six pence none the richer

there's a great story from CS Lewis's Mere Christianity
a little boy asks his father if he can get a sixpence (which is well... six cents) to go and get a gift for his father. The father gladly accepts the gift and he's really happy with it, but he also realises that he's not any richer for the transaction. i mean, it was HIS sixpence after all. (there's where the band sixpence none the richer got their name from)

God has given Him, and us, the gifts that we possess, and to serve Him the way we should, we should do it humbly... realizing how we got the gifts in the first place. sixpence none the richer.

guess in e last couple of wks, the pt tt the teaching team in church has been trying to drive across is that the bible isn't written with the purpose of answering all our questions to life or as a manual to life. It does answer questions, does tell us how to live our life and all that. But more importantly, it tells us about the character of God, and how God is charting the course of His ship to the final destination, right from the beginning.

and today we looked at abram (gen 12, 15) and the promises God gave to Him. essentially, God gave him two promises-
#1: descendents (to your OFFSPRING)
#2: land (give this LAND)

and guess wat happened? a famine happened, and abram LEFT THE LAND (uh-oh there goes promise #2). and then he went to egypt and then wat happened? he gave his wife away (no wife = no children DUH. uh-oh there goes promise #1) haha... so yea.

it gave us all a new perspective. in a way, dun we do that pretty often? God says one thing, we believe. and then... we tend to screw things up a little. But what happens? God rescues Abram and His promises. He gets the egyptian Pharaoh to return Sarai, and blesses abram with all those goodies =) and abram goes back to the land and all is good.

the character of God: He looks at man, after the time of the tower of babel..

(which is really interesting cos it isn't the kinda towers you would think of, but it's actually a kind of temple sorta thing that the pagans would build in the past, calling them names like 'the temple of the stairway between heaven and earth', or 'the temple going up to heaven', from archaelogical records and remmants. and they would put food at the top, believing that this was a kind of 'aid' to the gods, to help them come down from heaven and the food was like a 'rest stop' for the gods in case they got tired coming down, so they could eat and rest... that was the beliefs of e pagans of tt time.)

and well, God sees the sins of the people, and sets into motion a plan to save them all. From abram, we get issac, jacob, judah --> Lion of Judah. (and note, those pple before Jesus were a little erm... difficult sometimes too!) The grace of God so clearly shown, presented without a qualm from the Most High. He looks at us, people who are screwy, who are unfinished works, and He looks down with compassion and grace, extending help to people who don't even want His help, who dunno that they need it, and who reject Him. The grace. the love. doesn't it overwhelm?

for the benediction, the preacher sang lamentations 3:22-26 in Hebrew. and it was powerful. this is the first time i'm hearing hebrew, and wow. it is powerful. but indeed, the LORD is my portion, therefore i will wait for Him.