Living in the Spirit
June 19, 2021
Scripture Reading:
Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’
Your God is Too Small: A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike by J.B. Phillips is one of the best faith-based books I have ever read. Phillips challenges us to consider that we tend to relegate God to the events of biblical times without recognizing that the Creator God is just as relevant to us today. The things we read as history in the Bible were real-time issues of the era and place. They indeed describe the ways of God in relationship to humans, but the humans of that time and place had to implement God’s practices as they applied to their reality, just as we must interpret them for our world today. A good example might be that polygamy was acceptable in the stories of the Hebrew Bible and disappear in the New Testament. There are laws against it today. Polygamy was an economic phenomenon in its beginning. Today marriage is about the relationship. Both require the guidance of loving one another.
I think God sent Jesus to help us understand that God as love is the overarching litmus test of following God’s ways. The Bible does tell us that God created our world based on the foundation of love, and anytime we shift away from loving God, loving ourselves, and loving one another, our whole world gets out of sync, and we suffer the consequences for it.
Prayer: Lord, let your love empower our love so that our world becomes dedicated to your ways. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.