Sharing some thoughts

There is a striking thing about Paul's words in today's reading from Romans (12:9-21), and that is that at first glance they seem surprisingly simple: "Let love be genuine." Only four words in English. No difficult theology. No complicated doctrine to unravel. It sounds like advice that could be stitched onto a cushion or written inside a greeting card. The trouble is that once we begin to think about it, it becomes one of the most demanding things Paul ever says.   Most of us think we are reasonably loving people. We love our families, care about friends, and help others when we can. But Paul refuses to leave the matter there. He keeps expanding the circle: "Bless those who persecute you." "Live in harmony with one another." "Do not repay anyone evil for evil." "If your enemies are hungry, feed them." Suddenly we discover that Paul is not talking about the people we find easy to love. He is talking about the people who test us ...

  There is a small detail about the Bible that often surprises people when they first hear it… That is that for most of Christian history, people read the Bible without chapter numbers or verse numbers. Chapters were only added around 1205 AD, and verses came later, in the 1500s. Before that, people simply read the Bible as one flowing story. When scholars divided the Book of Isaiah, they gave it sixty-six chapters, the same number as the books in the whole Bible. They also divided it into two main parts. The first part has thirty-nine chapters, and the second part has twenty-seven. Those numbers match the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Whether that was planned or whether it just happened that way, Isaiah seems to reflect the story of the whole Bible. The first part contains many themes we find in the Old Testament: warnings, judgment, covenant, and God's call for his people to return to him. The second part is filled with co...

  We’ve probably all had times when we realise just how much we try to hold everything together by ourselves. We patch things up, we keep going, we smile when we’re tired, we pretend we’re fine when we’re not. We try to be strong, capable, sorted. And sometimes we manage it for a while. But sometimes the cracks show, and we realise that some things cannot be mended by our own efforts. Paul understood this. In Romans (10:5-15), he speaks to people who were trying to make themselves right with God by sheer determination. They were trying to climb their way up to God, trying to be “good enough”, trying to earn righteousness by the law. And into that struggle Paul speaks a simple truth - the word is near you. This is the heart of Paul’s argument. The righteousness that comes from the law demands achievement, “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith is different. It does not require heroic spiritual effort. It does not ask us ...