Today's passage is Acts17:16-34. After leaving Thessalonika, Paul went to Berea was welcomed by many until a group of hostile Jews from Thessalonika showed up, caused trouble and forced Paul out again. He went to Athens to wait for Silas and the others. In Athen he preached in the marketplace and was invited to an Areopagus meeting to explain further. Some sneered, some wanted to know more, and some believed.
All around are things people worship. In ancient Athens, those things all had a god associated with them.
If you worshipped sex, you prayed to Aphrodite.
If you worshipped money, you you might worship Ploutos.
If trade and business, then likely Hermes.
If literature, then Apollo.
There were hundreds of minor deities associated with these and other desires people had.
All the same things are worshipped today except that we don't have gods connected to them.
This makes it hard to convince myself that I'm not worshipping something other than the Lord when I find myself struggling with a temptation.
I like to know things, so I read a lot.
Sometimes I am simply consumed by my desire to know something and I neglect my Bible meditation and prayer.
Knowledge is important and most of what I learn is connected to my work.
But telling myself that the hours I spend on acquiring more knowledge is not only justified but important to my work is really just a rationalization.
Is acquiring more and more knowledge about neuroscience and astronomy going to be significant in my ongoing salvation?
Not likely.
But it's really interesting and gets me into conversations with others that often leads to talk of God.
But again, this sounds like a rationalization to me.
Paul used a quotation from Epimenides that he either knew or came across while waiting in Athens.
He applied it to the Lord in order to make some of the Athenians consider Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.
Where do I live and move and have my being?
Is it in books, in knowledge?
By looking at the time I spend in reading something new each day, I see that it's about hours, about ten percent of a day, which doesn't seem excessive.
I spend the biggest proportion of my day at work.
I spend more time with my office staff each day than with my wife.
I spend a lot of time outside of my work day thinking about my work.
Is that where I live and move and have my being?
I write a lot.
I think about what I'm writing even when I'm not writing.
Is that where I live and move and have my being?
Is it with my wife, my family and hers?
God certainly dropped me into a group of people that love me, challenge me, frustrate me and overall train me into seeing myself more obectively.
My church life is certainly a good candidate for where I live and move and have my being because it is so central to my life, providing me with focus, lessons, sharing, feedback on what I'm doing, and directing me to God.
It's in Christ that I live because he died and rose from the dead for me.
He is my salvation. He's the door to eternal life.
But I am weak and without Sunday worship, Wednesday worship, mokjangs, and daily QT, I don't think I could keep God at the centre of my life.
I am just too easily distracted into thinking momentary issues, incidences and events are important in and of themselves rather than signposts, warnings, and helps in my redemption story.
Lord, keep me mindful that you are the centre of my life and the periphery too. Keep your spirit alive in me to guide to seek you when I look to myself or others in stead. Be my fortress against all temptation.,
