Category Archives: Bible

Thoughts and impressions directly associated with a bible section or verse

Bible, Bible Study, Life, Worship

Echo of Joy

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Zephaniah 3:14-17
Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion!
Shout in triumph, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away His judgments against you,
He has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
You will fear disaster no more.
In that day it will be said to Jerusalem:
“Do not be afraid, O Zion;
Do not let your hands fall limp.
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

In our terrible times politically, and internationally we are given a sense of God is still in control. There is a gladness in these words. They are a part of a men’s study I am doing and sometimes it is difficult to find joy in the Minor Prophets. There is the overthrow of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the spreading of the 10 tribes to take away their identity, the fall of Nineveh, a prophet being swallowed by a fish, and a whole lot of gloom, despair, and excessive misery. But here in the last phrases of Zephaniah is hope and joy.
Here we join in with God dancing and singing. The very words seem to dance with Joy. The phrases seem to be written in a staccato, rapid-fire manner; almost as if the prophet was laughing while he was writing.
It is singing which it truly catching. The God of the Universe is in our present. God has a voice and HE calls us to join in. SHOUT to the rooftops, God is here. For with every beat of your heart comes a sound of God’s love and joy for you. The notes of our praise fill HIS heart with Joy. The notes of HIS joy fills our hearts. We are glad because HE is glad. We sing for joy, and HE shouts the joy with us with singing because we do. JOY is an ongoing echo between man and God.
SHOUT, go ahead where ever you are, whatever you are doing, stop and shout for Joy and cause that joy to fill God. And then listen carefully and you will hear the echo from God.

Bible, Bible Study, Culture, Politics, Worship

Micah’s question

It was his favorite spot.

High above his hometown of Moresheth.  Though it was quite a hike up the mountain, it was his place of worship, his place of prayer, his place of solitude, his place of getting above it all and just be still and know that the LORD was God.

It was high enough to see afar off the edge of the Mediterranean sea.  The blue was metered by the distance and late fog that rolled in about this time each evening. The sun was about to dip into the sea.  It was a special time between Micah and the God of Judah.  It was a moment of pure religion and worship.

In an attitude of prayer. He watched the sun just touch the sea.  Light was slowly dimming, to Micah it was a parable of his life.  The colors around him became less and less. Twilight was his hour of meditation.  A time of quiet before God.

Below was the plain of GAD the ancient home of the past enemy of Philisita the home of Goliath. In the quiet of that moment his mind went further up the mountain to its crest.  There was the cave that David had hidden in from Saul.  On the other side was Bethlehem. And even further was Jerusalem.  Jotham had replaced Uzziah and he was even worse leader, filled with sin and idolatry.

Micah had witnessed the wrath of God when Judah’s sister nation fell to Assyria. Some of the Israelites made it out.  With nothing more than what was on their backs they had move back to Judah.  It was a boarder crisis. And with them came their worship of Idols, wickedness and a bent toward the depravity of their hometowns.

Looking again to the setting sun.  The very edge was now touching the horizon.  Dipping its edge into the water grave of the sea.  Sun suddenly was clouded by a fog, intercepting its rays. Darkness came quickly like a great judgement.  The day, the light, the warmth suddenly vanished. With the quickened darkness came a sadness, a loneliness and a pent up anger.

How long will your mercy meter your justice?  When will your wrath become stronger than your love?

Looking at our own world I too ask.  Looking at our nation in turmoil where no one wants to help the regular person. YES LORD, HOW LONG WILL YOUR MERCY METER YOUR JUSTICE? WHEN WILL YOUR WRATH BECOME STRONGER THAN YOUR LOVE?

Based upon the first chapter of the minor prophet Micah.

Bible, Bible Study, Theology

Two Creations?

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Discussion of the Bible is one of the few my great pleasures.  I am not a theologian by any sense of the word, but I do read and try to understand the Bible. 

Because of our discussion a few nights ago I had occasion to dig into the Hebrew language to better understand an assertion of two complete and separate creations found in Genesis

Yes, the Genesis opens with two different creation stories.  Both describe the creation of animals, plants, and humans.  Never-the-less they are also a number distinct differences and may well even contradict each other.

For example, though these stories describe some of the same events, they order them differently:

  • Genesis 1: the creator makes plants then animals and then simultaneously creates man and woman.  In Genesis 2: God creates a humans, plants then animals, and later he divides the human into female and male.
  • Additionally, the two stories employ different names for the deity.  The first account uses the Hebrew word ELOHIM, meaning God and the second instance uses YHWH which is a tetragrammaton for “LORD”.
  • The two accounts are also very different in literary style. 
    • Genesis 1 is well organized into three days of preparation and three days of formation with “and it was so” KJV.  By the seventh day, the creation existed in proper and good order and God rests.  It is a very orderly and well packaged event sequence.  It suggests a very orderly and well packaged universe created by a God that is also very orderly and well packaged.
    •  The second story, starting in Genesis 2:4, through to the end of chapter 3, lacks the structure and orderly structure of the first account in the original language.  It is much less structured and with much less formula.  It is written in very dramatic and painted with melodramatic strokes. It is portrayed as a series of seven scenes with much more detail.

My belief about these differences and similarities derived from my personal studies have been compared to the conclusions to published authors are summarized here:

  1. The differences in accounts reflect two separate sources of oral transmission.  That there was a great span of time from the event and the writing down of these accounts.  The Hebrew Bible from which we as Christians take as God’s communication to the People of God under the leadership of Moses is made up of two viewpoints of the same event.
  2. The account of creation in Genesis was the effort to relate to both oral traditions.  He included both to provide a better understanding of two different viewpoints.
  3. Genesis wasn’t written by a scientist or a modern historian.  Chapter one is pure poetry.  Genesis 1-11, “pre-history,” is couched in figurative language. We read news differently from editorials and poems; we must do the same when we read the Bible and adjust our expectations and reading “lens” to the literary form.
  4. The author’s intent matters.  We must take into account the author and his design to portray ideas and thoughts and instruction. The questions of our time are quite different from the type of questions asked in the times of Moses. 
    • We would ask how the world began.  We would ask WHEN it came into being.  We would ask WHAT was the process and make it specific and exact?  We would ask WHICH came first and how did the next being become what he was?
    • The questions of the ancient world were different: WHO created? WHO’s in charge? WHY am I here, and HOW do I relate to other beings? WHY is there evil and can anything be done about it?
  5. These two viewpoints have a very distinctive predisposition to explain the creation.
    • The first creation is seen through the eyes of someone with a concept of God as being distant.  He would see the creation story as an event having a master plan.  God was a God that dictated the creation and it was done.  Please note this view is also exampled in John’s Gospel as the Father as the Power of creation and Jesus the creator.
    • The second depicts God as a human-like figure who walks in the garden with His creation.  It is a view, God has a hands-on God creation; hence the use of LORD,  God is seen as accessible, touchable, caring.
  6. These two accounts, seen and understood from two quite different experiences, have been combined in Genesis to read as a single literary unit. 
    • The first account starts with a title introducing as the time (YOM) “when God began to create heaven and earth.”  It concludes with an additional summary statement that puts a reasonable border of the account: “this is the story of heaven and earth when they were created” as found in Genesis 2:4.
    • There is a break in our Christian Bible between Genesis 1:31 and Genesis 1:2 which was added by Robert Estienne 1551 and really didn’t consider the narrative style change. And further there should well be a break in the middle of verse 2:4.
    • The second story begins mid verse in Genesis 2:4 with a parallel statement and word pair, “In the day the Lord God made earth and heaven.”
  7. Both narratives start with the same word pair, they place the terms in opposite order.
    • The narrative of the first picture or viewpoint of creation wanted to depict a heavenly creation.  The first account starts with “ELOHIM (GOD) created heaven and earth.”  The first story is very cosmic and seen from the ethereal dwelling place of God.  It is God standing aloof and distant.  The first story pictures the creation of an expanse to be separated between the heavenly and earthly waters along with the sun, moon, and stars.
    • The narrative of the second picture or viewpoint of creation wanted to depict an earthly creation.  The second picture characterized a view point that saw “YHWH (LORD) made earth and heaven.  The LORD was seen as an active participant set HIS priority as the story of earth.  In the second narrative shows not the creation of the sky or heavenly sphere but the formation of shrubs, fields, earth, and a garden.
  8. These two views have been melded and reconciled as a single literary unit.
    • The first text from the heavenly viewpoint ends with a pointer to the earth.
    • The second begins in Genesis 2:4 directing our attention again to the accounts of the earth.
  9. In its present form, as was finalized as a combined in the TANAKH (Jewish Bible) in the major first section of that Bible as the TORAH (Jewish section called the teaching) in the late or early second century BC, the Hebrew sees the creation account providing a prologue to the subsequent stories of Genesis.  These stories are primarily about the promises and accounts of the promised people.  Most of these stories were handed down from father to son for thousands of years.
  10. Context matters when trying to understand the revealed will of God.  Both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are together parts to a larger story. 
    • Genesis 1 is about God’s action and purpose.  God is found 32 times and every time He is the subject of the sentence. Every time it is God acting.  Every time it is God intentionally building something characterized as “Good”
    • The “days” of creation are symbolic. Genesis 1 is poetic, and poetic structure has meaning. Sequential days are not there for themselves as perfect 24-hour blocks of time, they are there to show sequence, to show order and hierarchy.
    • Notice that account one begins in darkness, formlessness, and emptiness. On “days” one through three God banishes the darkness and brings order to the chaos: heaven and sky, earth and land. On “days” four through six God fills the void, populating each realm in the same order. God makes people only after everything is ready for them to live in and rule. They are the “end” as in purpose, not sequence, of the created universe.
    • The first sequence is a poetic and literary “arrow” pointing to chapter two and the seventh day. It reveals the grand purpose of creation: that everything is ordered to the Sabbath and worship of God.  Genesis 1 is a prologue to the rest.
    • One Hebrew scholar notes that the first account of Genesis 1 was written much later than chapter 2.   It functions as an “entrance Hymn” to the great drama of salvation.
      1. While it is sung God fills the stage All the other players enter in sequence filling the stage each with their own dramatic entrance.  An all is “Good”.
    • There’s a perspective shift between chapters. In Genesis 1, the reader’s a distant observer of the creation of the universe.  Genesis 2 zooms in for a close-up on the “man” God created everything for.
    • Sequence shows relationship in chapter two.  The events are arranged to show truth about humanity in relationship to God, the animals, and the world. Chapter 1 told us man was created in God’s image, given dominion over the earth, and told to be fruitful and multiply. It is not over.  Creation is still ongoing.  Man, made in God’s image, can create.
    • The creation story from the ethereal God of Genesis 1 points to the hands-on God of Genesis 2.  The second account is an expansion of the first.  It is very human oriented.
      1. Man is made from dust. He does not evolve from something else and no other being is used to create him.
      2. Vegetation is for man’s food and pleasure and to teach obedience—he is creature, not creator of the world, and must learn to relate to God.
      3. The animals are created so man will know his special status—that he’s made for more. He doesn’t come from them, they are brought to him and he names and rules them.
      4. Man is only complete when God brings from his body another, the woman. Side by side, they will not only rule, but fill the earth. Together they are in God’s image: male and female; ruling the earth; fruitful. They live in harmony with creation, with each other, and with God.
  11. The first creation makes sense only considering the new creation in Christ.
    • Genesis 1 and 2 give us two complementary accounts of a single creation that together help us begin to understand the “whos” and “whys” of our existence.  But they are part of a larger story and we can’t fully understand them without knowing the end and purpose of the whole.
    • Perhaps that’s why John started his Gospel with another creation account. “In the beginning was the Word,” he wrote.  “All things were made through him […] The light shines in the darkness […] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
    • John’s deliberate use of language from Genesis helps us see the coming of Christ as a new creation.  It also helps us understand God’s purpose in Creation from the start.

I fully respect my brother’s view of two creations.  I don’t think it will make a difference to his salvation. But as a teacher once said to me, “it is a tertiary discussion that needs noting but not to a point of discord.”  For me, it is enough to say, “God made it, God made me, God Loves me, I love God.”  Anyway according to Revelation 21 it is all going away and will be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth. 

Enough said.  I welcome our continued discussions.

Just Larry.

Bible, Culture, Preaching, Theology

Words are important!

I have a facebook account in which you may well call me a lurker. I don’t post much. Once and a while I will be struck by a phrase or an idea that can’t be ignored. Today a post from a wonderful person reposted the phrase, “We need preachers who preach that hell is still hot, that heaven is still real, that sin is still wrong, that the Bible is God’s Word and that Jesus is the only way of Salvation.” What really struck me from that was the seeming lack of any of these things from the pulpit, but even more from those calling themselves Christians. All in the name of being more socially minded and more sensitive, and more politically correct, we (this includes me) have seemed to let the world dictate our speech, our behavior and belief structures.

I believe that we need good strong definitions to the words we use and hold on to. Take for instance the word sin. It does not mean it is all ok if you can get away with it. Or if there are no current prohibitions from in by civil law. For me sin is “any feeling or thought or speech or action coming from the heart which does not treasure God over, under, through, around, and within all other things.” Sin is preference over God. Sin is mainly not what you do, but what you are.

Bible, Bible Study, Life, Preaching, Theology

Cash Register Eternal Life

I just finished teaching a cadre of men an eighteen-week study on the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. The best time to assess that study is a couple of weeks afterward.  Lesson after lesson we explored the depths of this passage.  There were times where we found true understanding of scripture and lives were changed with slight veers in individual paths.  Now I am looking back and seeing what these passages really mean to me.

It is the third verse which was the greatest point of my study.  This is eternal life; that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. This is the only scripture where Jesus gives a precise, unwavering, perfect, straightforward definition of eternal life. 

The church today seems to want to define “eternal life” as a simple phrase pointing to where you go when you die.  It is a good place. It is the place you want to go.  It is the place where there are fluffy clouds and angel wings.  The church today seems to have made a part of an either-or situation.  And with this option, a market or economic value system has been attached. What does it cost?  What effort is required to attain it?  We want to know if God takes plastic.

Eternal life can not be bought.  Not by a sinner’s prayer.  Not by a perfectly recited and overly used system of chants.  Not by a set of behavioral attitudes.  Not by demonstrating in view of all and everyone in earshot that you have faith.

Eternal life is not the reward for effort. Eternal life is knowing God.  It is in that relationship of knowing one another that makes life eternal.  Simply by saying, “I am up to accepting your sacrifice,” or “I am willing to be your treasure,” is going to make the heavenly cash register open up and a little round token with the words, “Eternal Life” be given to you.  These are just the starting point.  The initial intersection between you and God. That first step is like the wedding ceremony; it is just the start.  Marriage is more than one simple saying of your vows.  Marriage and eternal life are about the relationship that goes on and on.  It is a daily seeking of relationship.  It is knowing.  It is devotion.  It is saying your sorry more than once.  Eternal life is not doing but knowing.

Comments?

Bible, Church, Culture, Worship

Do we still need a Bible?

As I was preparing to attend church last week, I dutifully selected one of the many Bibles that fill a goodly part of one of my shelves.  There are big ones with plastic tabs along the edge, so scriptures can be more easily found.  There are old broken-down ones that have lost their binding and used only gingerly on my desk and examined with care. There are numerous Bibles that are differentiated by the translation; NASB, MOFFAT, KJ, NKJ, NIV, Message, RSV and on and on.  This week I chose a TNIV.  It is a study Bible with lots of helps and references.

As I sit in the sanctuary just a few moments later and the scripture for the sermon is blaringly displayed across three screens, I wonder, “what is the necessity of lugging a big black book to church”.  What is it that makes me feel that I have my act together in worship when I carry my Bible?  Has the church passed by the need to have pew Bibles for those don’t have one, or do we don’t need one at all?  The Word is passed down to the congregant in little spoons full by the upfronts and that seems to be good enough.

I have one Bible that I started my ministry way back there and since then the cover fell off, the pages are so well worn that I must be careful not to tear them.  It has been marked, highlighted, annotated and referenced thousands of times.  There is a sense of history about it.  If I have the latest version with updated references and scriptural research, why don’t I just throw it away?

Books have lives, and for me and my fellow attendees, consideration must be made for what we have lost personally and collectively by neglecting the Bible as a tangible object.  As one writer said of both the Bible and the hymnal that they, “straddle the worlds of literary and religious reading, of song and private reflection.”   They are a part of the method that should not be done away, just because there is no pocket in the back of the folding chairs. Bibles at church are part of the foundational formation of the family of God? Another scholar points out that what we hold dear affects us and called it, “hand piety.” That which we hold, that which we carry, that which we place on our laps at church has a significance.  These things are permanent parts of our experience of knowing God.

With the Bible on our phones and words on the screen in most evangelical churches, are we being molded into the church by the objects we touch, hold, and memorize? I really don’t think a Bible app on a smartphone holds the same importance as a Bible you have prayed with, cried with, laugh with and come through terrible trials with. A smartphone is just too easy to become a group of loosely networked individuals, where devotional practices and worship are experienced in an individualized manner.

Take your Bibles to church.

By the way, I was snooping a couple of weeks ago and those who had their screens on during service were not looking at a Bible application.

Bible, Bible Study, Life, Personal, Preaching

Without Love

I may well speak fluently of Calvinism, Reformed, Wesleyan and even Seven Day Adventist within an assemblage of brethren. I can even lead them to a point of excitement and feelings of being accepted as one great body of believers.  Never-the-less, when I walk away, and I see them only as theological misfits, I am nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing.

I even can preach and teach the great mysteries of theology and apologetics. I can make thoughtful and logical expositional and theological stands.  I can and have used illustrations of media and popular culture in making my three points of homiletics clear.  I have presented the Words of God to such a way that people broke out in song or raised hands in expressions of joy.  If I have opened Gods truth that some were moved to simply sit in awe.  Never-the-less, if I do not care enough to know God myself and those who are loved by that same God, I am nothing but a white noise.

If I create a new vision for the church for new things and buildings are built as one more big edifice to Christianity, but I lose sight of the God I serve and the people that God loves, I am nothing.

If I am well known in the congregation as being one the biggest givers, and I am always there to sponsor the next big thing at the church and always willing to go the conference or barbeque, and I do not show love for those sitting in the corner wanting the most just to be included, they don’t mean a thing.

You see, no matter what I say, or believe or even what I do, if I leave out love, I am a man without hope or worth.

Love is the thing.  Love is never exhausted, it never gets too old, it never runs out of energy.  Love and compassion are more concerned with the other guy than my own selfish desires. Love is giving a couple of dollars to the man standing at a street corner; the very dollars you were going to spend for coffee on the way to church.

Love isn’t about the next big thing that everyone else has.  It is acknowledging all that I have are gifts from Him.

The opposite of love is walking around with the nicest clothes, with head held high, with the expectation that all around you will notice and give you preferential treatment.  It is giving everyone a voice.
It is the realization that you are not that important.  It is the acceptance of equality of idea, belief, stature, hope, dreams, and life.

Love is about sitting in the back at church not wanting to be seen or giving the best piece of pie at the potluck to the person who really needs it. It is giving up your place in line when it is inconvenient. In traffic, it is giving the other guy a way to get in even though he has just cut off three other cars. And when someone does not let you in, you say to yourself, “we all have places to go.”

Love is not caring about a heavenly scorecard keeping the size and quantity of sins for everyone else but me.
Love does not reveal the secrets of other travelers going the same way, instead, love takes delight and joy in new understandings and knowledge.

Love puts up with more than anyone would expect. When things get you down, love is there to bring you back up because God is trust.  Love in you will always be looking for the best in people, best in events, best in circumstances and best in the worst.

For Love, the past is the past and we need not look back with feelings of regret and longing; Love simply keeps going to the ultimate rewards of God.

You see my friends, Love just keeps on going, it never stops, it does not grow weary, it does not slow down because of resistance or age.

All that I have written will be nothing someday.  All the lessons I have diligently prepared and presented in God’s name will be gone and forgotten.

Even the essence of my intellect and understanding will reach a limit.

I can not know it all; I try with all my strength to push one more idea or catchphrase into my limited mind.  But I still know just a little piece of the truth. Everything I have ever learned, explored, understood, known, taught, preached, prayed is and will always be incomplete.  The good news is that when the total, the complete, the absolute, the perfect arrives, my incompleteness will all be eliminated.

When I was a kid, running wild in the streets and hills, I had few responsibilities or wonder.  I spoke of little things and fretted about even smaller things.  But I have grown up and have eliminated all the little things only to be confronted by the things I cannot know.

Today we can’t see the things that are right before our eyes.  There seems to be a wispy cloud between God and me.  I want to see better, I want to find some tool to dispel the mist, but there is none to be found.

Someday the mist will part.  Someday the fog will burn through by a great light. I won’t be long before the crystal-clear day dawns and the sun will cast its warmth upon my face and I will be warmed by it.  We’ll see it all then.  We will see as clearly and keenly as God sees.  Someday the view will be so clear so perfect that we all will see as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

Until that perfect completeness comes and reveals itself through the new day, we must keep on loving. Faith in the love of God has for us, hope in the inescapable and unchanging Love of God and to simply Love without extravagant limits.  But the best of these is simple and uncomplicated; LOVE!

Bible, Culture, Life, Personal, Sermon Illustration

Knowing and knowing

In teaching ten men on a weekly basis, I have often reached conclusions in my own personal study as I prepare.  Sometimes they are nothing more than a black hole dragging me away from the subject I was trying to understand.  The word “know” throughout the Bible has been most often related to a relationship.  It is more than head knowledge.  It is coming to point of value to the thing or person you have come to know.  It is not just a compilation of facts.  It is coming to understanding and that understanding is worth something.  Only with a sense of importance and a value, does it become known.

An example may help here.  I was returning from Oakland airport after picking up a special visitor to my home.  I left the airport and my GPS device reported immediately there was going to be a 20-minute delay on my chosen route home.  Intellectually I understood what 20 minutes were.  It was a simple inconvenience.  So we pulled into the prime commute traffic heading North.  About three miles down the road I hit the traffic.  in which no one was going anywhere fast.

After experiencing this congestion for seven minutes, my mind told me there would be a reprieve in a couple of minutes or so.  At that point my trusty GPS reported a change in the traffic pattern, “there will be a 54-minute delay on your route. My intellectual understanding of being inconvenienced changed to knowledge.  As we moved as a dreadnaught of hundreds of cars down the five lanes of traffic, I began to be a little irritated with little things.  Little things like motorcycles whizzing down between cars with only inches to spare started to irritate me a little.  I started keeping track of two or three cars that seemed to want to change lanes with every opportunity to gain on the rest of us willing to go with the flow.  It was nerve-wracking.

I was really getting to know traffic. When you know something beyond a simple understanding and then when you become a part of it you are changed.  To know of a future delay and becoming part of it is two separate things.  When you know something as the Bible uses know, then you have to live it. To know is experiencing and being changed by it.  It affects your feelings, your hopes, your dreams, and even your driving habits.

John 17:24 is John’s intent to tell us about knowing God.  His intent is to tell us that knowing God is more than an intellectual head knowledge.  Knowing God is seeing the value.  Knowing God is the relationship.  Knowing God is being changed.  Knowing God is an intimacy. Knowing is more than a warning of an impending delay in my plans, any more than our concept of hell slowing us down.

Bible, Personal

The hour has come

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Behold, my hour has come.

The Passover meal is set before us in the place I have chosen.  Passover is to be a celebration of the deliverance of my people in the face of desperate persecution and slavery. Judas had made his exit, leaving a cloud of speculation and disappointment. There seems to be a marked change in the countenance of the remaining eleven. Somber, yet inquisitive eyes, all trying to understand.  Trying to figure out the next chapter.  They don’t really understand it all.  I have taught so much in such a short time.  But they don’t yet understand.

I recline here with my friends, my companions for well over three years.  I love them.  I have cared for them. I have fed them from God’s abundance.  Buy my example of care and affection, I have tried to explain the purpose of my life and of their lives. They do not understand the time is at hand.

To demonstrate to these special men the love I have for them, I remove my cloak and overshirt and wrap myself in a towel.  All the while, they stare and whisper.  With a slow deliberation, I pour water into a bowl and I move to each person in turn and wash their feet.

Of course, Peter, my rock, my skeptical fisherman would not let it go.  My servanthood lesson could not go unchallenged. Looking down at my attempt to show my love for him he stated, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

I looked up into Peter’s impetuous and alarmed eyes and said, “Peter, someday you will understand.”  You see, my hour had come.

In his own rough scratchy voice and pulling back his feet from my hand, Peter says, “You shall never wash my feet.”  After much discussion and further objections, the deed was completed.

“Do you really understand what I have done for you?”  You see my hour had come.  It was the place of no turning back.  No more would there be laughter and fishing. No more would there be a few fish turning into baskets full.  No more walking along the Sea of Galilee.  It was the first moment of the end of my earthly life.  My hour had come.

I am filled with emotion and deep feelings.  I lean back at that table of now somber men and remember the beginning of it all.  I remember the hour I spoke, and the world came into being.  The hour I walked in the cool of the evening with Adam.  I was there in the beginning.  I was there witnessing all the trails of tears of Israel. I had to come to be a part of my treasure. And now my hour had come.

I close my eyes to see Mary and Joseph.  I remember well the time I told my mother, “My hour had yet not come.” Three years and it is now over. I am now at the time where it is to end.  The end of my purpose.  My purpose to walk, talk, understand, care, hope, be disappointed, to teach, be misunderstood, to be hailed, and to be criticized. It was time to give up and let go.  My hour had come.

From that first hour, this world has made its path around the sun.  It has been the home of my greatest treasure.  Yet it has been corrupted by war and famine and disease.  My greatest treasure has darkened the surface with suffering, pain, and hate.  They have wallowed in despair, never understanding the true nature of the purpose.

This despair and pain were unavoidable.  It came with my gift of freedom. That freedom became license.  That license became the darkness.  My greatest treasure became without worth.  No money would ever buy the redemptive value of my treasure.  I had to come and pay the price.  My hour has come.

The darkness will be even more intense.  Man will always be cruel.  The poor will always be on the street corners asking for one more coin. There will droughts, famines, war, pestilence, hate, disease.  Yet, in the middle of it all will now be a bright shining light.  There will be a hope.  There will be redemption offered.  My hour has come

Someday a new hour will come, and I will plunge a fiery sword into the very innards of the earth.  It will split like an overripe fruit.  This world of pain will pass away. It will be swallowed up and obliterated. The mountains, seas, oceans, plains, deserts, forests will all pass away.  Someday that hour will come.  But as I listen to the hushed tones of my friends and realize I must teach some more.  I still have work to do.  I must give them my words of life.  To help them understand the end is near.  I must tell them, “My hour has come.”

Bible, Ministry, Personal, Theology

Discernment

If ever there was a person that looked for the little things in life it was Jesus.  He had that habit about Him.  He is full of sympathy and sensitivity.  I can only imagine walking the dusty and dirty streets of Palestine with eyes flashing back and beyond, always looking, always seeking, always noticing.  When He entered the house of Peter, Jesus noticed his Mother-in-law was down with a fever. Matt 8:14. No one needed to tell Jesus of the problem.  No one slipped up to his ear warning the dinner might be late because one of the servers was sick. He just noticed.  He perceived the situation and went straight to her and touched her hand.

Jesus walking with the disciples noticed everything.  He noticed the patched garments of the children, the long lines of men out of work.  He noticed the great and the small.  He noticed the hypocrisy of the priesthood. He noticed a sore back from fishing all night and showed where the easy fishing was.  In the middle of one of his greatest sermons, He stopped and took notice that they “were hungry.” In the shadow of one of the greatest architectural masterpieces in that part of the world, the Temple, He stopped and noticed a woman putting in her last coin. He noticed the uneasiness of the keeper of the purse at the last supper. He noticed the women at the cross amid the terrible pain.

It was His habit.  It was his character.  It was one of the characteristics of the life of Jesus.  It is close to the center of his being.  God notices.

Are you suffering in silence, God notices.  If you can’t seem to stretch that last dollar to the end of the month, God notices.  If you can’t seem to find the light at the end of the tunnel of your life, God notices.  If the kids are driving you crazy, God notices.

And we too must take notice.  To walk through life with a glazed over, blank stare is to miss all of life’s finer adventures and to miss the very things God would have us see.  If we blunt our hearts to the suffering and heartache of those around us, we will lose the God-like gift of noticing.

God’s gift to us is noticing and our gift to those around us is noticing.   We need that gift of seeing the small, to see the currents within the grand sweeping river of life.

It is a God-given perception of the small.  It is noticing.

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