Psalm 6. Both sinners and the righteous bounce back after prayer. Day 11, Jan 11

Gerrit van Honthorst
David

Psalm 6

Traditionally “a Penitential Psalm.”

A Psalm of David.

¹ LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
   or discipline me in your wrath.
² Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am faint;
   heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony.
³ My soul is in deep anguish.
   How long, LORD, how long?

⁴ Turn, LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
⁵ Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?

⁶ I am worn out from my groaning.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

David has sinned, and he is suffering. He is faint, in anguish, in agony, groaning and weeping. He asks God not to rebuke him or discipline him, but instead to have mercy on him. Why? Because of God’s very nature, his goodness and kindness. Hesed, in Hebrew.

⁷ My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

His enemies have brought him much sorrow. Note: One can be a man after God’s own heart, and still experience much sorrow because of your enemies.

⁸ Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my weeping.
⁹ The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.

¹⁰ All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.

I love how David bounces back after he prays.

This is the astounding movement of the Psalms which mirrors the movement and motions our soul goes through when we pray.

God hears our cry for mercy. He accepts our prayer. We know things are going to change. We know God has heard our prayer and is going to bless us.

There is a reversal. The Lord has heard the Psalmists’ prayer for blessing. His enemies will be troubled, as he was troubled.

^{No one can hurt the soul of the one whom God loves. Through prayer, he will use reverses to strengthen himself, to grow more calm and peaceful.}

Look up in faith. Count the Stars. Genesis 13-15. Day 11. Jan 11.

By Anita Mathias

LOOK UP FROM YOUR TENT OF IMPOSSIBILITY AND COUNT THE STARS

Genesis 15

⁵ Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. ⁶ But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. ⁷ And quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.

⁸ So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. ⁹ Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called children of God.

Abram resolves to avoid conflict with Lot. How does he do it? He gives him first pick.

Foolish? Perhaps.

Fair? Not to Abraham.

Generous? Yes!

¹⁰ Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) ¹¹ So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company:

Lot chose selfishly. Abraham let him.

¹² Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. ¹³ Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.

Abram stayed in the land to which God had led him. Lot went to the land which appeared most economically profitable. God and his directives did not enter into the picture.

¹⁴ The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Lift up your eyes from where you are, and look to the north and south, to the east and west. ¹⁵ All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. Lot’s choice alienated him from participating in the blessings promised to Abraham. Instead, he became involved in the history of Sodom and Gomorrah, whereas Abram continued to receive God’s promises.

And God’s promises, because they are God’s are as good as the real thing.

A study in contrasts. Lot looked selfishly, and coveted. Whereas Abram obeyed God’s commands to lift up his eyes from where he was and look all around him, to the north and south, to the east and west. And he was blessed.

God says this to us today. Lift up your eyes from where you are, and look to the north and south, to the east and west. God wants to bless you BECAUSE THAT IS HIS NATURE. Ask him in which direction his blessing is flowing.

¹⁶ I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.

Offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth. Wow. Abraham is an old man now. 75 years old. How many children does he have?

Zero.

God trains his heroes in a rigorous school of faith, before they are heroes whom God can use.

¹⁷ Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

Sweet words. And what did Abraham have to do at this point? Precisely nothing. God gave him this gift, just because. Because of the goodness of his own nature.

Jesus repeatedly reminds us in the Last Supper discourse (John 13-17) to ask the Father for anything we wish, for whatever we wish.

It would be wise to take him up on it, and see what he does– just because…he loves us.

¹⁸ So Abram went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the LORD.

He was always aware of God’s goodness, and worshipped God even when he was not aware of a specific need for God.

Genesis 14

¹ At the time when Amraphel was king of Shinar,^[a] Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goyim, ² these kings went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). ³ All these latter kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea Valley). ⁴ For twelve years they had been subject to Kedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

⁵ In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim ⁶ and the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran near the desert. ⁷ Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar.

⁸ Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) marched out and drew up their battle lines in the Valley of Siddim ⁹ against Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goyim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five. ¹⁰Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills. ¹¹ The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away. ¹² They also carried off Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom.

¹³ A man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother^[b] of Eshkol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. ¹⁴ When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. ¹⁵ During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. ¹⁶ He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.

God’s blessing on Abraham was that he would be a blessing. So here, he turns the other cheek, and rescues Lot who chose the more fertile land.

¹⁷ After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).

¹⁸ Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, ¹⁹ and he blessed Abram, saying,

   “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
   Creator of heaven and earth.
²⁰ And praise be to God Most High,
   who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

That Abraham is blessed was evident even to the pagan king Melchizedek, who in turn blesses him too in the name of God.

Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

Abram’s spontaneous and generous response to Melchizedek’s blessing.

²¹ The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.”

²² But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, ²³ that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’

Abram was a man of faith. He wanted it to be clear that his blessing came from God himself. He is depending on God to become a great nation.

²⁴ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me—to Aner, Eshkol and Mamre. Let them have their share.”

He is beholden to God alone.

Genesis 15

¹ After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:

   “Do not be afraid, Abram.
   I am your shield,
   your very great reward.”

Wonderful words of peace. I am your shield, your protection.

Though Abraham was very rich, his reward was God.

God’s peace. God’s protection. God’s wealth. God’s promises. God’s destiny.

And children born of God.

² But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” ³ And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

The first time Abram cavils, which he needs to do in all honesty.

⁴ Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” ⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

In the Middle East, 8000 stars are visible to the naked eye. God is saying, IF I CAN CREATE THIS, IS ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE TO ME?

An impossible promise, on the face of it. BUT NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD.

⁶ Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

And as the writers of the New Testament say, we are children of Abraham. We are not righteous in ourselves, but we believe God, and it is credited to us as righteousness.

⁷ He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

⁸ But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

God is our father. An honest question is not the same as expressing doubt. And in his goodness, God gives Abraham a sign.

Having credited Abraham’s faith to him as righteousness, God graciously ministered to his need of assurance concerning the land.

⁹ So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

¹⁰ Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. ¹¹ Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ¹³ Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi^[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

A unilateral covenant between God and Abraham. God made the promise, and wanted nothing from Abraham in return. It’s like the unspoken covenant of protection and blessing which we enter into with our new-borns.

Poems on Marriage from Wendell Berry and R. S. Thomas

By Anita Mathias

Anniversary
Nineteen years now
Under the same roof
Eating our bread,
Using the same air:
Sighing, if one sighs,
Meeting the other’s
Words with a look
That thaws suspicion.

Nineteen years now
Sharing life’s table,
And not to be first
To call the meal long
We balance it thoughtfully
On the tip of the tongue.
Careful to maintain
The strict palate.

Nineteen years now
Keeping simple house.
Opening the door
To friend and stranger;
Opening the womb
Softly to let enter
The one child
With his huge hunger.

A Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love’s moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
‘Come.’ said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance. And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird’s grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.

– RS Thomas, ‘A Marriage’,

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

Wendell Berry

Wikio

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Blessed are the Have-Nots, Beatitudes, Matthew 5

By Anita Mathias

LIGHT OF THE WORLD
HOLMAN HUNT

^{MATTHEW 5}

¹ Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them.

Hey, I really like Jesus’ approach to his teaching ministry. He sits down. His disciples come to him, and he teaches him.

That’s one approach to finding your role in the Body of Christ. If you teach, do people want to listen? If you write, do people want to read it? If you want to counsel, pray, prophecy, practice hospitality—do you find people who want to be counselled, prayed for, listen to your prophecies, eat at your table? I think I heard John Mumford say that at our church retreat. Look behind your shoulder. Are there people following you? Then perhaps your calling to lead, teach, write, whatever… is from God.

He said:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Believe it or not, I used to have some trouble understanding this. Now, I have no trouble at all. Of course, it is blessed to be poor in spirit—so blessed. Not to need to be “a big deal,” “someone,” in the mix, in the know. Not to need to be known. To be content to be unknown. Just to be yourself. Just to love.

When I married my husband, Roy, 21 years ago, speeches at our wedding spoke of his humility and gentleness. “Is he really humble?” I wondered “What is humble?” But though only Christ, I assume was truly poor in spirit, I have seen in Roy some of the blessings of being poor in spirit—of not being consumed by the restlessness of ambition or the desire for prominence or the exhaustion of needing to blow your own trumpet.

⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.

When things go wrong for me, I run to God, I flee to God, I am immersed in him. When things go well, and everything is okay, it takes much more of a conscious effort for me to remember God, and turn to him.

If God is indeed our happiness, our wisdom, our consolation, our rock, our stability, then indeed blessed are those who mourn and have no recourse BUT to turn to God. Blessed are they who are comforted by God.

⁵ Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.

This is true, because Jesus says it is true (which is a statement from faith, not logic) but I have seen how this has worked out numerous times in my own life.

A rather manipulative woman recently said to me, “When all else fails, try humility.” I laughed, but in fact, meekness and humility have an immense power—more than pride and violence and dominance, which breeds anger and resistance.

I believe the meek often do get their hearts’ desires. Most men and women, who are after all made in God’s image, find it hard to resist the meek and gentle.

⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.

Who does not need mercy? We all do. And Jesus tells us how to obtain it. Be merciful when it is in your power to be so.

Gosh, I know from experience, immense blessing do come to the one who shows mercy.

Here’s an older blog post on the subject.

http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2010/10/orchards-of-stone-blessed-are-merciful.html

⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.

Purify my heart, Lord Jesus, I want to see you.

⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.

Do we want the blessings of being children of God?

I guess we should try making peace in situations of conflict, starting with family, then church conflict.

I don’t even know what that looks like, Lord, but teach me to be a peacemaker in situations of conflict.

¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Here is a recent post I wrote on the Beatitudes: Blessed are the Have Nots.

http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2010/12/blessed-are-have-nots.html

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

I just recently realized some of the blessings of this. Some. I have grown stronger through a season of experiencing this. I have been able to literally blow off and shrug off what people say. To take it all with a grain of salt. I have learnt to lean on God. I have learnt to trust myself to God, not matter what people say. To not care so much for people’s good opinion. To not bother to defend myself, but to leave all that to God. To rest in God, and be happy, no matter what people say about me.

¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

If we are experiencing insult, persecution and slander BECAUSE we are doing what we heard Christ tell us to do, then we can rejoice and be glad.

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth.

I love this metaphor. This is what I would love to be: an almost invisible element, seasoning conversations, the atmosphere around me, people’s lives. To have a quiet goodness. Salt doesn’t struggle to be salt. It just is.

Change us, Lord. Help us to be salt in our environments.

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

I love the way Jesus suggests we do life. We focus on the inside, on our character, heart and spirit, on what we really are.

When Jesus transforms us, and brings goodness out of our ashes, our goodness cannot be hidden.

¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

A fine balance. Jesus later on warns us against blowing our own trumpets, praying or fasting or giving for men to see.

So on one hand, we are not to promote ourselves and show off; on the other hand, we are not to conceal the good we have done, because a good child reflects well on her parents.

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The ESV Study Bible says, “Jesus fufills all the OT in that it points to him, not only in its specific predictions of a Messiah, but also in its sacrifice system, which looked forward to his great sacrifice of himself; in many events in the history of Israel which foreshadowed his life as God’s true son, in the law which only he perfectly obeyed, and in the Wisdom literature which set forth a behavioural pattern that his life exemplified.”

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

The New Covenant. God sends his spirit to dwell in our hearts. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, (Ezekeiel 36:26). With it come higher standards, not only don’t murder, but don’t linger in anger.

The injunction not to be angry may be saying to us: Why do you expect higher standards from your sister than you are capable of? Why are you angry with your brother who has lied, been lazy, stabbed you in the back? Have you never lied, been lazy, or betrayed a confidence? And why have you taken your focus off God to focus on your sinning brother, anyway?

²³ “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

Seek reconciliation whenever possible. When not possible—in a case of an inveterate enemy, or someone you just don’t trust—forgive them, but be on your guard.

²⁵ “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Avoid lawsuits as far as possible

Poems on Marriage from Wendell Berry and R. S. Thomas

By Anita Mathias

R.S. Thomas

Anniversary
Nineteen years now
Under the same roof
Eating our bread,
Using the same air:
Sighing, if one sighs,
Meeting the other’s
Words with a look
That thaws suspicion.

Nineteen years now
Sharing life’s table,
And not to be first
To call the meal long
We balance it thoughtfully
On the tip of the tongue.
Careful to maintain
The strict palate.

Nineteen years now
Keeping simple house.
Opening the door
To friend and stranger;
Opening the womb
Softly to let enter
The one child
With his huge hunger.

R.S. Thomas

A Marriage

– RS Thomas, ‘A Marriage’,

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

Wendell Berry

God’s Protection, Psalm 5, Day 9, Jan 9,

By Anita Mathias

May all who take refuge in you be glad.
Spread your protection over them

Psalm 5

¹ Listen to my words, LORD,
   consider my lament.
² Hear my cry for help,
   my King and my God,
   for to you I pray.

³ In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly.

I am not a morning person, but my days go so much better when I can have my time with God first.

It is wise to cultivate pathways into prayer. Try to cultivate the habit of, at least, a brief chat with God when you first wake up. You will be in a calmer frame of mind to face your day.

I like David’s simple and sublime faith. He lays his requests before God, and waits expectantly.

I sometimes have the image when I have prayed about a situation that God has taken it into his hands and his hands were busily working, moulding and fashioning it.

When you pray, God ALWAYS hears. He does step into the situation (except when we are are wilfully continuing in sin. In that case, a valid prayer is “Lord, help me to repent,” rather than “Lord, bless me”).

The answers to prayer vary. They can be Yes, No, Slow, Grow.
Read this brilliant piece by Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision.
http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2010/04/bob-pierce-founder-of-world-vision-on.html

⁴ For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness;

with you, evil people are not welcome.
⁵ The arrogant cannot stand
in your presence.

Oh dear. The arrogant cannot stand in his presence. Jesus tell us to be humble so that we might find rest for our souls.

What is humility? Asking for a humility is a dangerous prayer because the process of being humbled is a painful one.

But, Lord Jesus, because I want to stand in your presence, and because I want rest for my soul, give me your humble spirit as a gift (and make the process of developing a humble spirit as free from pain as possible).

You hate all who do wrong;
⁶ you destroy those who tell lies.
The bloodthirsty and deceitful
   you, LORD, detest.

You who are lied against, you who see the deceitful triumph, take heart. The Lord hates those who do wrong. He detests the deceitful.
Lord, purify my heart, my speech and my tongue.

⁷ But I, by your great love,
   can come into your house;
in reverence I bow down
   toward your holy temple.

⁸ Lead me, LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make your way straight before me.

A beautiful prayer for guidance. Make your way straight before me.

⁹ Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;

   their heart is filled with malice.
Their throat is an open grave;
   with their tongues they tell lies.

How awful this sounds! Have you known disgusting situations like this?
I have. In fact, in toxic church situations, in an atmosphere of fear and distrust and ambition and scheming, sadly, Christians too can behave like this

¹⁰ Declare them guilty, O God!
   Let their intrigues be their downfall.

Banish them for their many sins,

for they have rebelled against you.

This prayer of the Psalmist is a good and valid prayer because, in fact, such people only cause harm and evil.

¹¹ But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

¹² Surely, LORD, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

I love the Psalms. They are an excellent model for healthy prayer. David comes into God’s presence troubled by his enemies, by deceitful people whose words cannot be trusted, whose hearts are full of malice, who scheme and intrigue.

He achieves peace. He realizes that God does not like or favour such people either. He prays that their intrigues may lead to their downfall and banishment. He lays his requests before God, and waits in expectation.

He ends by reaffirming God’s goodness and power, ¹² “Surely, LORD, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favour as with a shield.”

He is at peace, and so, after travelling through his turbulent emotions with him, are we.

Immense Blessing, Genesis 11-13, Day 9, Jan. 9

By Anita Mathias

Genesis 11

¹ Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ² As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ That is why it was called Babel^]—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Wow! Note the economy of this passage. The whole story of Babel told in 9 sentences. Wow.

It’s a moving and scary story. The endeavour of the people of Babel was two-fold, “to make a name for themselves,” and to resist destiny, to resist what God might do, resist “being scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

Isn’t that ambition in a nutshell–“to make a name for ourselves?” Hmm. Is it wrong?

Yes, no, or It Depends? I would tend to say Not Always Wrong, partly because all ambition is not yet dead in me, and I have not heard God saying to me what Cardinal Wolsey said to Cromwell in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
O Cromwell, Cromwell!

Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.

It is okay I think to work towards a goal, provided you have had long and serious talks with Christ about it. Is is a good fit with the talents he has given you? Will it bless you, your family and the world? Will you be fully human, fully alive while pursuing this goal? Will you be happy? Is it a healthy, achievable goal?

The people of Babel wanted to be famous, and wanted to resist the will of God. And so he who sat in the heavens laughed them to scorn. The Lord held them in derision.

From Shem to Abram

¹⁰ This is the account of Shem’s family line. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father^[d] of Arphaxad. ¹¹ And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
¹² When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. ¹³ And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.^[e]
¹⁴ When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. ¹⁵ And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
¹⁶ When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. ¹⁷ And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
¹⁸ When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. ¹⁹ And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.
²⁰ When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. ²¹ And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.
²² When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. ²³ And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.
²⁴ When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. ²⁵ And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.
²⁶ After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

Abram’s Family

²⁷ This is the account of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. ²⁸ While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. ²⁹ Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. ³⁰ Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

God gives humanity a third chance. People blew it after God inaugurates human history with Adam and begins again with Noah. Now there is yet another opportunity– he enters into a faith-based covenant, with a child born by faith to an old and barren woman.

God’s loving mercy–how he gives us chance, after chance, after chance–is indeed astonishing. We must be careful not to presume upon it.

³¹ Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

A journey prematurely aborted. They stop, but God’s plans for them do not stop. He calls them again.

³² Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.

Genesis 12

¹ The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

The demand of faith–get up, leave everything familiar, and go into the unknown. “Go to the land I will show you.”

Oh great!! That would have maddened me when I was younger, and really wanted to know my future and destiny desperately.

Now I feel that statement does mirror our lives accurately. We are walking with God to a land he will show us.

We do not know what the year will bring, or the decade, or our lives. We walk on a winding road, and cannot foresee its twists and turns, but we know a good God walks it with us.

And here are God’s seven promises to Abraham. A free gift as we give our children gifts–with no strings attached. Just because!!

² “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;

Surely these are among the sweetest words God can say to an individual, “I will bless you.”

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

The beautiful contract of faith!! Whereas the people of Babel worked very hard (and futilely) to “make a name for ourselves,” God just gives Abraham this as a free gift, “I will make your name great.”

And what is the purpose of this free blessing: “You will be a blessing.”

³ I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;

Wow, do not ever mess with those whom God is clearly and manifestly blessing, with those on whom his favour rests. For God promises, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.”

and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

Wow! What an amazing free gift. Let’s pray together,

Lord, as a child of Abraham, I ask that you bless me and my children,

That if it pleases you, you “make our names great”

and make us a blessing.

Bless those who bless us.

Bind those who curse us from causing us any pain.

And bless all peoples on earth through us.

This is our inheritance, through faith, as children of Abraham.

⁴ So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.

Wonderful words were spoken over Abraham. However, if Abraham had not taken the risk of faith, none of it would have come true.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. ⁵ He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

⁶ Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Theophanies are memorialized so that they will not be forgotten. It is important for us to do this too, in a journal entry or blog post if nothing else.

⁸ From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.

⁹ Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Abram in Egypt

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. ¹¹ As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. ¹² When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. ¹³ Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

And this was a hero of the faith.

And this is part of being a human being.
One day our faith blazes brightly.
The next day, we are cowardly,
We trust in our shifts, schemes and devices rather than in God.

So don’t be too hasty to write off men of faith when they disappoint you.
And don’t be hasty to write yourself off either.
With God there is always a second and third chance.

¹⁴ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. ¹⁵ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

¹⁷ But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

Very interesting! Here God punished an unwitting sin innocently committed. This is reminiscent of what Jesus said in Luke 12;48. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows.

How much more will his judgement fall on deliberate sin.

Genesis 13

¹ So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. ² Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.

“Very wealthy in silver and gold.” This is what we would intuitively consider God’s blessing to look like, partly because if we wanted to bless our children or family or friends, we would give them good things.

However, God’s blessing is so much more. It is primarily INTERNAL. Shalom. Peace. Joy. Love. Because what is silver and gold worth without peace, or joy, or love or shalom?

³ From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier ⁴ and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the LORD.
He has sinned, he has been a coward, he has been forgiven, he has been blessed. And now Abraham returns to the great theme of his life. He calls upon the name of the Lord.

Les Nuits de la pleine lune, Full Moon in Paris, Eric Rohmer

By Anita Mathias

Full Moon in Paris or Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune belongs to Eric Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs series. It is based on the proverb “He who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind.”

Louise is restless with her stable adoring lover, who wants her to stay in and be with him. She feels he is taking away her youth.

She also feel that she is missing out on experience. She has rarely been alone. She has never known the pain of loneliness. She has never loved more than she has been loved.

Louise rents an apartment in Paris to be alone, and revels in the rhythms of solitude. She wins hard -won absences from her lover to be in Paris, to go dancing with her Platonic lovers, and then, despite her assurances to “go all the way” with a man she picks up at a party.

Along the way, she is breaking the heart of her stable, decent lover, who just wants to be a family man in the suburbs. “Have an affair too,” she advises. “I wouldn’t care.”

At the movie’s end, he does; she does.

It’s the story of the growing-up of a mixed-up woman.

I like Rohmer’s films because they are slow explorations of the psyche of his characters, and this interests me as much as it does him.

And they are in French. I might possibly get restless if they were English films, or dubbed. But I have been learning French intensively for the last two years, and hearing it, understanding it, that language like music, gives me great pleasure and great joy.

* * *

And here is an interesting obituary of Eric Rohmer who died at 89

Eric Rohmer obituary

Idiosyncratic French film-maker who was a leading figure in the cinema of the postwar new wave

Tom Milne
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 January 2010 20.09 GMT
Article history

In Arthur Penn’s intelligently unconventional private eye thriller Night Moves (1975), Gene Hackman’s hero – who finds the mystery he faces as unfathomable as his personal relationships – is asked by his wife whether he wants to go to an Eric Rohmer movie. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.”

Behind that exchange lies a jab at Hollywood’s mistrust of any film-maker, especially a French one, who neglects plot and action in favour of cerebral exploration, metaphysical conceit and moral nuance. The Dream Factory, after all, had proved through trial and error that cinema is cinema, literature is literature, and the twain shall meet only provided the images rule, not the words.

Of the major American film-makers, perhaps only Joseph Mankiewicz allowed his scripts, fuelled by his own sparkling dialogue, to wag the tail of his movies. While acknowledging the brilliance, Hollywood punditry never failed to complain that Mankiewicz characters simply talked too much.

Rohmer, who has died aged 89, pushed even further into this disputed territory. The oldest of the group of critics associated with the film review Cahiers du Cinéma, who launched the French new wave in the late 1950s, Rohmer had (writing initially under his real name of Maurice Schérer) established impeccable credentials for a future film-maker. Among the objects of his admiration were Dashiell Hammett, Alfred Hitchcock (about whom he wrote a monograph with Claude Chabrol), Howard Hawks, and above all FW Murnau, the great visual stylist of the German expressionist era (on whose version of Faust he published a doctoral thesis). As a film-maker, however, he turned instead to such literary-philosophical luminaries as Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, Choderlos de Laclos and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

His first feature, Le Signe du Lion (The Sign of Leo), completed in 1959 after one false start and a handful of shorts, fitted comfortably into the early new wave formula of Parisian life, with its tale of a student musician, tempted into debt by a promised inheritance, who lapses into abject destitution after the legacy turns out to be a hoax. In retrospect, one can clearly see in it the seeds of Rohmer’s later work. Showing little interest in plot or action, Rohmer concentrates on demonstrating how Paris itself becomes an objective correlative to the hero’s state of mind, gradually metamorphosing from a welcoming city into a bleak stone desert as he realises that the friends from whom he might hope to borrow are all away for the vacation.

With Le Signe du Lion failing at the box office, Rohmer retreated into television where, while working on educational documentaries, he hatched his daring conception for a series of Six Moral Tales. Variations on a theme, each film would deal with “a man meeting a woman at the very moment when he is about to commit himself to someone else”. Furthermore, as Rohmer later observed, the films would deal “less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they are doing it”.

Made for TV, the first two films in the cycle, La Boulangère de Monceau (The Baker of Monceau, 1962) and La Carrière de Susanne (Suzanne’s Career, 1963), shot in black and white and running for 26 and 60 minutes respectively, were too cramped in every respect to be more than clumsy foretastes of what was to come.

Completing the series for the cinema with La Collectionneuse (The Collector, 1966), Ma Nuit Chez Maud (My Night With Maud, 1969), his international breakthrough Le Genou de Claire (Claire’s Knee, 1970) and L’Amour l’Après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, 1972), Rohmer found exactly what he needed in the bigger screens, longer running times, more expansive locations and availability of colour (actually in black and white, My Night With Maud uses the snowy landscapes of Clermont-Ferrand as a perfect counterpoint to its chilly Pascalian thematic). Backed by the richly sensuous role now played by the visuals, the somewhat arid intellectual dandyism of the first two films flowered into a teasingly metaphysical exploration of human foibles.

Le Genou de Claire, for instance, perhaps the most accomplished of the six films, is about a French diplomat, on the brink of both middle age and marriage, enjoying a brief lakeside vacation at Lake Annecy in France. Seduced by his idyllic summery surroundings, he begins casting an appreciative eye over the young women on show. Innocent dalliance, he assures himself, proclaiming that his courtly fancy has been captured by the perfection of the eponymous heroine’s knee. Deeper down, though, as he comes to realise when a pert and pretty teenager responds to his casual flirtation by remarking on his resemblance to her father, lies a less palatable truth: there, but for the grace of God, goes a dirty old man.

Rohmer followed his Six Moral Tales with two similar cycles, identical in style, method and accomplishment. First came Comedies and Proverbs: La Femme de l’Aviateur (The Aviator’s Wife, 1980), Le Beau Mariage (A Good Marriage, 1981), Pauline à la Plage (Pauline at the Beach, 1982), Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune (Full Moon in Paris, 1984), Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray, 1986) and L’Ami de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, 1987). Then, Tales of the Four Seasons: Conte de Printemps (A Tale of Springtime, 1989), Conte d’Hiver (A Winter’s Tale, 1992), Conte d’Eté (A Summer’s Tale, 1996) and Conte d’Automne (An Autumn Tale, 1998).

In between times, Rohmer also made a number of non-series films, most notably two literary adaptations which are rather different in their visual approach. Die Marquise von O… (The Marquise of O, 1976) adopts a severe neo-classical style in transposing Heinrich von Kleist’s teasing early-19th-century novella about the social furore occasioned when a chaste young widow suffers a pregnancy which she insists can only be the result of an immaculate conception. Perceval le Gallois (1978), on the other hand, toys joyously with cut-out sets and false perspectives to invest his adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes’s 12th-century Arthurian tale with the faux-naif aspects of an illuminated manuscript.

Both remain entirely consistent with the body of Rohmer’s work, a highly original and endlessly fascinating attempt to render the interior exterior by mapping out the maze of misdirections that bedevil communications between the human heart and mind.

Rohmer guarded his private life fiercely – giving different versions of his date of birth and real name on different occasions, so that it is difficult to be certain of the truth. He was married in 1957 to Thérèse Barbet, and they had two sons.