Bible

With a hat-tip to The Good Book Company Blog, here is an assortment of creative suggestions to help families learn Bible verses together.

http://www.girltalkhome.com/blog/seeds-of-character-winners

I love this quotation from Gerard Wilson (paid link). He's commenting on Psalm 5.

By relentless goodness I mean that from the beginning, God’s only intent was and still is to bless his creation. Judgement and mercy, therefore, are not two competing characteristics of Yahweh but are two inseparable consequences of his holiness. Relentless goodness is the flip side of incompatibility with evil. (Page 167)

I've been re-reading John 16:12-15 again. To remind you, here's what it says:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Every Christian believer will, at times in their life, feel the weight of the fact they are a sinner. Perhaps they have just done something that proves to them, and they fear proves to others, that they are a failure before God and before others in the church.

Here is CS Lewis, talking about why it is that people like to undermine St Paul whilst maintaining that they follow Christ.

A number of us heard an extremely helpful talk this morning from Hugh Palmer, rector of All Souls Langham Place in London. He reminded a group of us, all in church leadership or pastoral ministry of some kind, to keep first things first.

Ed Clowney (paid link) again:

Ed Clowney (paid link) makes a brilliant comment on 1 Peter 2:18-20. Peter is teaching slaves how to react when they are punished, or suffer, for no fault of their own. Indeed, they may be suffering because they have done something good. Clowney says this:

I think I've finally worked out what is going on in Ruth 4. I'll make a note here as a place where I can come and find this again when I need it. Do comment below if I've missed something.

There are 3 Old Testament laws in play here.

Leviticus 25:23-28 says that, because all the land is really God's, should someone sell part of their land to alleviate their poverty, the buyer cannot regard it as theirs absolutely. A relative of the person they bought it from must be allowed to redeem, or buy back, that land, and the price for that is to be calculated fairly.

Psalm 95:1-7c inverts the categories of creation and salvation. Roughly, the pattern of the Psalm goes like this:

• Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord, the rock of our salvation (1-2)
• For, he is a great God who holds, owns and formed everything (3-5)
• Come, let us bow and kneel before our maker (6)
• For he is our God, and we are his people, under his care (7a-c)