Page 20 - Living Light 88

Wed March 19 - Choose life
The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn... but the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. Proverbs 4:18-19
“Choose life” was Moses’ urgent call to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30:19. This concerns a relationship of love, obedience and holding fast to the Lord who ‘is your life’, as the following verse confirms. The alternative to life is obvious!
The Bible often presents stark alternatives – light and dark, as in today’s text, life and death, wisdom and folly, the righteous and the wicked, the Spirit of God and fallen human nature. We might say “That’s too simplistic!” But God’s wisdom teaches us that the alternatives bear quite different lifestyle fruits. Jesus taught that “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:18). The way of right-doing creates a steady restoration of God’s image in a person, whilst the way of wrongdoing creates a steady deterioration of character.
But wait a minute! There’s something, an amazing thing, called the grace of God! And his grace can change, rebuild, save. We can read about the Rahabs, the Mary Magdalenes, the Pauls. We can marvel at God’s grace, with such as John Newton and with transformed folk we know – ourselves included, perhaps. I’m praising God for transformations recounted in a 1990s book called ‘Miracles’ that I’m reading. And it goes on today, in the gracious ways of our ‘only-wise God’ (Romans 16:27).
Lord God, I choose life, because of your astounding grace! Amen.
Thursday March 20 - Straight speech or bent talk?
Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Proverbs 4:24
I once prayed to God to ‘keep me bent on a straight course’ – and was soon smiling at the wording, and happy that he could sort it out and keep me straight rather than bent! We’ve looked at the call to follow God’s wisdom, keeping straight ahead, choosing
the firm way of God’s teaching. But the way we walk must include the way we talk, because our talk can be bent and veer off the straight, just like our walk. The word ‘perversity’ in today’s text is literally ‘crookedness’. ‘Keep your mouth from crooked speech and banish deceitful talk’, says one translation. Another says ‘Turn your back on the mouth that misleads’, which suggests that we need to be contortionists! But the sense is clear: don’t speak bad words, don’t copy those that do, don’t malign others with your speech. Rather, speak words that edify rather than destroy.
The book ‘Miracles’ that I mentioned yesterday is good not only in its stories but in the words that tell them. But some otherwise good novels I read introduce the occasional sickening or even blasphemous word or phrase, reflecting our modern society. But society is fallen and bent, and at those bits I move quickly on.
Our speech betrays our inner thoughts, as Jesus said: “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Matthew 12:34). God wants us all to be straight – rather than bent – speakers. So turn your back on a crooked mouth!
Gracious God, may my speaking be full of grace (Colossians 4:6). Amen.
PRAYER FOR TODAY
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PRAYER FOR TODAY