, all glorious above;

O gratefully sing His power and His love.

There it is again – worship and gratitude as response to God’s power and love. If we’re ever in need of persuasion to go to church, one of the best arguments is that we want to avoid becoming serially ungrateful! When Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit” he was describing the person who knows they are not self-sustaining, that life is gift and we depend on God every blessed minute of our lives. We gratefully sing of God’s power and love, because that power has saved us and upholds us; that love surrounds us and renews us in Christ, and so we are not about to take God for granted. Grace and gratitude merge into praise when we come to worship.

Wednesday

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,

Bow down before him, his glory proclaim

You could spend an entire day pondering that phrase ‘the beauty of holiness’. Holiness is one of the most essential words in the Christian’s vocabulary. Think of words like wonder, awe, splendour, purity; or phrases like unapproachable light, or dazzling darkness. This hymn is a needed reminder that God is not our pal, and that over-familiarity is not the same as reverent intimacy. In worship we don’t stand before God like fans at a rock concert lost in the experience. ‘Bow down before him’ is an altogether different approach. Indeed that’s what it is, an approach in reverent humility and grateful love to the One who is beautiful in holiness.

Findochty Church from path to Portknockie

Thursday

All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;

Him serve with mirth his praise forth tell, come ye before him and rejoice.

Three words that should characterise Christian worship – cheerful, mirth and rejoicing. The Psalm goes on to give all the reasons for such joy-filled praise. God made us, we belong to God, and every day of our lives we are under God’s care. I love the old Scots way of speaking: “For why? The Lord our God is good; His mercy is for ever sure…” More than one famous preacher has said a miserable Christian is a contradiction in terms. That’s unfair – we all go through times of real struggle when joy feels impossible. But that’s precisely why being with God’s people singing of the goodness of God is so vital – literally revitalising. Praise is faith in defiant mood!

Friday

Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here;

Come bow before Him now, with reverence and fear

“Be still and know that I am God.” That command is intended to silence the busyness of our mind; it’s a call to stop doom-scrolling and pay attention to the presence of God. Here. Now. Wherever we are, at whatever time, no matter the circumstance, the Holy One is here. Jesus promised to be with his disciples always, to the end of the age and to the ends of the earth. When we come to worship, in church or wherever, we don’t come into the presence of God. We stop what we are doing and acknowledge the presence of the Holy One. For myself, it’s too easy to forget the ever-present God, there wherever I am, in grace, in love, in mercy and in the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

St Cuthbert’s Cross. (completed 2025)

Saturday

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;

Someone once defined evangelical spirituality as “early rising, prayer and Bible study”! Allowing for all our different lifestyles and circumstances not everyone can manage the early rising bit. But the hymn is encouraging our first thoughts, ‘early in the morning’, before the day gets going, to make time to give God his place and his time in our lives. If not now and early, then later before the day closes. Worship is a discipline, and many of our most valuable skills and relationships depend on our faithfulness in practicing and investing time and effort in the things that matter most to us. That’s as true of the piano, a golf swing, driving the car, and maintaining our friendships. And it is true of worship – we do it for God. Intentional faithfulness, investment of ourselves in what matters, and what matters most – love for God.

Cross, Iona Abbey, May 2025

Sunday

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

The vision of Isaiah, the Lord high and lifted up, his glory filling the temple; the vision of the exalted Christ, risen and seated at the right hand of God. Vision is not only about seeing; it is also about adoration, wonder and yes, worship. The vision of God in Christ revealed to believing hearts by the Holy Spirit, is the centre and focus of worship. Not me. Not my feelings. Not me enjoying the experience of worship. But that outward reach of praise, gratitude, wonder and love. Wesley’s phrase describes well this deliberately selfless worship as “lost in wonder, love and praise.” So, “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” (Ps. 95.6)    

Monday

1 John 5.13 “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

Eternal life for John is both the promise of the future and the present reality. New birth, new creation, walking in the light, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that we are indeed children of God, perfect love casting out fear. These are some of the ways John brings strong assurance of sin forgiven and a heart cleansed and turned to God in Christ. The name of the Son of God is Saviour, Advocate, One who is the very presence of God in and amongst the community of believers.

Tuesday

1 John 5.14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

It sounds as if “according to his will” is a get-out clause, explaining prayers that god unanswered in the way we had hoped and asked. But in the Lord’s Prayer hallowing God’s name is followed by “Thy will be done”. We can have confidence that God hears our prayer, but we also have confidence in the wise love of God and therefore yield to his will. In Gethsemane, faced with the cross and praying such suffering might be avoided, Jesus prayed, “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” There are times when we cannot know what we ask – but God does, and God is love!

Wednesday

1 John 5.16 “If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.”

John said at the very start, “If anyone does sin we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ the Righteous One.” There are no sinless Christians. But no Christian sins as if it didn’t matter, because the Christian life is lived under the Cross. Sin that does not lead to death is sin of which we repent, knowing the cost and consequences of sin, and having experienced the love of God in Christ “as the atoning sacrifice for our sins”. So when we know of someone’s sin we pray for them that they will know again the cleansing and forgiveness of God.

Thursday

1 John 5.16-17 “There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.”

The problem here is it seems John is saying there are two grades of sin. But John is clear – all wrongdoing is sin. When he speaks of the sin that leads to death he is revisiting much that he wrote earlier. There are sins that are incompatible with being a child of God. These include denial that Jesus is the Son of God, refusal to obey God’s commands, hatred of brothers and sisters, and love of the world. These are sins that contradict any claim to love God, because they are deliberate attitudes and actions that deny the truth of God as revealed in his Son, our Saviour. Such a set of the heart is incompatible with the love, trust and confidence of the child of God.

Friday

1 John 5.18 “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.”

To continue in sin is exactly what John means by sin leading to death. Those truly born of God are kept safe by God from such blatant couldn’t-care-less disobedience. The Spirit within, the love of God dwelling and remaining in the heart, the grace that keeps the child of God walking in the light, the prayers and love of Christian for Christian – these and that central truth of John: “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them, and they live in God.” (1 John 4.15)

Saturday

1 John 5.19-20a “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.”

This is another way of saying “He that is in us is greater than he that is I the world.” The victory over sin, death and the devil is already won on the cross and through the resurrection. Apostle John, shrewd pastor that he is, looks the small community of faithful believers in the eye and says the one thing they need to hear: “We know that we are children of God.” His whole letter has been leading up to that established truth of the heart. We know! With that secure, everything else can be understood and lived through, even in a world set in opposition to God.  To know him who is true, and to know that we are children of God – that is the Christian’s assurance.

Sunday

1 John 5.20b-21 “And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Christian assurance is not only what we know. It is also about who we are and where we are. We are in Him who is true, and He is in us. We are held within the eternal life and love of God through his Son Jesus Christ by the Spirit who lives in us. Our identity is embedded in the eternal purposes of God who is the true God, of Light and Love.

If ever a word more needed to be heard by a fractured world, then this is it.

If ever a word is being so cynically ignored by those with the power to make peace, but choose war as the way to assert power, this is it.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5.9)

Working on Panel 6 of the Beatitudes tapestry. But actually, this verse sits at the precise centre of how I see Christian witness being practiced.

This inludes but is not limited to:

an inner hospitality of the mind to others’ ways of seeing the world,

a conscience alert to injustice,

conciliation as the modus operandi of the words we speak,

careful stewardship of our money to enable and encourage the common good,

not acts of random kindness but acts of intentional, strategic habits of kindness,

an enacted hopefulness by caring about what happens to people and looking for ways to turn such care into a different reality for them.

And so on.

And on.

Monday

1 John 5.4-5 “Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

Remember what John said earlier? “He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world.” By believing in Jesus, the Son of God and the Saviour we can overcome sin and all the forces and cultural pressures of the world. The Spirit of God within and the life giving presence of the risen Christ are the counter-balance. God’s love for us, and our love for God, creates ‘the expulsive power of an opposite affection. Through the Holy Spirit, the assurance of God’s love in Christ gives the believing heart power to withstand and overcome temptation, sin, and the world’s best strategies.

Tuesday

1 John 5.6 “This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.” 

In John’s time some people claiming to be Christians denied that the Son of God really died. John recalls two defining moments in Jesus’ life – his baptism by water and his death on the cross. Both events demonstrated the love of God and the holiness of God – both were times when Jesus the Son of God encountered sin in its full force, and on our behalf overcame sin and death once and for all. This we know because, as Paul also explained, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”   

Wednesday

1 John 5.7-8 “For there are three that testify:the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” 

The three that testify are in agreement. In any court seeking to get at the truth, three witnesses corroborating each other’s testimony is powerful evidence. In John’s Gospel and Letter he explains that it is the Spirit who takes the things of Jesus and spells them out to believing hearts. The Spirit tells us we are children of God; Jesus in his baptism (in water) ‘fulfilled all righteousness”; and in his death (the blood) the Spirit gives the assurance that the final reality in the universe is God’s sin-bearing, pardoning love. Or again as Paul says, “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.”  Three witnesses – the Spirit, the water, the blood.   

Thursday

1 John 5.9 “We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.” 

This is John once again hammering home a truth that matters so much he is determined to leave no room for misunderstanding. If you believe in God, then you will believe what God says; God is light and in him is no darkness at all. John is recalling how at his baptism in water, the voice from heaven said “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” If God said it, and God is final truth, then God’s testimony outweighs any other testimony. The inner witness of the Spirit is God repeating in the believer’s heart this truth – Jesus is God’s Son, our Saviour and Lord.

Friday

1 John 5.10 “Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.”

Coming near the end of his letter John is determined to win the argument. The stakes are at their highest when it is God who is contradicted! The testimony of God is when the truth of who Jesus is, and what Jesus has done for us, is brought home to our hearts, and made clear to our minds. This is the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, who is the source of all true blessed assurance – “heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood. This is MY story, this is my song!”

Saturday

1 John 5.11 “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

The question of whether Jesus is the Son of God is not just a theological argument. The truth of Jesus as God’s Son who bears the sins of the world, who died and rose again, through whom God’s holy love is revealed, is itself a matter of life and death. Eternal life is the life of God in the soul, and the promise of eternal life with God in the eternal life of joy and praise and worship and service that is our future in God. Eternal life is the gift of God, the fulfilment of God’s creative love that first called us into being and into the life of the Triune God through Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Sunday

1 John 5.12 “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

John doesn’t do compromise! When the stakes are this high it becomes an either – or choice. You cannot call God Father unless you call Jesus the Son of God, for God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can come to the Father except through me.” This is the conclusion of John’s case as advocate for the truth that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. To grasp this truth, and take it to heart, and walk in the light of Christ – this is life!

Monday

1 John 4. 18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Love thrives on trust, and withers in an atmosphere of fear. John is a clear-headed psychologist as well as a pastor who understands the nature of God’s transforming love. Where there is mutual love there must be an equal presence of trust. When the love of God is made perfect and brought to completion in us through Christ, then the relationship between God and ourselves is one of trusting faith and answering love. Fear has no place there, just as punishment is no longer a reality for the forgiven.

Tuesday

1 John 4.19 “We love because he first loved us.”

Like the good teacher he is, John ties what he says now, to what he has said earlier. Important information bears repeating for emphasis – “This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (v10) In one brief sentence John sums up the energy source of Christian devotion. We love because we are inexplicably, unfailingly loved by God, without calculation or prior conditions – “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” Love is the present reality within which every Christian is called to live. To know the love of God in our heart is to be transformed into an agent for whom love is the motive of faith.

Wednesday

1 John 4. 20 “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Sometimes the truth cannot be made palatable for diplomatic reasons! Loving others is not just a helpful suggestion, it is a divine imperative. Yes loving others is a choice we make, but it is in response to God’s command. Love for others is not ‘second nature’ for Christians, it is the natural outflow of the new nature in Christ. John’s logic is frank and uncompromising. If you can’t love the brother who is visibly present here and now, then you don’t love God whom you say you believe in. A refusal to act in love towards a brother or sister contradicts any claim that we love and obey God.

Thursday    

1 John 4.21 “And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”   

A command is non-negotiable. It can’t be ignored, or reduced, or made less inconvenient. A command has the underlying authority of the One who gives it, in this case God. The keyword in the command is the word ‘also’. John forges an unbreakable link between love for God and love for others. Every command carries with it a demand. I have friend who uses the word ‘huvtae’: a good day is when there are no huvtaes. She is referring to things we have to do. Well, for Christians who are loved by God, and say we love God in response, loving others is a ‘huvtae”!      

Friday

1 John 5.1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.”

The child displays the characteristics of the father so that there is both a similarity and a continuity between the generations. John is arguing that if you love the father, then you will love the child who is the continuing identity of her parents. Family likeness should mean a mutual recognition of belonging to the same family. The family likeness of Christians is our belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Saviour. Since Jesus is God’s Son, and we are born of God, we are family who love the same God and love each other as brothers and sisters and as God’s children.

Saturday

1 John 5.2 “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.”   

John is remembering the words of Jesus in the Gospel and those words are probably the best commentary on what John has been saying all through chapter 4: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Loving our brothers and sisters, loving Jesus, knowing the love of God, loving our neighbour, yes, loving even our enemies: who can do all this? We can. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”  And hold firmly to this promised reality: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given to us.” (Romans 5.5)

Sunday

1 John 5.3b “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome….”

John means that loving others as our way of showing our love for God, is not beyond our abilities and strength. Jesus said to all who come to him that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Paul’s way of saying that might be, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We obey because we love, and that love which is our deepest response is sustained by God’s indwelling love. It is one of the miracles of God’s grace that he kindles in us the very love we offer back in worship and service.  

Monday

1 John 4.11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Once again, John’s unbreakable logic. Since we are loved by God beyond any measure we can calculate, love then becomes our defining response to others. We love as we have been loved; we forgive as those who have been forgiven; as recipients of God’s grace we become agents and witnesses of that same grace. “Inscribed upon the cross we see, in shining letters ‘God is love.’” God’s love never leaves us as God found us- we love others because God first loved us,  

Tuesday

1 John 4.12.”No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.”

Read that again! God is not seen through the mystical experiences of the super-spiritual. God’s presence is made obvious through the interchange of love amongst those who have come to know the love of God in their own transformed lives. God’s love is made complete, comes full circle, when it is reproduced in the communities of Christ. In other words, loving one another as God loves us is not optional, it is the natural outcome of God’s love reaching out in generous kindness, gestures of peace, efforts to understand, and care for the fabric and health of the community of Christ.

Wednesday

1 John4.13-14 “We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son too be the Saviour of the world.”

As Paul said, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” John is a skilled advocate gathering the evidence that reassures his community of believers. The Spirit is the living evidence of God at work in our lives as individuals, growing and establishing the faith of this fellowship of believers in Jesus. What is more, the Spirit is the living testimony of the love of the Father in sending the Son, and of the love of the Son who has come as the atoning sacrifice for sin and as the Saviour of the world. That’s how “We know that we live in him and he in us.”

Thursday

1 John 4.15 “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.”

In John’s time there were those who denied that Jesus was truly and fully the Son of God. Since earliest days, the confirming evidence of being a Christian is a public confession of Jesus as Son of God, crucified Saviour and risen Lord. John keeps coming back to the spiritual reality that God lives in the new life of the believer and they live in God. God is the sphere of life in which we live, and God is the source of life which enables us to walk in the light and to live in the love of God. The Christian community is an energy hub of the love of God lived out in practice.

Friday

1 John 4.16a “And so we know and rely on the love of God for us.”

 It was once said of R. W. Dale, a famous preacher in Birmingham, that he hammered his points home so forcefully he was in danger of splitting the wood! John does go on, and on, about how we know the love of God. But it is the repetition of emphasis, and the force of a spiritual argument intended to reassure. Apostle John is a pastor, building up and encouraging believers who had started to doubt the truth of God’s love, and the lived reality of salvation through Jesus’ death. He want them to rely on the love of God, to depend for dear life on the truth that whatever else is real, God’s love is the ultimate reality, and the foundation of everything else.

Saturday

1 John 4.16b “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

Just in case you’ve not have been paying attention, here is the whole argument in summary! John’s letter has sometimes been compared to a spiral, he keeps coming back to things he has said before. But he has his reasons. He wants to make clear, one and for all, that Christian assurance rests not on how we feel, but on the fundamental truth of who God is. God is love. God is light. God is Spirit. The presence and work of the Spirit in our lives is confirmed by mutual love, faith in Jesus as Saviour, walking in the light, and knowing we have an advocate with the Father.

Sunday

1 John 4.17 “In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.” 

Love is made complete when the love of God comes full circle and comes to full expression through the work of the Spirit in our lives. Confidence before God is based entirely on God’s work within us by the Spirit, applying to our hearts and minds the truth of Jesus as Saviour and Advocate. John is giving a threefold proof that we are indeed children of God: possession of the Spirit, confession of Jesus as Son of God, and living in the love of God. That’s a threefold cord not easily broken!

The fourth Beatitude panel is finished as far as it can go with tent stitch – I’m working within the discipline of only using this one stitch on all nine panels except for embroidered detail to be completed when the nine panels are done.

This panel is based on “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This was inevitably more challenging, because of the attempt at a personal level to convey the long shadow of mourning against that promise of future comfort.

At one point in Lament for a son, Nicholas Wolterstorff’s remarkable book about the death of his son, he wrote words which many of us have discovered to be both true to life as it now is, and, yes, comforting in the light of God’s promised future:

“The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out into tears when confronted by its absence…Those who mourn are the ones who realize that in God’s realm of peace there is neither death nor tears, and who ache when they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.”

The Pleiades constellation, also called the Seven Sisters, is mentioned three times in the Bible. Each time it is to highlight the power and providence of God the Creator. Likewise in Psalm 8.1-2 “LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.” Then there’s that parentheses in the creation story in Genesis 1.16: “Oh, and by the way, He made the stars also!”

The lights in the panel come from Pleiades, and the first intimations of dawn and the new day, the light of God’s promises shining towards us to where we are now.

Monday

Luke 24.48-49 “You are witnesses of these things.I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

The mission of the Church is to be a community of witness, its reason for existence is to be a living testimony to the Gospel. It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to energise, vitalise, direct and empower the Church. “You are the Body of Christ”, wrote Paul – “and individually members of it.” Luke is telling where all this started. Jesus’ first followers are in disarray, scared and no idea how to even start without Jesus, are reassured by the promise of the Father. They will receive through the Holy Spirit, all that they need and more than they can know. The courage to witness, the words to speak, the strategies to be developed – through the Spirit it will all be God’s doing.

Tuesday

John 14.15-17 “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Comforter to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.”

The promise of the gift of the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit is to those who obey the command of Jesus. These words of Jesus have strings attached, formed by tough and resilient cords of faith in him, and love lived outwardly to others. To wash one another’s feet and to follow Jesus as the Way and the Truth and the Life, these are commands to be obeyed. To love Jesus is to trust him, to follow faithfully after him and to set our hearts on what pleases Him.  The promised Spirit fulfils that other promise: “Lo I am with you always”, to the ends of the earth and the end of the age.

Wednesday

John 16.13 “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”

Jesus is the truth and it is the role of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of God and make them known to us. In that sense the Holy Spirit is the interpreter of Jesus, the One who spells out the full meaning of who Jesus is; the eternal Word made flesh; the Light of the world; the Good Shepherd; the judgement and mercy of God; the crucified and risen Saviour; the love of God incarnate. “The One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Thursday

Galatians 5.25 “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

This is what living in the promise of the Spirit looks like; being led and guided and enabled in our discipleship by the Spirit of God. Much of Paul’s pastoral theology has to do with walking in the Spirit of Christ That’s why he lists the fruit of the Spirit, those hallmarks of Christ-like character. That’s why more than one he spells out the gifts of the Spirit, and in Ephesians says there is one body and one Spirit and such grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. To live by the Spirit is to live in the power of Christ, bearing the fruit and displaying the unsearchable riches of His grace.

Friday

Romans 8.14-16 “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God…and by him we cry ‘Abba Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

The Spirit is the guarantee of our status as children of God. That heart cry “Abba Father” is a cry of recognition, giving voice to that deep sense of belonging of those who are in Christ and who know the reality of Christ in them, the hope of glory. Assurance is not self-generated, it is evidence of the gifted presence of the Spirit. Each day, each moment, each step, each relationship, each choice and every decision takes place within the sphere of the Spirit. Jesus did say “I will not leave you as orphans.” The Spirit is Jesus way of keeping that promise.

Saturday

1 Thessalonians 5.19 “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.”

This is one of eight short imperatives that lead up to Paul talking about sanctification. Yes that refers to our personal holiness, but it includes being a community of holiness. The fire of the Spirit is quenched by self-serving, divisive talk, failure of care and compassion, comfortable complacency with the way things are, curated anger and an unforgiving spirit – in short, all those choices, attitudes and actions that ignores, silences and refuses the guiding impetus of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s fire by contrast ignites everything in us that will burn, providing the energy for love expressed in obedience, fuelled by gratitude and replenished daily by God’s grace.    

 

Sunday

Acts 2. 1-4 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues^[a] as the Spirit enabled them”

Everything in this past week’s TFTD leads up to and beyond Luke’s dramatic story of God yet again interrupting, disrupting and realigning our human history. Now the real mission of the Church begins. Tongue-tied witnesses find their voices, and even the words and language to speak into the life of the world around them. “Holy Spirit, we welcome you. Come as the wind, the renewable energy that drives your people into the hope-filled future that is your Kingdom.”  

The poem, “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus’, was written after Levertov had spent eight months going through the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, devoting an hour a day to prayer and journal reflection, and meeting regularly with her spiritual director. Out of such immersion in the Gospel narratives came a clearer grasp of her own spiritual tendencies.

As an intellectually engaged critic of texts she inevitably brought analytic tools to her study; as a seeking pilgrim she knew she needed to know and believe out of her own spiritual experience arising from these Gospel stories. By imagining herself into each story, the walls of time and culture between her and the original Gospel events dissolved briefly, so that she could find herself, and be found, in the encounter with Jesus. 

In her journal she wrote a prayer in which she asked “keep her intellect sharp and yet not be a vehicle for the spirit that denies.” She knew that belief for her consisted both in intellectual grasp and in personal commitment. Faith is both cognitive assent and affective response, both thought and emotion. 

The poem is printed exactly as Levertov herself insisted; each line a step, with time to pause and feel its weight, before the next phrase. To read is to descend a stairway of thoughts, each one a step in her argument, which progresses across the page, returns and again progresses, the downward movement of a spiral of continuous, contemplative and imaginative thought.

In the encounter with the risen Christ intellectual and cognitive grasp are essential but not enough. Miracles are not established by mere reasoned evidence; that conclusion is reached by the confirmation of deeper ways of knowing; to feel the truth, taste the truth, and bear witness that a miracle such as resurrection is known because personally witnessed in its transformative power.

This is one of Levertov’s most explicit testimonies about her personal experience of God. Faith is both knowledge and trust, engaging intellect and emotion, reason and feeling. The propositional truth  ‘Christ is risen’, must find evidence in the experiential truth of personal encounter. Around the same period, in a poem about the conversion of Brother Lawrence, Levertov articulated her own experience of prayer as unending ‘silent secret conversation / the life of steadfast attention.”

At the foot of the stairway of this poem, is the surprised joy of Emmaus. That story of bewildered disciples, the talkative stranger, the yearning for companionship, and bread in the hands of the unknown guest, contained all that Levertov sought in her quest for peace, assurance and a faith that allowed for both questions and trust.   

On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus

It is for all

         ‘literalists of the imagination,’

                  poets or not,

that miracle

                   is possible,

                                   possible and essential.

Are some intricate minds

                                      nourished

                                                     on concept,

as epiphytes flourish

                               high in the canopy?

                                                           Can they

subsist on the light,

                             on the half

                                       of metaphor that’s not

grounded in dust, grit,

                                 heavy

                                          carnal clay?

Do signs contain and utter,

                                        for them

                                                     all the reality

that they need? Resurrection, for them,

                               an internal power, but not

                                              a matter of flesh?

For others,

                of whom I am one,

                                            miracles (ultimate need, bread

of life) are miracles just because

                                                 people so tuned

                                                                          to the humdrum laws:

gravity, mortality–

                           can’t open

                                           to symbol’s power

unless convinced of its ground,

                                              its roots

                                                           in bone and blood.

We must feel

                    the pulse in the wound

                                                       to believe

that ‘with God

                      all things

                                    are possible,’

taste

        bread at Emmaus

                                  that warm hands

broke and blessed.

Monday

1 John 4.5 “They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.”

For John the world is not the earth, or the whole created order. He thinks of the world as the way the world is organised against God. The human structures of power, the ways the world of people, nations, cultures, and institutions use power, acquire wealth, impose control. That is the world. This organised life of humanity is hostile to God, ruled by greed, sinful in its appetites and in desperate need of saving. So a Gospel with a saving message that calls for confession of sin, repentance and changed ways, and faith in the Son of God who died for the sins of that God-loved world – not going to happen, says a world resistant to the claims of God. As Apostle John says, the world chooses to listen and dance only to the beat of its own music.

Tuesday      

1 John 4.6 “We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”

The confession of Jesus as Son of God and as Lord marks a clear line of allegiance to Jesus. To be born of God is to know God’s love lavished upon us – we are children of God. There is a strong family likeness in Christian believers, a common language of the Kingdom of God, a shared love, loyalty and commitment to Jesus. All of this only makes sense to those who know God dwells in them by his Spirit. They recognise the truth when they hear it, because it is spoken and interpreted to their hearts by the Spirit, who “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Wednesday

1 John 4.7 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”

John keeps coming back to this. The test of life is our capacity to love. Loving others as Christ loves us is a God given capacity, enabled by the Spirit who dwells in us. Self-giving love is the authenticating DNA test of the child of God.  Perhaps reminding ourselves of I John 3.16 is all the commentary we need here: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” John is a practiced exponent of the logic of divine love.

Thursday

1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

And so, finally, John raises the argument to its highest level. Love that is generous, forgiving, costly, truthful and faithful is essential evidence of knowing God. Yes, knowing about God is important. But John is saying so much more. God is love, and that means God is the God who calls us into personal relationship and communion. We know the love of God because we know the God of love. Don’t lose the wonder of those words. “God is love.” Be astonished. Let worship grow out of adoration.

Friday  

1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

God is love. The eternal loving communion and holy interaction of Father, Son, and Spirit, overflows in the love that creates, redeems, sanctifies and enables the Christian community to embody that love. The incarnation of Christ, the cross and resurrection, and the eternal intercession of the Son of God; God’s whole unfolding drama of redemption, is rooted and grounded in the eternal truth of who God is. As Charles Wesley’s hymn declares: “Thy nature and thy name is love.”

Saturday

1 John 4.9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” 

This is John’s paraphrase of his own words in John 3.16. God is love, but the love that God is, comes to us as grace and gift. The love of God is an outpouring of grace, love becoming visible as grace incarnate in Jesus, the eternal reaching out of the heart of God to a fallen creation on which God has never given up. The purpose of the coming of the Son of God, John has already made clear. Jesus is the word of life. God is light, and Jesus is the light of the world. God is love, and Jesus is the personification and demonstration of the lengths to which divine love will go, the depths to which God’s love will reach, the scale and scope of God’s grace, justice and mercy, even to us.

Sunday

1 John 4.10 “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  

God’s love always comes first. The initiative in our salvation rests entirely with God. The love of God is from all eternity, so we are held within a loving purpose that has created us, came looking for us, called us, and has always and ever loved us beyond our knowing. Our love will always be response to God’s love that first found us. John knows the inner dynamics of the human heart. That phrase “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” tells in concentrated form of the self-expenditure of God in Christ. Reconciliation is the healing of hurt, the removal of guilt, the restoring of love, and all of that by the grace, mercy and love of God. And why? Because God is love.