Month: July 2019
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Blindly Seeing
Luke 24:13–35, John 20:1–18, John 21:2–14 Poor Cleopas. Literally walking with Jesus and he didn’t have a clue. Luke’s choice of words makes it pretty clear. Cleopas couldn’t have been that oblivious. He had to have been prevented from recognizing Jesus. That makes perfect sense from Luke’s perspective. What is it about this resurrected Jesus…
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Spirit Movement
Psalm 51, Isaiah 66:1–16, Acts 16:6–15 How the Holy Spirit moves in our lives is both a mystery and very important. The psalmist requests to be restored. Attributed to King David after being confronted in his sin regarding Bathsheba and Uriah, there is definitely some restoration that needs to happen. While David as an individual…
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God’s Work Working
Exodus 20:1–21, Exodus 32:1–19, Exodus 34:1–9 The first “printing” of the 10 Commandments was wholly a God printing. God made the tablets. God wrote on the tablets. Imagine holding something like that in your hands. You witnessed yet another miraculous happening. Out of a mountain God created tablets, then God wrote on them. In a…
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Faithful Asking
Genesis 18:17–33, Colossians 2:6–19 There are two different amazing streams of thought in this vignette of Abraham and God. The first is Abraham’s audaciousness. That a faithful person is free to ask God for clarification is beautiful. This shows us that when we are faithful toward and trustful of God, it’s okay to not understand,…
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Beyond A Name
Isaiah 43:1–4, 1 Peter 1:13–23 Do you know somebody’s name? Of course, you do. You know yours. You know the names of loved ones. You know the names of friends. You probably know the names of people that are not that close. We sometimes dismiss the importance of names. If we thought about it, though,…
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Godly Peopling
1 Corinthians 7:32–38 When we read this passage, we have to understand that Paul really was expecting the world to end. The Messiah had come, why wait? Over the years, there has been an interesting development. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches have elevated male singleness for their priests. On the other hand, Protestant churches…
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Sharpening and Armor
Matthew 15:10–20, Luke 6:39–42, Ephesians 6:12–18 In our current political and cultural climate, there are plenty of sharp barbs being thrown out. If we wanted to, we could say flaming arrows, which is metaphorically accurate. It’s pretty nuts, and certainly unloving, unpeaceful, impatient (i.e, doesn’t bear), unkind, bad (i.e., not good), unfaithful, ungentle, and lacks…
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Nourishing
Exodus 16:13–36, John 6:29–41 Who’s On First? was a comedy routine honed and made famous by the comedy team of Abbot and Costello. It is a masterful—and frustrating—play on words. Mana ≈ What is it? How would you like your food—for 40 years, no less—to be named, “what is it?” Imagine teaching a child the…