Category Archives: Life

He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures – Luke 24:24-25

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44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

A while back, GQ magazine got some attention by putting the Bible on a list of books not worth reading.  I never actually read the list in GQ myself.  I only learned about it from USA Today.  Feel free to check out at least the headline there.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/04/23/gq-magazine-puts-bible-list-classic-books-not-worth-reading/541325002/

By writing such a thing, maybe the GQ columnist was hoping to increase GQ readership as compared with the Bible. If so, I don’t believe it worked.

There is something here that is understandable though, and that is that the Bible can be hard to understand.  Christ’s own disciples were often stumped by it, just as they were often stumped by Christ.  After the resurrection, however, much of that began to change.  Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  And that brings us to where we are today.

We are far removed from the people and events of the Bible, both by time and by geography.  Sitting here in my office on the edge of downtown Indianapolis, the events of the Bible happened a long time ago on a continent far, far away.  And that can be troubling.  

We can feel much like those early disciples.  Confused, bewildered, baffled.  If we give up too soon, we can come to the premature conclusion of the GQ guy and think the Bible just isn’t worth reading.  We need Jesus to explain things to us.  Like the psalmist we may cry out,

Open my eyes, that I may behold
       wondrous things out of your law. (Psalm 119:18)

Jesus even promised that the Holy Spirit would come to teach us.  In John 14:26, he said, 

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 

Without God’s help we just might not get it.  But with his help, we can find ourselves agreeing again with the psalmist,

92 If your law had not been my delight,
    I would have perished in my affliction.
93 I will never forget your precepts,
    for by them you have given me life. (Psalm 119:92-93)

When Jesus challenged his disciples, the Peter gave a response that all of us should be able to repeat after him.  Here it is in John 6,

67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Let’s make God’s word our delight and far from being critical of it, we will find that it will become for us a source of life.

Comments on Our Collective Mentality: A Shared Article about Pasternak, the Soviet Union, the New York Times and Where the USA Finds Itself Today

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I found this article by Izabella Taborovsky well worth reading.  It is not full of sensationalism, hype or doomsday prophecy.  It is, however, a sober reflection on the reality we now inhabit.  

Click on the image to go to the article:

Tablet Magazine

Of course it’s worth it – Luke 14:26-33

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There is a paradox involved in serving Jesus.  We know we are saved by grace and that the eternal life we receive from God is nothing but a gift from him.  At the same time, Jesus makes it very clear that discipleship is truly costly.  This is a cost we all need to count.

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

First some clarification of that love/hate thing.  Those words, love and hate, were used in that culture at that time as comparative terms, not necessarily opposites. Matthew makes this clearer than Luke, in Matthew 10:37-38.

37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

But the point Jesus makes is still stark.  Our love of God and determination to follow Jesus must be our highest affections.  No person or thing, not even our own lives, can stand in the way of our commitment to Christ.  Nothing can be held as superior to him.  

These are serious words and must be taken as seriously as they are meant.  Jesus encourages us to count the cost.  Are we ready to pay this price?  Can we finish building the tower?  Are we ready to go to war?  Remember, we need to renounce all that we have.

Of course the most faithful, fully devoted discipleship worth any price we might pay.  Does  t bring tension into some relationships?  It’s worth it.  Do we even lose one or more of those relationships as result of following Christ?  Will it affect us materially, in the realm of our career goals, wealth or possessions?  Probably so, according to Jesus, to all of the above questions.  Still, it’s worth it.

Paul served Jesus a long time and endured far more than most in exchange.  Let’s remember the conclusions of his thorough assessment in 2 Corinthians 4:17.  No matter what we face as we follow Jesus, it is nearly nothing.  The glory that awaits us is better to an absurd extreme.

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

We need to count the cost of discipleship, but of course this will only determine for us that it’s worth it in the end.

Anticipating two births – Luke 1:24, 34-35

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Here in Luke 1, we get the stories leading up to the births, and even the conceptions, of both John the Baptist and his relative, Jesus Christ.  After the angel Gabriel speaks to John’s father, we read, in Luke 1:24,

After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived.

Gabriel also speaks to Mary.  When he does, he says, in Luke 1:34-35,

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

Gabriel announced God’s plans to these interested participants before the children in question were even conceived.  This tells us something about God’s plans, and ours.  

I’m reminded of what God said to the prophet in Jeremiah 1:4-5,

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jesus, John and Jeremiah all had obviously special roles to play in God’s plans for his people.  Without getting into a too-lengthy study on the subject, there is ample evidence to conclude he has specific, and therefore special, plans for each one of us.  Each human life is important and a part of God’s plan.  

The plans for each person are not special because of who we are.  These plans are special because of whose they are and whose we are as a result.  If God created us with a plan, then that is something we need to take seriously.

There is a prayer from Hilary of Poitiers (who you can read about here), in which he says,

Before I came to know you, I was nothing.  I had the misfortune not to know the meaning of life, I was without understanding of myself, I was nothing of what I am now.  It was your mercy that gave me life.  I have no doubt that you decided it would be good for me to be born, for you are good, you had no need of me and you would not have given me life if it had been to my detriment … *

Personally, I would like to live out the thoughts expressed in that prayer for the rest of my life.  Hilary does not express God’s plan or purpose for him.  He only admits that he can trust that it must be good.  God is good and deserves that kind of trust from us, his created beings.  Whatever God’s purpose and plans are for each one of us, may we fulfill them to the utmost.

*from Early Christian Prayers, edited by A. Hamman, translated by Walter Mitchell