September 2010

I really enjoy this time of year, crisp mornings and clear blue skies. And then there is the new growth on the tips of trees. The frangipani outside our kitchen window has been lying dormant all winter long and is just beginning to show the tiny buds of awakening and new growth, the makings of this year’s crop of yellow and white flowers and long flat green leaves. It is a great time of year!

Even in the smallest of things, like tiny buds of new growth, we see God’s hand at work, but how often do we take them for granted.

This month we will be re-starting the Saturday morning Bible study group and our opening study will be the letter of James. This letter is often forgotten, lying tucked in the back of the New Testament. Martin Luther, I believe, mistakenly dismissed it as an epistle of straw, but modern scholarship has revived its importance. This brief and sharply argued rhetorical letter has been identified with James the brother of Jesus and in it James offers us profoundly practical help in living daily as followers of Jesus Christ.

For example in the middle of the first chapter of James we encounter a powerful claiming statement. Verse 17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” What a beautiful verse. Here is genuine good news. James uses astrological terms to help understand the steadfastness of God to the changeableness of creation. The ‘heavenly lights’ – the sun, the moon, the stars, as great as they are, they change, but God ‘changes not’. Some say James here is having a dig at astrology by saying ‘don’t bother looking up your horoscope. The signs of the cosmos won’t help you’. To live wisely is to believe and trust in God, for He is the Creator of all things, He is ‘the Father of the heavenly lights” and what is more He cares for us.

It reminds me of what King David says in Psalm 8 “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him.” (Psalm 8:3-4). And care for us He does!

If you would like to join us in our Bible Study on Saturday morning (we meet fortnightly) we will start on 18^th September at 9.00a.m.

“O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is your name in all the earth.” Ps 8:1.

The Lord bless you and keep you, now and forever.