Today it is a holiday in Ontario, and so before returning to Going Deeper with St. Eugene I wanted to take this opportunity to share what I have been experiencing in my study of St. Paul’s letter to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:1-7.  I have been sharing my study with a very dear friend and together we use William Barclay’s The Daily Study Bible series.

I must admit that in committing to work and share with another I am much more faithful to this, than I seem capable of being on my own.  There is a very real joy and grace in being able to share and savour that which we hold dear in our hearts – or at least there is for me.

Barclay’s translation of 1 Timothy 2:1-6 reads as:  “So then, the first thing I urge you to do is to offer your request, your prayers, your petitions, your thanksgiving for all men.  Pray for kings and for all who are in authority, that they may enjoy a life that is tranquil and undisturbed, and that they may act in all godliness and reverence.  That is the fine way to live, the way which meets with the approval of God, Our Saviour, who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to a full knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and on mediator, between God and man, that man Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all.  It was thus he bore his witness to God in his own good times.” [1]

Barclay continues with:  “Few passages in the New Testament so stress the universality of the gospel.  Prayer is to be made for all; God is the Saviour who wants all to be saved; Jesus gave his life as ransom for all.  As Walter Lock writes in his commentary:  ‘God’s will to save is as wide as his will to create.’”[2]

It was this last line from Walter Lock that stopped me in my reading and studying and invited me to sit and ponder.  “God’s will to save is as wide as his will to create.”   There is a sudden and deafening “WOW” that arises in me and I sit in awe not a little joy for I am incapable of ‘understanding’ such immensity as this, as our God.  I find myself simply wishing to stop all else and to sit in and with it.  I wish to absorb it all at the same time as being absorbed by it.  What an incredible gift of consciousness!

[1] William Barclay – The New Daily Study Bible:  The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon p.60, 61

[2] Ibid.