When the old meets the new...

...or should that be 'when the new meets the old'?!

Sometimes there is a tendency to think that the two can't mix and work together. For example, even in my day to day life, work colleagues express surprise that, in spite of my age (although nowhere near retirement age yet, the Brokenlegged one is no spring lamb!) I still quite enjoy listening to 'dance' music in its various genres! I mean - my generation invented it so why wouldn't I like it?!

I tend to view Christianity - the Gospel, worship, liturgy and doctrine as a continual process of the new meeting the old; the original tenets are being overlaid, retimed, sampled and mixed as time goes on.

What is important though is that just as Pachelbel's original Canon in D is still clearly recognisable above, we can still recognise the same message of the Gospel coming through clearly regardless of how the surrounding 'melodies' have been altered.

God's Word was never intended to be a hard and fast set of instructions, rules and regulations held in a book for all time. If it is viewed and treated as such, it soon becomes meaningless and quite dead - irrelevant - just as modern secularism and atheism have decreed.

God's Word understood and interpreted in the light of the Spirit on the other hand is a living, moving, changing and evolving entity which ultimately draws us closer to the One who speaks it - it embraces both the new and the old. even though the newer 'version' might seem irreverent, the ultimate Truth will speak through as the keynotes. Even now, when looking at the Bible as a whole, even though there appears to be contradiction, non-historical and unpalatable texts, the essential truth of God's love and plan of salvation runs throughout - you might just have to look harder to appreciate it at times!

Old and new together? Of course it works!

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." Hebrews 4:12