"He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man." (v. 25)

For Reading and Meditation:     John 2:12-25

Yesterday we touched on the statement of a psychiatrist, Dr James Fisher, who said that when searching for the positive attitudes which made for good mental health, he came across the Beatitudes and realised that he need search no longer. After nearly fifty years' experience of helping people with mental, emotional and physical problems he concluded: "If you were to take the total sum of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene - if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage - if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of our Lord's Beatitudes - and it would suffer immeasurably through comparison." Dr Raymond Cramer, a minister and a Christian psychologist, says something similar when he describes the Beatitudes as "the psychology of Jesus". Some may find that expression unacceptable when applied to the Beatitudes, but remember, this is a scientist who is speaking. In studying the laws of human behaviour and seeking to discover what brings a person to his highest point of integration, he came to see that the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes are the clearest and most succinct expression of the principles by which a person can know contentment and inner happiness. In an age which is fascinated with the study of human behaviour, there is only one true psychology - the psychology of Jesus.

Father, I see that psychology, as well as all other "-ologies", are only valid as they are brought to Your feet. Show me, dear Lord, not just how to live, but how to live abundantly. In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.