Streams of Living Water

Have Christ’s Mind in You!

Philippians 2:5
As most of you will know, my favourite pastime, although I don’t get much of a chance to practice it down here, is golf. After being a member of a golf club for a while, you begin to learn not just the technical aspects of the game, but also the social etiquette – the expected behaviour – most of which isn’t written down anywhere, you just learn as you go along. One of the more obscure pieces of golfing etiquette is the complete avoidance of a certain word whilst playing – you may never say this word or it may cause you to start hitting vicious slices – and if you do say this word, everyone glowers at you. That word is ‘shank’ – ‘shank’ is a complete sliced miss-hit, which you can start doing all the time – and when you can’t stop doing it, you just want to throw your golf clubs away. So next time you are playing golf, never say the word ‘shank’! In Christian circles we also have a bogey word – don’t say it, never use it – that word is ‘theology’. People think of theology as so dry and boring, theology as being the reason for splits and divisions, way above their heads, and of absolutely no practical value at all. Now admittedly, there can be nothing more dull or dry, nothing more divisive and nothing less practical than scholastic theology.

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One of the best things about the football world cup is the expressions on the faces of the players after a penalty shoot out. For the team which has won, like Portugal, faces light up with smiles and shouts of joy. For the team which has lost, like England, faces dull down with grimaces and tears of grief. There are no neutrals after a penalty shoot out. But whilst the television screens can show us what players are like on the outside after a penalty shoot out, the book of Psalms gives us an unprecedented glimpse of what we as God’s people look like in the extremes of our Christian experience. And here, in Psalm 43, especially in vs. 5, we have both extremes interlocking into one song – the experience of living in darkness and living in light.
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