Dec 30

Read Mal 1:1-2:17 and Pr 31:10-20

As a very young boy, I pronounced the name of this book incorrectly.  I used to pronounce it Ma-la-chee (as I thought it rhymed with Chachi from the Happy Day’s TV show!).  However, Ma-la-ki was not of Spanish descent!

Malachi is the very last book of the Bible.  Who was Malachi?  In Eugene Peterson’s introduction of the book:

“Most of life is not lived in crisis - which is a good thing. Not many of us would be able to sustain a life of perpetual pain or loss or ecstasy or challenge. But crisis has this to say for it:

In time of crisis, everything, absolutely everything, is important and significant. 

Life itself is on the line. No word is casual, no action marginal. 

And almost always, God and our relationship with God is on the front page. 

But during the our humdrum times, when things are, as we tend to say, "normal", our interest in God is crowded to the margins of our lives and we become preoccupied with ourselves. "Religion" during such times is trivialized into asking "God-questions" - calling God into question or complaining about him, treating the worship of God as a mere hobby or diversion, managing our personal affairs (such as marriage) for our own convenience and disregarding what God has to say about them, going about our usual activities as if God were not involved in such dailiness.

The prophecy of Malachi is made to order for just such conditions. Malachi creates a crisis at a time when we are unaware of crisis. He wakes us up to the crisis of God during the times when the only thing we are concerned with is us. He keeps us on our toes, listening for God, waiting in anticipation for God, ready for respond to God, who is always coming to us. 

Malachi gets in the last word of Holy Scripture in the Old Testament. The final sentences in his message to us evoke the gigantic features of Moses and Elijah - Moses to keep us rooted in what God has done and said in the past, Elijah to keep us alert to what God will do in the days ahead. By leaving us in the company of mighty Moses and fiery Elijah, Malachi considerably reduces the danger of our trivializing matters of God and the soul.” 

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