New and Living

Was speaking in my wonderful youth group at church in Lurgan tonight. Was great to be back and to hang out with the guys and girls that I worked with every day on my year out.

It was amazing to look around the room and see faces looking back at me smiling with love and desire for God. Some of them have turned their lives around and have God all over them... It made me feel alive.

I was chatting to them about the tabernacle in the old testament and in particular about the table of shewbread that sat in the holy place, a table with 12 little loaves of bread representing the twelve tribes.

As I have been reading about it this week I have been fascinated at God's gift of salvation.

The old way would have been too hard for me.

The bread on the table was called "the bread of the presence". It represented God's desire to connect with people and his desire for people to connect with each other....community.

The thing is though that things were strict and rigid.

Only the priest could go in...and thats only if he had been on his best behaviour.

The priest went in on his own.

He wasnt allowed to sit down.

He could eat the bread....but only at the end of the week when it was stale...as a ritual.

Sounds like a lot of us wouldnt have had a look in.

Imagine you were standing outside the tabernacle looking in and thinking..."God is in there". That would have frustrated the life out of me.

Imagine a table with stale bread that you cant even sit down at.

A table for me is sacred and a place where community and love rule...seats help with the comfort thing.

Anyway I am reminded of how thankful I am for the new and living way that God provided through the "bread of life", Jesus.

The new way says when your standing outside looking in at the bread on the table, looking in at God;

You are free to come in

You are good enough to come in...no matter what...you dont have to be somebody.

You can sit, eat fresh bread, and you dont have to go alone....bring friends, soul friends....its incomplete without other people.

The new way also adds an extra. Jesus commanded that we GO. We run into the holy place with confidence and freedom, we do it together and then we go and we share our bread with the least of them...that is after all sharing it with Jesus himself.

I encountered a young man in a serious state of lonliness this week. A 24 year old, abused as a child, homeless, addicted to alcohol, without a friend in the world. He swallowed razor blades and a fews packs of paracetamol to try and escape it. He refused our treatment because he didnt want to live.

Do you think he needs some of the bread on that table...Id say its his only hope. I cant describe my heartache. I could only say...he needs love, he needs people, and he needs Jesus. Hell is his everyday life..right now all Im doing for him is praying because I have no idea what else to do.

God's desperate quest to connect with us has been glorious. He completed it.

We must help others connect through Jesus-we must tear off chunks of bread and put them in the hands of a starving world.

I am astounded that God chose the tent to dwell in rather than the temple. Solomon built a palace for God.

God prefered to be close to the dirt, in a make shift tent that moved from place to place.
God isnt like what we think sometimes.

Jesus was not like the temple of solomon. He wasnt frim and upright in a religious sense. He wasnt grand in status.

He was a bit like the tent that David made. He was never far from the dirt of humanity, he was real and yet he was not only full of God he was God in his fulness.

I reckon that the way to be most like him is to live in the new and living way.

Running into his presence every day, having community with soul friends and most importantly connecting with and serving the least. I guess this new and living way might be a bit like the tent...not as classy but deep and beautiful. Thats what I want.

Hebrews
Since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus Christ by a new and living way, opened for us by the curtain that is his body…
Let us dray near to God
Hebrews 10:19