Daily Notes July to September 1991 [antikvár]

editoria I ! 'GOD CONTRACTED TO A SPAN' I'm writing this in the week before Christmas (such are the publishing schedules!). It's a good time to reflect on the paradoxes of power with which the Bible presents us, and which are the particular focus of this quarter's notes. Next week, Christ's church in all the world will worship Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man. In the Bethlehem stable (refuse all snug department-store versions), our homeless, powerless God began to show us how profoundly his ways are not our ways, his thoughts not our thoughts. The next weeks' readings will confront us time and again with God's ways and thoughts, by his sovereign reversals of the world's understanding of power and success. Alan Storkey's article (pages 53-60) reflects on the extent to which we nod assent to a gospel of God's power perfected in our weakness, but actually live by other values. In terms of this quarter's readings - would we have hired Jacob? Wouldn't we like to excise the embarrassing mistakes of the Judges from holy scripture? Do Ruth and Naomi really matter in the grand sweep of God's plan? And as for the crucifixion But because God chooses to work this way, we 'are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God our righteousness, holiness and redemption' (1 Cor 1:30). Praise him! Pauline Hoggarth