MAC KIRK

Malachi Advent I 2014    Malachi struggled with the same things that we still do as a nation , as a people, as families and as individuals.  The people looked around at others and said, " it is useless to serve God...it the evildoers who are successful."3:14  ( NEB) They had neglected the House of God after returning from captivity ( 100 years later).  The priests did not set the example . Intermarriage between believers and non-believers continued.  Jews were divorcing their wives to marry idolatrous women. ( Halley's Bible Handbook) 2:10-16  They offered diseased and blemished animals in the temple 1:8 as well as neglecting the temple tithes.     Malachi is quoted in the NT in Matthew 11, Mark 1 and Luke 1 , " Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me." ( KJV)  He was speaking of John the Baptist who too faced similar things when he told the people to repent .  There is an attitude as well today in our churches and definitel

John 6:5-- Suprising Challenges    Is it not true that God uses things, people, circumstances and situations to challenge us?  Somehow we did not think we had signed up for that when we acknowledged Him as Lord and King of our lives.  Yet in today's Gospel we see Philip being tested when he is asked , " Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?"  Is He testing our motives ?  Perhaps we can relate to the story of the fish :   " A little fish was swimming around in the ocean, when he came across an older ( and presumably wiser) fish.  ' Excuse me ,' said the little fish. ' You are older than I , so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean? ' The ocean,' said the older fish, ' is the thing you are in now.' ' Oh this?' ' But this is water.  What I'm seeking is the ocean,' said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.' "  as in Hearing with the Heart by Farrington.

Nobleman and Jesus John 4: 46    Have we ever been so overwhelmed and desperate that we go to God for a need that we cannot meet anywhere else?  I know we have.  We have asked I am sure for a loved one that has been deathly ill or have asked God, " Why?  Why?  Why did my loved one die ?"  At many times in our lives we feel absolutely helpless.  Perhaps we have experienced loss in other ways....thru a divorce or the loss of a friendship for some reason. Or a personal crisis in the life?    Thomas Merton well-known writer and Catholic Trappist monk was not always so.  In his auto-biography The Seven Storey Mountain, he tells of his worldly life. His conversion he said was when he, " ...was pierced deeply with a light that made me realize something of the condition I was in, and I was filled with horror at what I saw...and my soul desired escape . And now I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray...and praying to the God I had never known , to