Okay, back in Sweden and reading from Ephesians 5:15:
“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people, but as wise making the most of the time. Because the days are evil. Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine for that is the Bowery, but be filled with the spirit as you sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another. Singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times, and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Thanks be to God the word of the Lord.
Before I used to work as a musician and drinking wine was part of the job and me and my friends, we used to have a lot of fun and we used to drink a lot of wine and it never seemed to cause me any problem, any trouble. I would become a happier person, a funnier person, a more generous person, more confident, fun to be around. And yeah, to be honest, it seems like, it seemed like it never made anything bad, nothing bad came out of it.
It was like an armor that I put on and it worked very well and, to be honest, it went on for quite a while, and the problem was that slowly and slowly, slowly, I started to feel weaker and weaker. I would put on the armor and in the morning that armor would be go on and I would feel weaker and more vulnerable than before. And eventually I realized that this can’t go on and I need something else. This is not sustainable.
Probably a lot of people, probably you guys have been there as well, a few of you at least. And this old idea – the idea of the ‘God shaped hole’. I’m not sure where it comes from. The God shaped hole could be some John Donne from the 1600’s. But the idea is that there is a place in here in your heart, there is a void, there is a gap. They can only be filled with God. You might try to fill it with other things, with adventurous kicks and great things, but it can never truly be filled but with the spirit of the Lord. And I believe that to be true, and I believe that for many reasons. I just had a friend who stopped his drinking, and he did that through the 12-steps, the Minnesota thing. I’m not sure what it’s called in English, but it’s this 12-step program and never mind.
But the first step or the second step (I’m not sure which one it is) is about accepting that you are powerless against what you’re struggling with. And you also need to confess that there is a higher being, anyway, the God shaped hole. I think we need to take care of that, and we need to do that, not just in theory but also in practice.
You need to live that new way. And one way of finding knowledge about how to live that new way is reading the Bible. And in here in Ephesians it, it’s suggests that we come together and sing songs and hymns together. It sounds fairly boring, but I think maybe the idea is that we need community, we need Christian community, spiritual community, and we also need to give thanks to God to live in gratefulness and perhaps not be careful with the kicks and the wine drinking so that it doesn’t become a fake armor or the pathway to a non-sustainable life.
A lot of thinking here. I’m still a bit off after the traveling a lot here, but I’m wishing you a good day.
First broadcast on The Sunday Eucharist on August 18th, 2024
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