Week Two

Part 2: Year on year

Conversation starter

Our phones and social media accounts often have a startling feature when they send you a notification out of the blue to show you a picture from this very date X numbers of years ago. Suddenly in the middle of your day you are confronted with where you were and what you were doing in yesteryear however profound or mundane. How does it make you feel? And how do you feel generally when looking at old pictures?

Read Ezekiel 2: 1-5

A prophet for this generation…

Who are the prophets speaking to the years we are living through now? What are the timeless messages God’s people need to year and what are the timely messages that we need to hear in 2021?

Read Mark 6: 1-6

Time doesn’t stand still…

…and neither did Jesus’s ministry. When he came to Nazareth Jesus didn’t have a hometown advantage, he was in fact undermined by the folk who had known him before, who wanted to put limits on who he could be in their mind.

What’s your relationship like with your hometown? Is it where you live now, or do you now live somewhere else? How have you, and it, changed over the years?

What is your prayer for your hometown?

Read Philippians 3: 7-16

Whatever the years have brung…

We can learn from our experiences but we are not bound by them. Reflection can be helpful but our God of mercy and love does not want us to be trapped under the weight of the past. Our God has a better prize in mind than melancholy or nostalgia. In God’s tender love there is a home for all of us no matter where we have come or what we have been through.

What does the prize that Paul talks about here — the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus — mean to you today?