Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Micah 2:10 “Arise and depart, For this is not your rest; Because it is defiled, it shall destroy, Yes, with utter destruction. Thought for the day – Where is your rest? There’s a classic stereotype that comes up again and again in action movies. The hero or heroine thinks they can go no further and then a voice, or a memory or a vision tells them they have the strength to go on. It is not their time ,their job is not finished, yadda, yadda, yadda. And on a superficial level we can read that as how we continue as pilgrims living in a world that is not our home. But there is a darker and more meaningful meaning in our verse today. In Old Testament understanding the rest of the people of Israel was the Promised Land. By God telling them that it was no longer their rest God is effectively evicting them.  And it got me wondering what we have done to remove ourselves from God’s rest for us? So recently I was talking to someone and the conversation came up about personal bound...

  Micah 1:9 For her wounds are incurable. For it has come to Judah; It has come to the gate of My people— To Jerusalem. Thought for the day – The hope in Ebola I was struck by our verse today from Micah about Judah's wounds being uncurable, and it got me thinking about uncurable diseases. One of the reasons I was thinking about uncurable diseases is because recently there's been an outbreak of Ebola in Africa, cantered on the Democratic Republic of Congo with over 5000 deaths. As someone who has worked in healthcare in Africa, Ebola has always scared the pants off me. The symptoms start innocuously enough a bit like the flu but quickly progress to vomiting diarrhoea, rash liver and kidney failure and internal and external bleeding. On average 50% of people who get Ebola will die from it. There is a vaccine against one of the three forms of Ebola but no treatment.  If the outbreak continues as it is it is on track to become the biggest outbreak of Ebola since in discovery and t...

  Jonah 4:4 Then the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Thought for the day – Karens According to that great encyclopaedia Wikipedia, Karen is a pejorative slang term typically used to refer to a middle class woman who is perceived as entitled or excessively demanding. According to Professor Heather Woods, a Karen's defining characteristics are a sense of entitlement, a willingness and desire to complain, and a self-centred approach to interacting with others. And while Karen refers to women, the term Davids or Terrys is the male equivalent. Loud, opinionated, and obnoxious. They are generally angry as some sort of offence against them. Sort of like Jonah. Jonah may, for all intents and purposes, be the first recorded Karen. And his complaint? God heard the cried of the people of Ninevah and spared them. And Jonah is mightily upset. So God asks the question: ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ In other words, ‘What right do you have to be angry and tell me who I c...

Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Thought for the day – God’s will I wonder sometimes, how much energy we would save if we just did what we were told. I say that because I was watching my children the other day and I'd asked my son to put down one of his devices and he had an absolute paddy. And I remember saying to him, how much easier would your life be if you just did what you were told?  And as I was thinking about today and today's reading of Jonah in the city of Nineveh, I couldn't help but smile at the thought of me telling my son to do what he was told, and that his life would be easier, when we as adults regularly don't do what we're told. And in our chapter today we have Jonah doing what he was told, even though his life was made particularly difficult by him refusing to.  And the things is when Jonah preached the word of God. The peo...

  Jonah 2:7 When my life was fainting away,     I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you,      into your holy temple. Thought for the day – Final call So, Jonah was having a bad day. He'd been thrown off the ship, been swallowed by a giant fish, and now three days later he's praying. And he's praying these words that we have in our verse today. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. And I wonder how many of us have found ourselves in a situation where it's only when we hit rock bottom that we've prayed.   Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying praying when things are really bad is a bad thing. In fact, most of us will want to pray when things are getting really bad, but I can't help but wonder why it is that we leave things to the very end. The other day I was at a Bible study and we were talking about how the disciples had called upon Jesus in the storm and ho...

  Jonah 1:6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” Thought for the day – Sleeping through the storm Have you ever been woken up at the worst possible moment? The captain in Jonah finds Jonah fast asleep in the hold while the ship is breaking apart. “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God!” It’s a rebuke from a pagan sailor to a man of God.   Jonah is sleeping because he’s exhausted from running from God. He’s gone down into the ship, down into the hold, down into sleep. It’s the sleep of someone who has closed their heart to God and is worn down by his rebellion. Compare that to Mark 4. There’s another storm, another boat, and another sleeper. But Jesus isn’t sleeping because he’s running. He sleeps because he’s resting in the Father’s hands. The disciples wake him with a very Jonah-shaped question: “Teacher, do you no...