Meditate: Acts 2:47

If you’ve got a certain kind of calendar, you might have noticed the word Purim listed among the holidays. To learn the origins of this holiday you have to go back to the Bible’s Book of Esther.

The Jewish people had been conquered and forcibly resettled. Esther is a Jewish orphan who’s being raised by her cousin and finds herself the winner in a “beauty contest” to choose the replacement for a disgraced queen. She’s just settling in at the palace when the king’s right hand man sets in motion a plan to have all the Jews killed and their property seized.

Thanks to her cousin, Esther learns of the plan. She fasts and asks all the local Jews to do the same.

With time running out, Esther risks her life to expose the plot, the crisis is averted, and the evil guy gets what’s coming to him. (Makes you want to read the book, doesn’t it?)

Purim is celebrated as a reminder of how God intervened to save His people.

Esther and Mordecai, her cousin, demonstrate that God always makes a way for His people. Mordecai says it best when he points out that Esther was brought to the throne “for such a time as this.” Just in time, God brought a lowly outsider, a Jewish orphan, to the throne of the most powerful nation on earth.

Praise God for His faithfulness!

• How has God shown His faithfulness in my life?
• Have I been put anywhere “for such a time as this?”

Pray:
Praise: Your love endures. You are faithful throughout all generations.
Confess: I focus on my own plans and overlook the grace of Your will.
Thank: You keep watch over me in all my ways.
Ask: Let Your faithfulness guide my actions and comfort my fears.
Digging Deeper: Psalm 117; Esther (at least start reading it.)

Originally published on March 17 — Saint Patrick’s Day!

Meditate: Acts 2:47

He grew up hearing stories of raiders who destroyed villages and hauled the people away to “the ends of the earth.” When he was 16 it happened to him.

A cruel master put him to work as a shepherd. Alone there with the sheep, he began to pray.

And God heard him. He later wrote, “There the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my abjection, and mercy on my youth and ignorance, and watched over me before I knew Him, and before I was able to distinguish between good and evil, and guarded me, and comforted me as would a father his son.”

After about eight years he escaped, returned home, and entered the ministry.

Years later when he’s in his forties, established and “successful,” God calls him to return to the people who’d enslaved him.

He’s rich but he sells it all, goes back, and over the next 30 years baptizes perhaps 100,000 converts (he lost count), brings human sacrifice to an end in that country, and becomes the first Christian leader to go on record against slavery. (He throws a guy out of the Church for slave-trading.)

By the time of his death he had established over 200 churches and launched a missionary movement that many credit with keeping Christianity alive through the Dark Ages.

In fact, if you trace your Christian roots back through “the people who told the people who told the people who told you” there’s a pretty good chance you’d eventually run into this guy.

So join me in praising God for the heritage of St. Patrick and all the other people God has used to bring us the Good News about the Kingdom of Heaven.

• Who brought the Good News to me?
• Where is God calling me to take the Good News?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Merciful One. You don’t treat us as we deserve.
Confess: I ignore You in good times and cry out when times are bad.
Thank: You did not abandon me in my sins but reached out in Your love.
Ask: Turn me to You with all my heart that I might serve Your people.

Digging Deeper: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 10:1-17

Meditate: Acts 2:46

I don’t know about your experience but in mine it’s no big deal to find people who can tolerate one another long enough to slurp down a meal. It’s something else altogether to find folks who can do it with “glad and sincere hearts.” (NIV)

From the different translations of this sentence, a sense of celebration comes out. Not an outright party but a “hey, we’re really glad y’all are here” kind of lightness and hospitality.

This is pretty amazing when I take into account that this Church wasn’t just your typical home group. Remember they had over 3,000 people in the Church already. There’s not really anything said about the logistics of this; whether this is two’s and three’s or 50’s and 100’s we don’t know.

Another thing that’s challenging is the image here of what the group dynamics folks call “assimilation.” Remember that “over 3,000″ number I just threw out? We know that because of the reference in the previous paragraph that “about 3,000″ were believed and were baptized on that first day. These “hearts” were “glad and sincere” enough to absorb this influx in genuine fellowship. Present company excepted of course, but if this happened in many churches we’d spend all our time sizing one another up to figure out who the “newbies” were.

In my mind, I hear the voices of pastors I heard long ago who insisted that if you truly loved God, you’d be pretty excited about His family, the Church. And, they went on, if your heart wasn’t in spending time with the family maybe it’s because you’re not a part of it.

I don’t know that I’d totally agree with that but I do know this. My wife is enough to bring my mother-in-law and I together. Any one who’s survived boot camp seems to be able to find plenty to talk about with a fellow veteran. An American can hear an American accent on a street in a foreign country and that common citizenship is often enough reason to talk on a level you’d never reach on a city bus.

And if all that’s enough, then maybe we Jesus followers, we fellow adoptees of the Lord Almighty, ought to be able to muster “glad and sincere hearts” in one another’s company.

• Tell us how you really feel. How often do glad and sincere apply to my attitude about fellowship?
• Is my “heart” generally “glad and sincere” or do I save that for certain people only?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Lord, the Almighty, the Everlasting Father.
Confess: I’m not always glad or sincere in the presence of Your people.
Thank: You have given us Your family to love, serve and watch over us.
Ask: Fill my heart with Your love for Your family.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 133

Meditate: Acts 2:46

Always remember that this all grew out of their relationship with Jesus.

It was Jesus that brought the original disciples together in the first place. Others came in response to the Truth about Jesus. In a way, He’s the host every time they get together. “The unseen guest at every meal” they used to say. In an atmosphere focused on Jesus, He was enough to bring them together.

Whether this is a reference to taking the Lord’s Supper or not (yup, there’s a debate), at least for the first few months it’s hard to imagine sitting there with these brothers and sisters and looking around the table and not thinking about it - that “Last Supper” where Jesus transformed the significance of broken bread and passing the cup. (Keep in mind, He said they were to remember Him every time they did this.)

I can’t imagine not recalling the many ways He announced that night that He was the Promised One, the fulfillment of all that the Jewish people had been waiting for. And wistfully recalling that He promised He would be coming back.

• Is Jesus enough to bring me together in fellowship with other Christians?
• How can I remember Jesus in my fellowship?
• How can I show that I expect Jesus to return?

Pray:
Praise: You alone are God; You alone are the Lord. You alone are worthy of glory and honor and power forever.
Confess: It’s hard for me to connect the Lord’s Supper with a real meal with Jesus as host. Or to see Jesus present in my fellowship.
Thank: Whenever two or three gather in His name, Jesus is there.
Ask: Make me aware of Your presence in my fellowship, in my worship, and in my life. Fill me with expectancy at the thought of Your promises.
Digging Deeper: I Thessalonians 4 - 5

Meditate: Acts 2:46

It’s interesting to think that the life of this fledgling Church centered around daily gathering. It’s not as if none of them worked.

Life was certainly hard enough in those times. Virtually everything had to be done by hand. Grinding your own flour to bake your own bread wasn’t just a trendy hobby.

No central heat, A/C or indoor plumbing. A horse and cart was the upper end of transportation technology.

Passing the word meant just that-messages still involved real messengers.

What passed for a “high standard of living” is something you’d have to go to the most impoverished third world country to see in our world. Crime and a lack of street lights meant that it was a really good idea to be home at a very reasonable hour.

And still, this time of Word, prayer, and community still rated daily attention. Somehow they find room in their schedules.

Now put away your sackcloth and ashes. I’m not asking you to punish yourself at how “unspiritual” we’ve become.

See, what I get out of this is that they used the methods common to their culture to express how Jesus had joined them together. Going daily to the Temple showed the place God had in their lives. In a world with no telephones or email, meeting up was the standard way to really communicate. Taking meals together was something only families (or people “like family”) did; you didn’t’ bring strangers to your table.

But the fact is that we wouldn’t dream of meeting down at the church every day or of taking over a different restaurant for lunch each day just so we can stay in touch. And it’s easy to just say that times have changed and move along without asking what this level of commitment to God and our brothers and sisters would look like in our culture.

I once heard a guy say that if you’d show him your checkbook and your calendar, he could tell you what mattered to you. Well, I often hear people say that they’re longing to see God move in our day as He has in days past. Maybe you’ve even said this so let me ask…

• Is there a place in my schedule for God?
• Who does Jesus’ join me together with?
• How can I meaningfully communicate with my Christian brothers and sisters?
• How can we show our world that we’re God’s family?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Lord of All, including time and culture.
Confess: Independence is a hard attitude for me to overcome.
Thank: You have given me brothers and sisters all over the world.
Ask: Teach me how to communicate the Truth of You to my world.

Digging Deeper: Philippians 2:1-18