The Bible’s Truths Today

I attended a men’s bible study several days ago made up of
several men from my own church (including a few of the breakfast crew) and
several from a neighbouring church.

The facilitator (well known to readers of the crookedshore
site) was illustrating how we can use Old Testament passages to help us
understand God’s vision for our community (and our responsibilities as
Christians within it).

This caused not a little debate (it was a men’s group!) with
allegations that the chosen passages were being taken out of context.

Not so for me. Because I had already totally accepted
another key message of Rob Bell’s aforementioned book, i.e. if we accept the
Bible is true, we should also accept that every passage in it is as true today as
it was when written – we simply need to understand how the message that lies
within the passage is true for us today.

Consequently, as we discussed Zechariah 8:4 – 5 “This is
what the LORD Almighty says: "Once again men and women of ripe old age
will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with cane in hand because of his
age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there."

I wasn’t thinking of the streets of Jerusalem in Biblical
times, I was overcome with the potential of how we could do this within our
community. Because the other Biblical idea that was resonating loudly with me
that night (and I had been carrying around for a few days) was Paul’s teaching
in Ephesians that those of us in secular jobs can use our work to worship God
every bit as devoutly as our friends who are pastors, deacons etc. Equally, I
thought, a group of men should not be overawed by the major church in the
community projects going on worldwide (or even within Northern Ireland) we
should simply come up with the best ideas that we can that can be achieved
within our limited resources. And we very quickly got some crackers.

We agreed to meet again as a group. Please God we will.