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John Wesley

January

The religious holidays are over, the Happy New Year’s Eve party hats are stored or
thrown away and we are settling back into our regular daily routines. Many marketers
use this lull in our colder, winter season to send out lists of magazines and books for sale.
We dream of warmly sitting by the fireside while soaking up printed knowledge,
therefore increasing our IQ, and this dream picture entices us to order non fiction and
self-help books. Nursery and seed companies become enablers for us to dream, as we
skim through the colorful pictures of the beautiful gardens we dream of having by
ordering flowering bushes or luscious fruit trees we can grow and then eat of the healthy
fruit.
Some people, at this time of year, bring out their Bibles to either read or re read, as a
New Year’s resolution. Many say, “I read it, and once is enough.” Others says, “I tried
to read it, but could not understand it.” But for the people of the early Methodist
movement, the Bible came alive for them, because they believed that the Scriptures were
for them, “love letters from God” (Chilcoat p.83).
They were excited and refreshed as they employed three new ways of reading the
Bible.
Paul Wesley Chilcote states in his book, Recapturing The Wesleys’ Vision – An
Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley. Just as you would read a letter
from a close friend, they read the Bible daily and picked out the main points. Second:
Reading the whole test slowly, they read to see their place in God’s design. Third: They
pondered (prayed-meditated) upon the Scriptures.
Chilcoat says that they placed themselves in God’s presence and asked for guidance.
Then they pictured themselves in the Bible story to gain insights for their own lives.
Lastly, they put into action whatever they discovered about themselves.
How many times do we read, hear, see something, that triggers a revelation (a
dramatic disclosure of something not previously known or realized) . . . . and it ends
there. We do not act on what had been revealed to us!
This new year, as in every new year, and in every new day, we have choices to make.
We can sit by the fireside and dream of things that could happen: if we read the
magazines and books we ordered, if we plant the bushes and fruit trees we purchased, if
we read the Bible in a new way to discover the importance of the Word . . . or, we can
actually apply ourselves this year, this time. We can apply ourselves to ‘Glorify God’ in
all that we do, and in all that we say.
John Wesley said it better than I in his social ethic statement: “Do all the good you
can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, To all
the people you can, As long as ever you can.”

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