Be Still And Know

Hebrews 1:1-2 Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. These opening verses of the letter to the Hebrews declare that God has always spoken to people. He did it in the Old Testament as he spoke through the prophets and then in the New Testament through his Son, Jesus. It is good for us to stop and reflect on the fact that he didn’t have to speak. He could have chosen to create humankind and leave us alone. He could have looked at what a mess people made of the world and decided to remain silent. But he didn’t. His choice was to communicate and before taking a closer look at this wonderful letter we should stop for a moment and praise God that his desire is to communicate with us. In the Old Testament God spoke through the prophets in various ways. Often the communication was in the form of words, bu

Jonah 3:10; 4:1 When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened…This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So far as Jonah was concerned it was bad enough to have to go to Nineveh at all, with its terrible reputation for sin. But at least he was given the responsibility for sharing a message of God’s judgement upon them. They certainly deserved it. But to his great surprise the people repented and so God changed his mind about destroying the people. This was all too much for Jonah who became extremely angry with God. These evil people needed, in Jonah’s view, to be blasted off the planet rather than offered forgiveness. Jonah reflected that he ought to have remembered that God was “a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love” (Jonah 4:2). Jonah’s reaction helps us to reflect upon the mystery of God’s grace, which we meet in a very powe

Jonah 3:1-3 Then the LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you.” This time Jonah obeyed the LORD’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. Jonah had learned his lesson. He had tried running away from God and spectacularly failed in the attempt. So, when the Lord called him for a second time he obeyed and went. The task before him was colossal. Nineveh stood at the heart of the great Assyrian empire and had a population of more than 120,000 people. It was one of the biggest cities in the world at the time, occupying a strategically important location on both north to south and east to west trade routes. Today it forms part of the large city of Mosul in Iraq. Nineveh was the last place on earth that Jonah would have chosen to be, but that’s where God wanted him. The Bible introduces us to many people who were led by God to places they didn’t want to go to. Moses is a particularly powerf

Jonah 2:1-2 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from inside the fish. He said, “I cried out to the LORD in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and LORD, you heard me!” The thought of spending three days and nights inside a large fish is well beyond my imagination. And the book of Jonah doesn’t do anything to satisfy my curiosity! This is no newspaper account of exactly what it looks and feels like to be swallowed by an enormous fish. Rather, it is the story of a man meeting with God at a time of extreme need. Jonah’s words echo many of the Psalms and reveal his sense of despair and abandonment. Life seemed to have come to a shuddering conclusion but, amid his confusion, he cried to God and God heard him. Jonah had walked the path of disobedience and now, in the belly of the fish, he needed to set off in a new direction. God had not abandoned him, but was ready to hear his cries. Jonah’s situation reminds me of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32)

Jonah 1:1-3 The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. Most Bibles will have the title ‘Holy Bible’ on the cover, which could give the impression that it is a book stacked full of stories of really holy people who never take a step out of line. It is surely a relief to us all that the Bible is nothing like that. At times it feels like the complete opposite! Take Jonah for example. He was called by God but was appalled by the command. Going to Nineveh was absolutely the last thing that he would ever want to do. The city was, at the time, one of the largest cities in the world and was famous for its sin. It stood at the heart of the great and menacing Assyrian empire and everything about it would have been repulsive to Jonah. So, he went to Joppa and found a boat that was heading in the opposite d

Isaiah 42:1 “Look at my servant, whom I strengthen. He is my chosen one, who pleases me. I have put my Spirit upon him. He will bring justice to the nations.” I became absolutely fascinated by the law when I was in my teens. I often visited our local magistrates’ and crown courts in Southend and was completely gripped by the whole process. On a few occasions I went up to the Old Bailey in London where they tried the most amazing cases. My mind was well and truly opened up to the darker side of our society and I was given a good crash course in justice. It became clear to me that the difficult work that these courts were doing was vital to the stability of society. But when we read about justice in Isaiah the subject is much wider than merely what happens in courts of law, vital as that obviously is. It refers to God’s desire that everything should be done fairly throughout society. Relationships need to be healthy and strong and the way people treat one another needs to be considerate and loving. Our vers

Isaiah 40:28-29 Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. It was Samuel Butler, the 19th-century author, who observed: “Life is one long process of getting tired.” However young and fit you may be, the time comes when you need to rest. Our bodies demand it. Isaiah points out that God is completely different and is able to work continually without any rest. He never grows weak or weary. What an encouragement this is! It means that God can be completely relied upon at all times. We are more than aware that our work level changes if we are tired or it is getting towards the end of the day. How wonderful that God is not subject to these variations because it means we can reach out to him at any time with confidence. Even though people are making demands upon him all over the world he never needs to take

Isaiah 40:25-26 “To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One. “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.” I have never studied astronomy but I find the scale of the universe totally mind boggling. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. That’s fast! But to go on any significant journey into space we too would need to travel at that speed. In one minute we would have travelled over 11 million miles and by the end of the day we would have covered 16,000 million miles. After a year we would have travelled nearly 6 million, million miles. That’s good going but it would still take more than three further years before we reached the nearest stars. No doubt we would feel a great sense of achievement to have got that far, but we would need to keep going for another 20,000 years at the same speed to reach the edge of our g

Isaiah 40:3-5 Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the LORD! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together.” I’m no lover of airports, but I do love flying. Having flown to many parts of the world, I have always been amazed by the huge expanse of mountainous areas so was not surprised to discover that mountains form nearly a quarter of the earth’s land surface. As I have flown over them for hours on end, I have tried to imagine the way of life for the people who live in such areas. Mountains are beautiful, but they must make travel incredibly complicated for the people who have them as their home. In today’s dramatic reading we hear that our mighty God can flatten the mountains and fill in the valleys. What Isaiah is telling us is that we should never

Isaiah 40:1-2 “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned.” We all make mistakes, but some have far greater impact than others. Many mistakes are of minor importance, and are soon forgotten, but others can change the whole direction of life from that moment. The people of Jerusalem and Judah had made a long succession of disastrous decisions but in this passage God told them that things were going to change because he would forgive them. When we make mistakes, and especially when they have long-term implications, it is easy to imagine that there is no hope. But God is always in the business of restoration. He is always looking for ways of bringing salvation and renewal. This is truly a message of comfort and one which our world desperately needs to hear. I have spent many, many hours of my life with people who have tried to persuade me that they were beyond God’s help. Their lives had gone from bad to much, much

Psalm 47:1-2 Come, everyone! Clap your hands! Shout to God with joyful praise! For the LORD Most High is awesome. He is the great King of all the earth. Clapping uses no words but conveys very powerful messages. There is all the difference in the world between clapping that is dutiful and polite, and clapping that is enthusiastic and heart-felt. I am glad that the Bible encourages us to clap precisely because it takes us beyond words. However well-chosen and eloquent our speech it can never fully express how great, majestic and awesome our God is. I was not brought up to make much use of my body in worship. Standing up, sitting down and shutting my eyes were the sum total of my bodily worship! I had an aunt who was high church and she did a lot of kneeling. Lifting hands or dancing in worship were well outside my experience until I was in my 20s. What mattered were the words. Of course, the words do matter and we will always want to use them as we praise God, but I am glad that we live in days when many

Psalm 46:1-2 God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. When disaster strikes it’s often without warning. A death, a car accident, a serious illness or a fall. Although such events come without announcement they can, in an instant, completely change the shape of our lives. In those moments of shaking, it’s so important to know that we can look to God as our refuge and strength. As a minister I’ve often visited the homes of people at times of traumatic change. I remember once visiting an old lady who knew that she had terminal cancer and only had a short while to live. She lived in a dark cottage in a village; when I visited her it was late in the afternoon and there was very little light in the room where we met. But I will never forget her glowing smile in the fading light. She knew the Lord well and had every confidence that her life was in his hands. He was her refuge and strength. The next

Psalm 42:11 Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again—my Saviour and my God! We all face times of discouragement, when nothing seems to be going right, as it’s an inevitable part of the ups and downs of life. But sometimes those times of discouragement can dominate all our thinking; that is clearly how it was for the psalmist. He reflects that his tears have been his food day and night and people were taunting him all day long with the words: “Where is your God?” He thinks back on the happy days when he would lead the worship procession up to the temple, but that’s all a distant memory now. He paints a very sad picture. But his feelings of despair don’t have the last word, because amid the grief he knows that God will not let him down. He puts his hope in God, knowing that there will come a time when he will be able to praise God again. We are told that depression is extremely common and that about 50 per cent of people will experience it at some time

Psalm 42:1-2 As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Having spent a couple of years in India, I am very familiar with the challenges of living with intense heat. One lesson I learned very swiftly is that you need to carry a drink with you at all times. But, inevitably, I sometimes forgot. I can remember occasions when I was craving a drink and was happy to drink anything to slake my thirst. Deer are just the same. They can only bound around the countryside for so long before they need to search for a stream of cool, refreshing water. King David used the image of thirsty deer as an illustration of his longing for the living God. This psalm suggests that David was feeling deeply discouraged. Nothing seemed to be going right. It was a time of struggle and confusion, but he knew that God could satisfy him in a way that nothing else could. Many things give us satisfaction for a short while: possessions, success, re

Psalm 40:1-2 I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. I was born and brought up in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex on the Thames Estuary. As a boy I loved exploring the coast, which is well known for its generous expanses of mud! At low tide it is possible to walk out more than a mile from the shore. However, you have to be careful. In places the mud is of such a fine quality that you can easily sink into it; I remember being told gory stories of people who got caught in the mud when the tide turned, with disastrous consequences. The psalmist here is reflecting on his own life and recognises that he had once been totally stuck – just like being stuck in mud. He had been in a hopeless situation but he cried out to God, who had reached out to him and lifted him to a place of solid ground. What a relief! There are some predicaments in life

Psalm 39:4-5 Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath. I will never forget the moment. I was 17 years old and a friend of mine asked me: “Have you heard about Luke?” I hadn’t. Luke was always full of life, had very long hair (as most of us did at the time) and a cheeky smile. My friend said: “He died last week in a car crash together with three friends. Their Mini hit a fuel tanker and burst into flames.” I was completely and utterly devastated. It made no sense. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. As I struggled to come to terms with Luke’s untimely death, I learnt many things. Most of all I learnt that life, which seemed so permanent, was anything but. As tragic as this moment was, it taught me to look at every single day as a miraculous gift from God. I came to realise that every day needs to

Psalm 38:4-9 My guilt overwhelms me—it is a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins. I am bent over and racked with pain. All day long I walk around filled with grief. A raging fever burns within me, and my health is broken. I am exhausted and completely crushed. My groans come from an anguished heart. You know what I long for, Lord; you hear my every sigh. In this Psalm, David is incredibly honest. He tells us exactly how things are in his life, and it’s not going well! He feels guilty, he’s in pain and he is emotionally crushed. You can hardly imagine anything worse. But in the middle of it all, he knows that God hears him. I love the expression that David uses when he writes: “you hear my every sigh”. God doesn’t merely know when we are going through a hard time, but he picks up every detail of our distress. He is our creator, and he knows us better than we know ourselves. When we pray, he is well ahead of us in understanding what is wrong and why we are st

Luke 2:29-32 Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel! Eight days after Jesus’ birth, his parents took him to the temple for his circumcision. There is no suggestion that the people of Jerusalem understood the significance of this moment. All the people at the temple saw was a young couple presenting their baby in the way that people did every day. But two elderly people did understand what was going on. Simeon and Anna had been longing for this day - and it had finally come! These verses form what is known as the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon’s famous prayer of thanks for this miraculous moment. He had been looking forward to this day for so long that he could now die in peace. As a Jew, he recognised that this was a glorious moment for the people of Israel. But it was much, much more. Simeon also recognised that the Messiah had

Luke 2:19 Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. This sentence is what I would call a piece of considerable understatement! Mary had just given birth to the Messiah. She certainly had plenty to think about! Older versions of the Bible translate this verse as: “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (NIV). What had happened to Mary was a turning point in human history and stands at the centre of God’s loving plan for his world. No one, however old or mature, could possibly have taken it all in or claimed to have fully understood what had happened. Two thousand years later, theologians are still reflecting deeply on it. There is much that we do understand about our world, but still much that is beyond us. When we see the wonders of creation, we can attempt to describe what we see but we may never completely capture its beauty and intricacy. When we see the way in which God works in our lives, there is much that makes sense but always some things

Luke 2:16-18 The shepherds “hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished.” Just imagine if this was happening now. Bethlehem would be swamped with news reporters and film crews, and all the shepherds would have microphones thrust in front of them. The world would be hanging on their every word and the details of their amazing story would have been cross examined with forensic care. As it is, we have to rely on Dr Luke, who sums up the whole story in just a few dramatic words. In short, the shepherds confirm that the words of the angels about Jesus’ birth were absolutely true. Then, they went out to tell everyone the astonishing story. Good news cannot be hidden. You rarely need to tell new Christians that it is good to share their story with other people, because they just love to do so.