Category: Uncategorised

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.

Monday

I John 3.24a “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in Him, and He in them.”

John has a lot to say about keeping God’s commands. We are called to live in the light, to walk in the way of truth, and to be energised by the life of God. Christian life is a grace-enabled work of obedient love and grateful obedience. Mutual indwelling is to share the life of God, to know ourselves surrounded by, and energised by the reality of God. Such an intermingling of grace and obedience has no possibility of counterfeit. The evidence is established by a life lived in the truth and love of God.

Tuesday

1 John 3.24b “And this is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the Spirit he gave us.” 

The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that we are God’s children. The Spirit was the gift of the risen Jesus to his followers: Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The work of the Spirit is to explain and make known the truth of God in Jesus, to strengthen and reassure the believer’s heart, and to be the real presence of the risen Christ in our lives. “I will not leave you on your own”, Jesus promised. “Lo I am with you always, to the end of the age and the ends of the world.”

Wednesday

1 John 4.1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Not everyone who says they speak the truth of God is to be trusted. John is encouraging a clear principle for each Christian community. No one person has a monopoly on the truth, or the say so over what is believed or practiced in the life of a church or Christian fellowship. “Test the spirits” is strong guidance’. Each community must discern where the truth lies, and where truth ends and lies begin! In the tests of whether a spirit or word is from God, John gives clear criteria based on what he has already said: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”

Thursday

1 John 4.2 “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,” 

For Christan minds and hearts, Jesus is the be all and end all of the truth about who God is, and what God commands. Jesus, who dwelt amongst us, is the eternal Word made flesh. He is the embodied truth of God’s purpose for creation and humanity. There were those in John’s day who debunked the idea that Jesus was God’s Son in the flesh. But John knew what was at stake. God’s redeeming love is fully expressed and accomplished in the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus the Saviour. It is the Holy Spirit who enables the confession “Jesus is Lord.” 

Friday

1 John 4.3 ^“but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”

Opposition to, and misrepresentation of Jesus and his followers, have been the cost of faithfully following Jesus ever since the earliest days of the church. Jesus warned of such persecution and denial of him. The spirit of antichrist is around whenever Christ is maligned, or Jesus is dismissed as a failed messiah now irrelevant in the harsh realities of life in the world. If we are being ridiculed, ignored, or even persecuted for living and speaking our faith in Jesus, we are doing something very right! And the courage to do that comes from, you guessed it, the Spirit of God.

Saturday

1 John 4.4 “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

“He that is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” So the praise song goes, and the jaunty tune and rest assured tone captures exactly the confidence-instilling words of Apostle John. The spirit of antichrist is formidable, but the spirit of Christ prevails in those who “are from God.” ‘More than conquerors’ is Paul’s phrase, but here John describes the battlefield and the certainty of victory in the ongoing conflict between the hostile world and the followers of the crucified and risen Christ. Christian assurance in the face of the spirit of antichrist is founded on the sure and unassailable truth that in Jesus Christ all the strategies of sin, death and untruth are already defeated. “Fought the fight the battle won! Alleluia!”

Sunday

1 John 4.4 “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

Take time to hold this verse long enough to begin to grasp the immensity of what it says to you, and every Christian under pressure. “You are from God.” “He that is in you is greater…” You are indwelt by the love and light and truth of God in Christ. You follow a risen Christ; you are held within the eternal purpose of God; you are a child of God and the subject and object of God’s redeeming love. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”  John the pastor is no ‘There, there, it will be all right’ pronouncer of platitudes! This is theological reassurance anchored in the truth of who God is.

If poems can save our lives; if poetry gives us oxygen in a world inundated with mass-produced verbiage; if poetry can heal where other words have wounded, and poetry can give wisdom for the perplexities of our times; if poetry can open our eyes and tune our listening and encourage our instinct to care; if all of that is true of poetry, then perhaps we should all have a portable copy of our favourite poet.

My first paperback copy of George Herbert’s poems, bought in 1981, is well worn, but still intact. It travelled on many a holiday, has years of pencil notations, and is now a collector’s item from the early Everyman paperbacks. When The Everyman Pocket Library Series came along I bought myself a beautifully produced edition. I often take it on holiday!

Camera. ✓ Walking shoes. ✓ Wallet. ✓ Phone ✓ Medication ✓ Poems ✓ Essentials for my kind of holiday. Yes, I do realise this is one of those personal preferences that should never be made into a universal rule of life for every other soul! But it does explain why I at least, think a photo of this wee book against a holiday place background is worth posting. And why on holiday, a long familiar inner text can be reassuring and replenishing company. Or so it seems to me

Monday

1 John 3.16-17 “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. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”

These two verses provide a chain of logic that makes compassion and generous self-giving an obligation, not an option. For the Christian believer, the cross of Jesus is the highest index of what love for others looks like. That word pity means empathy, to feel for someone so that their pain and struggle becomes a compelling argument for us to help them, out of a love and compassion that originates in God.

Tuesday

1 John 3.18 “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Children of God show the characteristics of the Father. Ten times John uses the affectionate family name to encourage obedience. Love may begin with emotion and thought, but it is fulfilled in action. Love is at its most convincing in our actions and behaviour towards those we say we love. Yes love is announced and confided in our words; but words are only proven and made convincing when they are made actual and visible. Love is practical; it only comes true when we behave in a loving way.

Wednesday

1 John 3.19 “This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us.”!

How do we come before God with confidence and without embarrassment? By living in the truth of Christ, and in the light and love of God. John keeps coming back to these three things – truth, light, love. Belonging to the truth, knowing Christ the truth and aligning our lives with Him as we seek to follow faithfully in his steps. That is where peace is found. And yes, we often enough sin, lose our way, step outside the truth that is the heart and soul of our lives. At such times our heart condemns us. But John, like the good pastor he is, knows how to break that double bind of felt failure.

Thursday

1 John 3.20 “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” 

This is one of the most telling words of pastoral wisdom in the entire New Testament. We have an Advocate with the Father; Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins; God is greater than our conscience; he knows our failures, our guilt, and our repentance. He also knows the life of faith and love we try so hard to live in Christ. God knows our worst, and our best. When we sin our heart condemns us; but God is greater than our inner sorrow, shame and guilt. He knows everything, the whole convoluted mess is fully known, and yet, “He is faithful and just and cleanses from all unrighteousness.” God is the great repairer of broken hearts, and broken egos!

Friday

1 John 3.21 “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

Confidence before God is quite a mild translation. Bold is the stronger word, and means the freedom to speak freely. “Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own!” Apostle John is now giving a dressing room team talk! A winning attitude, mental strength, mutual encouragement, recovered motivation – confidence before God is all of these. John is seeking to instil a renewal of faith, a strengthening of love, and a new grasp of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Saturday

1 John 3.22 “We have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.” (Part 1)

This is an astonishing verse! Apostle John is apparently taking Jesus literally: “You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it…I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” We all struggle with the experience of praying, sometimes in desperation, and what we pray for doesn’t happen. Unanswered prayer can be a bewildering experience that knocks our confidence. What are we to make of those words – “receive from him anything we ask”? Is prayer always a blank cheque? Or a signed cheque that sometimes bounces?

Sunday

1 John 3.22 “We have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.” (Part 2)

Prayer is never an unconditional offer of whatever we want, when we want it. We can never fully know the purposes of God. The benevolence and providence of God will always be a mystery to us; but he who did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up for us all – will he not, with him, freely give us all things? The one sure thing that underwrites our every prayer is the love of God, expressed in his covenant faithfulness towards us in Christ. We cannot know why at times we do not receive what we ask. What we do know is that God’s sovereign will towards us is guided by covenant love and enduring faithfulness. That we do know, so we go on trusting the One we call Father,“keeping his commands and doing what pleases him.”

Monday

1 John 3.10 “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.”

Most of us are now familiar with various forms of online authentication. That can be anything from your PIN, a password, even thumb print or facial recognition. It must be something uniquely personal, that only you would know. Apostle John points out two authenticating tests for Christian behaviour – to do what is right, and to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. To do wrong and think it’s OK, to despise and hurt our brothers and sisters, proves we are not children of God and followers of Jesus who walk in the light. Claiming to be Christian while hating others is to fail that test.

Tuesday

1 John 3.11 “For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.” 

One way or another, from start to finish, love is a test of Christian authenticity, proof that we are children of God. The new commandment was made the authenticating test by Jesus in the Upper Room: “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love seeks what is best, remains faithful, acts in kindness and trust, helps carry life’s weight, is there as supportive presence and never intentionally does harm. John has much to say about this later, for now he simply says that love is the originating principle of every Christian life – we love because God in Christ first loved us.  Love is who we are, and why we are.

Wednesday

1 John 3.12 “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.” 

The presence and activity of the devil is woven into the fabric of John’s view of reality. Evil is real, deceptive and destructive. John’s world is divided into light and darkness, love and hate, truth and lies – and we each must choose the path we walk. Christians walk in light, love as God loves, and hold to the truth of who Jesus is as Son of God and Saviour. Where light, love and truth are absent, murder happens. Cain’s murder of his brother is the first murder story, the start of human violence that escalates from not doing right and hating those who do. 1 John 3.8-15 are not there as devotional comfort. John is warning of the reality of evil, the consequences and cost of failure to live in the light, to act in love, to hold to the truth as it is in Jesus.

Thursday

1 John 3.13 “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.”

The world is not set up as a place of love, doing right, speaking truth, or walking in light. And the world hates being exposed as the opposite of each of these. That is why Jesus was crucified. Where love is absent, nothing much can live. Where love is consistently practiced it becomes a way of life, and a way to life. John is talking about the fatal consequences of hate. Refusal to love by choosing hate is a self-imposed death sentence. By contrast, those who live in love flourish in the light of God.

Friday

1 John 3.14 “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”

Yes, I know. Pretty dark stuff. John keeps hammering away at the dangers of hate, and the connection between hate and violence. But reading the Bible is an exercise in realism. We don’t treat the Bible well if we are only interested in being kept devotionally cosy, undisturbed by the realities of a world breaking apart by division, hate, lies, and therefore violence. John is explaining the chain reactions of hate, and is encouraging the chain reactions of love. Hate = Death: Love= Life.

Saturday

1 John 3.15 “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.” 

Let’s take that first sentence. John goes to the central defining truth of all Christian existence. “Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters, ‘God is love’. The cross is “the measure and the pledge of love.” That old hymn is a fine commentary on that first sentence – “We sing the praise of him who died”. It is not possible to kneel at the cross with hate in our hearts; kneeling in that place we are baptised in love.

Sunday

1 John 2.15b “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

John is an expert in the spiritual logic of the Gospel. Since God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. Love is never cost-free. To love is to become involved for good in the life of someone else. John recognises no limits. To lay down our lives is not so much to die for others, as to live for them, to bear the cost of their help and support, or as Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.”