Lent 2023 day 33

 The clocks went forward.  And I dont know about you but losing that hour messes with my head every time.  For some reason it always makes me think about when the sun stopped shining in Joshua 10.  In the Bible its commonly translated that the sun stood still, but commentators are now happier with the translation 'stopped shining'  and have managed to do calculations pinpointing an eclipse to that precise

time in history (they can actually tell us that the date of the battle Joshua was fighting was Oct. 30, 1207 B.C. And the time the sun ' stood still'  was 4:28 p.m. Isnt that amazing??)  As with so many events told in the Bible science can come up with logical explanations for 'miraculous' happenings.  But what it cant account for is how people knew.   Yes, there might have been a solar eclipse in Oct 1207 BC.  But how did Joshua know that it was about to happen and declare it to all Israel?  How did Moses know which plagues were going to happen, when?  And how did he know where the reed sea was going to part to reveal dry land?  Even if you believe the natural and biological explanations for these momentous events, the only logical reason for them being forseen and prophesied is the communication between God and His leaders.

I happen to think that God made the world to run by natural laws and that He mostly doesn't need to intervene in these to get His will done.  But I think He does tell his servants the prophets what He is doing so that they can be forewarned.  He still does that today.  There are lots of stories of people who have felt not to get on the plane that crashed, or to wait, or go, or speak or not and thereby see something amazing happen.

Way back in the Easter of 1986 a team of student evangelists were passing through St Andrews (where I was a student) on their way to different missions around Europe. They visited our church and spoke about the various things they were going to be doing.  Most of them then set off to go wherever they were going, but at the housegroup on the Wednesday night we were asked to pray for one young man who was still waiting for his visa to come through.  He was having to stay behind because of a delay in his paperwork arriving and asked us to pray that whatever was holding things up would shift so he could meet up with the rest of his team.  As we were praying I had a picture of a deep ravine with a huge split in the floor of it and a red triangle superimposed on top.  It looked to me like some sort of warning.  So I shared with the group that perhaps God was holding up the visa for a good reason;  to protect the student missionary from some sort of danger.  He was supposed to be going to Chernobyl.  Three days later the nuclear reactor imploded.  He wasn't there.

Coincidences don't happen in the Kingdom of God.  But I think we often miss God doing stuff because we aren't paying attention.  Joshua and Moses and so many of our Bible forefathers excelled at listening.  There must have been many times when they didn't understand what they were hearing. But they obeyed anyway.  This is serious, grown up Christianity. Challenging and a bit scary.  But there's no point in being half-hearted is there?  So lets believe that God could speak to us about earthquakes and asteroids every bit as easily as He could speak about sore knees or which job we should apply for 😀


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