@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

A Lived Communion

In an age that scripture identifies as the “end times” (Mtt.24:3; 2 Tim.3:1-5; 2 Pe.3:3-4; 1 Tim.4:1), marked by anxiety, material preoccupation, and spiritual distraction, this saying, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ (Mtt.4:4) confronts the illusion that security lies in economic or technological sufficiency. It calls instead for a daily, relational posture of hearing and responding to God. This is a lived communion of prayer and Scripture, a “walking” with God reminiscent of Enoch, because the same Word that created and sustains the cosmos must also continually nourish the believer’s inner life. Therefore, to “live by every word” is to practice active trust: not passive belief, but a disciplined, moment-by-moment reliance that seeks God’s voice, submits to it, and expects His provision, recognising that apart from this ongoing participation in His speaking, even abundance becomes emptiness, whereas with it, even wilderness becomes life.