Day 8: 2 Corinthians

Estimated Reading time: 30mins to 1hour
Biblical text (choose the version you like): http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=2Cr&c=1&v=1&t=RSV#top
Audio Reading 50mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLI3w_jL4bY
Deep Thought
Does the letter to the church in Corinth seem irrelevant to your church situation? Consider this quote:

But we are in a Corinthian world, a polyglot, pluriform culture with different people going off in different directions doing different things with personality cults; with issues about money and sex; with rediscovering the sacramental universe but then not knowing what to do with it and getting it upside down and inside out; and with the question of resurrection, and what you mean by that. And the problem, then, in the church, is that when somebody tries to speak a gospel word, which is both a healing and a rebuke, into the culture, the culture hates it. And the Christian culture hates it. And you move very rapidly from 1 Corinthians to 2 Corinthians.

My church has just been doing that. My church is right now in 2 Corinthians mode, where it’s saying, “What is this authoritative thing anyway? We don’t actually like that.” I see my good friend and colleague Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as being right now like Paul writing 2 Corinthians. It’s a deeply, deeply painful pastoral and personal thing. Paul would much rather not be writing 2 Corinthians. But it’s what happens when you wrestle with the big issues — you say the hard things that have got to be said, and the church doesn’t want to hear them. And that’s where the Anglican communion is right now. So I sense that the Corinthians locus is where we have to go and find ourselves re-inhabiting Paul’s world. And it’s painful. It’s tough. But it’s the only place to be right now.

said N.T. Wright during a visit to Seattle Pacific University

Respond by praying for church. 


Jars of Clay (2 Corinthians 4:7) Consider other songs that capture God's truth applied in the lives of the song writers. Share them here or on your own page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLyUqUQNJgY&list=PL9E5CCF14A02023AF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lgJrLhb5Y 2 cor 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

In Singapore, 2 brothers were run over by a cement truck and died. http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp/sgseen/this_urban_jungle/1579332/brothers_killed_by_cement_truck_600_people_bid_final_farewell.html

This was their mum's response at the funeralhttp://daneshd.com/2013/02/01/transcript-of-mrs-yap-the-mother-nigel-and-donovan-the-boys-in-the-tampines-accident/