Dear Friends,
As I was driving home the other day I came to the roundabout on the pond. I was wanting to turn right and normally at a roundabout those on the left have to give way to those wishing to join the roundabout from the right. That is not the case at Otford pond. For those wishing to turn right from the High Street to go along Sevenoaks Road, they have to wait for those entering the left from Shoreham Road. Now that sounds very confusing but the point is – it is a changed priority roundabout.
It made me think about the words of Jesus in the sermon on the mount, and the changed priorities that he was laying before those who would be his disciples. This world is not ‘normal’. Everything God created this world to be was ‘normal’ and it has become ‘abnormal’ through sin and greed. Jesus challenges
us in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke as to what we think is ‘normal’, and makes known to us God’s perspective of what ‘normal’ really should be, and he says change your priorities and be rich and powerful in the things that really matter, the things that really are of consequence.
We see in the Beatitudes that the things the world values are not the things that God views as important, and one day everyone will discover that, but until that time we are called, as his disciples, to walk a path that is opposite to the world. We might be called foolish but is it not better to be a fool for God than
realise too late how foolish we have been trusting the world’s values rather than the Lord’s?
We shall soon be entering into the time of Lent, what better time to ask him what changed priorities do we need to make in our own lives.
With love,
Jane