A tale of two covenants

This is the sixth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century.

The Bible is divided into two ‘Testaments’. It is obvious that the Old Testament tells about Hebrew history and religion before Jesus, while the New Testament tells about the coming of Jesus and what happened next.

But is that all? Can the differences between the two Testaments tell us something important about the Bible and how we should read it?

Westboro, love and hate

I read a news report today, in the wake of the horrifying cinema shootings in Denver, about statements made by members of the Westboro Baptist church.

I don’t live in the US, so I don’t know a lot about this church, but the statements were hateful and insensitive to those mourning the trauma and loss of this shocking event.

Prayer is power sharing?

I’m currently reading Knowing Christ Today by Dallas Willard, and I found this quote:

“Prayer is God’s arrangement for a safe power sharing with us in his intention to bless the world through us.”

I like this, because it touches on a number of important things.

A healing

Most christians believe that God heals people, but most of us also know that not everyone is healed. We hear various reasons why God doesn’t always heal, but in the end we just don’t know.

But it is always encouraging to hear a reliable account of God healing someone.

Prayer and mission

Felicity Dale at Simply Church has posted some interesting accounts in Does prayer make a difference? Two groups of christians prayed for non-believers, with very striking results:

1. A church in the US identified 160 homes, and prayed for 80 of them for 90 days. Then they approached all homes with the offer to visit and pray for them. Only one in the “not prayed for” group accepted the offer, but 69 out of 80 homes that were prayed for responded positively.
2. Christians in India picked two villages and prayed for one. When they visited both villages they were thrown out of the village they didn’t pray for but made many converts in the village they did pray for.

I have a few difficulties about praying for one group and not another, though I guess they can at least rectify this following the experiment. And I certainly don’t think we can use these examples to “prove” that prayer works. (In fact, as you can see at Intercessory prayer and healing properly scientific studies of prayer show only moderately positive results.)

But I think we can see these accounts as a great encouragement to pray. We all believe in prayer and know we should pray more, but as TS Eliot said:

“Between the idea, and the reality ….. falls the shadow.”