With Christ in the Vessel...

Hey daily walkers

 

The other day I restarted my sermon cd in my car and today when I was driving home from dinner, I heard a sermon by Elisabeth Elliot that mentioned Mark chapter 4 where Jesus crosses the sea of Galilee by boat and a storm comes. She was talking about how God's prescence, sovereignty and love will help us have a quiet heart in the midst of trials and be like Christ as he slept on a pillow while the storm raged outside. She quoted a poem by Amy Carmichael (missionary to India) that struck a chord with me.

 

Thou art the Lord who slept upon the pillow,
Thou art the Lord who soothed the furious sea,
What matters beating wind and tossing billow
If only we are in the boat with Thee?

Hold us quiet through the age-long minute
While Thou art silent and the wind is shrill :
Can the boat sink while Thou, dear Lord, are in it;
Can the heart faint that waiteth on Thy will?

— Amy Carmichael

 

Hope the reading is continuing with everyone. Not long now til the end!

 

ur sis

 

rowas

Walking through Psalms

Hey we're nearly finished Psalms! Can you believe it??

 

It's been really cool reading through Psalms - so often as I read, it has been an echo of how I have been feeling (maybe a bit amplified at times - especially all the enemy talk hehe). Thank God too that the memory verses for the first two weeks of the Scripture memorisation Progam at church have been from the reading a few days ago (Ps 119) :)

 

Hope you all are going well with your reading - whether you're toward the end of Psalms, at the beginning, or still tackling the Pentateuch - keep going! We're nearly half-way through the year :D

Lesson from Job - swift to hear, slow to speak

I think one of the most unusual books in the Bible would be Job. Many people wonder, "why is it there?" Why do we need to read 37 chapters of bad advice from Job's friends, trying to make sense of what has happened to their friend.

The interesting thing I found was that much of what they say, to be honest, sounded a lot like me when I talked to people going through hard times. When we talk to people going through suffering, often our many words ends up hurting rather than helping them. Sometimes God may want us to stay silent as part of our counsel, rather than recklessly throwing in our two cents. I was reminded of this during the last few weeks. There were two incidences that I found myself talking to someone who is suffering, but realising that I didn't have much to say that would not sound too different to Job's friends.  There are things that God will sometimes do that we are not able to understand at the time, and neither will our friends. Instead, our encouragement could just be that a good and loving God will do what is most good and loving.

Unicorns in the Bible

Finding that reading Job has been a blessing. It's been a good reminder of God's sovereignty and the fact that though we don't know what's going on, God is still in control.

I was intrigued by one of yesterday's little side notes in the DWB (daily walk Bible) which mentioned the Mariana Trench so I looked it up today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench - it sounds like Adrian's favourite pasta, but it's actually a dirty, great, big trench in the sea! It's nearly 11000m deep Wikipedia says 'If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), were set in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, there would be 2,076 metres (6,811 ft) of water left above it' 

Now that's deep! 

Also another intriguing inclusion in Job 39 about a unicorn! There are other mentions of unicorn in the Bible so I wanted to find out more... hence http://creation.com/the-unicorn - you may agree or disagree that it is supposed to be translated as a 'wild ox', but as for me and my imagination, we will think of unicorns