Unexpected good-ness

I really did not want to have church in our house last night. I had been in Birmingham the day before (on a day-course on church and gender post-Christendom – interesting stuff) and I still had Halloween costumes to make (!), so I really could have done without church. But one faithful soldier turned up at our door and so we couldn’t really get out of it.

We were starting a short study on Biblical genres, which sounds way less interesting than it is… 🙂 (I think that oftentimes as Christians, we want to find particular answers to specific questions from the Bible. “What does the Bible say about ‘x’?” type things, but we struggle because the Bible isn’t that specific on too many of the things on our ‘hot topics’ list of 2013. By looking at the different types of writings that the Bible is composed of, we can get a better understanding of what we are reading, the context it was written in and how people understood it at the time. Obviously we can never fully uncover all of these issues, but it can help our understanding to try.) Last night we were looking at ‘law’ writings and what the purpose of the law was for the Israelites in their covenant relationship with YHWH. We also contrasted this with the person of Jesus and how we relate to God in the light of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As well as it being a good time of study and discussion, it became clear how easy it is for us as Christians to fall back into measuring how well we are doing compared to a list of rules and expectations. Although we don’t need to adhere to the minutia of law that developed in certain sections of Judaism, we often do. It might not be the same actual laws, but the spirit of sticking to rules or living by certain expectations is still there for many Christians. We shared how it is often difficult to truly live lives that are full of grace – both for ourselves and in relation with others. We struggle with asking the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and be alive in us daily to be Jesus-followers. It was a sweet time of sharing, talking, reading, thinking. And after praying together and committing again to seek to live in grace by the power of the Spirit as we follow our radical Jesus, it felt good to have shared that time with that little group in this particular place and time. Unexpected blessings on a Sunday night. 🙂