Thursday, January 12, 2006

Good Morning!

 

Remember, that tonight is the fourth of four stewardship meetings this week.  I believe that Ron Ray is one of the speakers tonight on the program, giving his testimony about what Pleasant Hill has met to him and his family.  Meeting starts at 7P.

 

Also, in connection with our capital stewardship campaign, we will have a Day of Prayer on Saturday, January 28 from 9A to 9P.  Our class will have one of the hour shifts -- I just don't know which one as of yet.

 

Today's Reading:  Revelation 1:1-3

 

Getting started with the actual scripture, and Barclay packs a lot into the first day's lesson:

 

-- He has a long section about the use of the word apocalypse, which is the other word that could be used for this book instead of revelation, and is close to what the original Greek says.  He also notes that the idea of apocalypse, or revelation, is that God is always revealing his message, his word to us. The book of Revelation is the only revelation by God to us.

 

-- Barclay speaks a little big about the idea of how this revelation is being communicated to us -- God gave it to Jesus, who gave it to an angel to give to John, who gave it to us.

 

-- Barclay also notes one of the first passages that tend to cloud the water as to what Revelation is about -- John says that these are things that "must soon take place".  I'm sure that we will return to this as we try to understand what time period this revelation or vision is about.

 

-- Barclay talks about the original word that is translated as servants in our Bibles -- both the Greek and Hebrew words that are translated as servant in our English bible are probably more correctly translated as slave.  The point is that, to us, slave would point out a higher standard of belonging than does servant -- if we said that we are called to be the slave of God as opposed to the servant of God, how does that change your understanding of the relationship of you as a believer to God?

 

-- Barclay talks about the threefold blessing given to those who read this word, hear this word, and take this word to heart.  He also mentions the first of many, many numberologies in the book -- the "blessed are" in this scripture is the first of seven in the book of Revelation.  Note that we tend to gloss over, in all the scripture, the "blessed are" type verses in favor of what we consider more substantive verses, but think about it -- we are being blessed for what we are doing -- reading and trying to understand this book of scripture.  We have devalued the idea of blessing -- after all, we say whenever someone sneezes, but we need to understand that when we see it in this kind of context, that is not an inconsequential thing. 

Today's Scripture

 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Matthew 5:4

Today's prayer request:      The family of Allie Hamilton

 

If I've correct, today is the funeral for Allie Hamilton, who was a senior at McAdory.  We need to remember the family at this time, and her friends and classmates -- many who are youth who attend Pleasant Hill.

 

Today's class member prayer:

Monica Harbarger

 

Have a great day.

Jay