Contemplative Bible Reading

Acts 8:1-4 (New Living Translation)

Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.

A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. ² (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) ³ But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.

⁴ But the believers who were scattered preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went.

This is the (hi)story of the scattering of Christians due to a great persecution in Jerusalem.

I call this preaching in the rat race and I find it to be a model that fits well in our current post-post-post-something-or-other-but-we’re-still-sinners-world (I think I just created something here ;-). Anyways, the followers of Jesus the Christ went here and there. What did they do here and there? They told people about Jesus the Christ. They couldn’t help themselves; they had to talk about Jesus.

We can do this today. Where ever we find ourselves in the rat race, we tell people about Jesus the Christ. Pretty simple, yet not always easy.

Luke 24:36 (New Living Translation)

And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. “Peace be with you,” he said.

I know this is out of context in a sort, but just read the sentence.

Jesus is here, Peace be with you, the end. All in well with mankind. Pretty simple. Sometimes we make it more complex.

Genesis 14:22-23 (New English Translation)

22 But Abram replied to the king of Sodom, “I raise my hand to the LORD, the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth, and vow 23 that I will take nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal. That way you can never say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’

Notice Abram’s testimony, how he describes God:

the Most High…Creator of heaven and earth

I hear a lot of talk these days about God and gods. There is one true God – the Creator of all, and that is how Abram describes who his people called Yahweh or Jehovah. We worship the creator – however you translate that.

Then notice Abram’s reaction to the creator God:

I praise God and, as a result, I will behave in a righteous manner.

In short, that is the life of a follower of God, a follower of Christ: acknowledge Him and live righteously as a result.

Genesis 4:17 (New English Translation)

4:17 Cain had marital relations with his wife, and she became pregnant43 and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was building a city, and he named the city after his son Enoch

Okay, here is my (probably silly) theory on where these other people came from:

I think the Garden of Eden was the start of the line of people that God followed through the nation of Abraham to Jesus. The Garden was literally in place, and Adam and Eve literally lived there. When Adam and Eve left the Garden, they met the other people living on the planet. Those other people were created by God for His purposes.

Okay, now you know what I think about this today. Perhaps tomorrow I will have another thought on the topic, or perhaps the topic won’t cross my mind for another ten years.

Genesis 4:6-7 (New English Translation)

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why is your expression downcast? 7 Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it.”

Can a downcast expression lead to sin?

Does a downcast expression indicate that sin is crouching at the door?

Is sin always crouching at the door?

Does sin desire to dominate each of all each moment?

How do we subdue sin?

As usual, writing the questions is much easier than writing the answers. I find these verses an interesting turn on words.

Mark 7:8-13 (New Living Translation)

⁸ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

⁹ And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ ¹¹ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— ¹² then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. ¹³ Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

I like the words used in the New Living Translation for these verses. The wording explains the concept of “Corban” in simple terms.

Jesus is rebuking the religious leaders for prohibiting people from doing anything for their father or mother. What? How is that religious? How is neglecting father and mother good and righteous?

I have no doubt that the religious leaders had good intentions. I have no doubt that when this tradition began that people knew how to use it and when not to use it.

Things that people create just seem to spiral downward from good intentions to really bad acts.

Today? Oh yes, I am sure that if we observed our lives we would find similar things that started with good intentions and have spiraled down into a bad practice – one that pushes us away from God. The shame of these things is that they make it difficult for some seeking God to plow their way through our lousy traditions.

God, help me to see the obstacles I have created and remove them.

Luke 17:7-10 (New Living Translation)

⁷ “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? ⁸ Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? ⁹ Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? ¹⁰ So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Jesus precedes this statement with, “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come.”

One of those “stumblers” is servants who think more highly of themselves than they ought. Jesus tells us that sometimes we are merely doing what is expected of us, and we need to remember that.

The phrase that keeps coming to me lately is, “but when is it my turn?” We say, or think, “I have given money in the plate every Sunday for decades – 10% and more. The church helps people with money and has a dinner to honor people and puts a plaque on the end of a pew with a person’s name but when is it my turn? When will I be honored and helped and blessed and…”

Uh, wait, “when will I be blessed?”

Am I kidding? When will I be blessed? Perhaps the question is, “when has God never blessed me?” (Please note the “n” in that question.) When was the time that God treated me as an unworthy servant? When did He not give me far more than I ever earned or deserved?

Thank God for humble duty and undeserved reward and a life of this Master saying, “Come along now and sit down to eat.”

Luke 19:41-44 (New Living Translation)

⁴¹ As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it ⁴² and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

Jesus is heading for His crucifixion. He looks at Jerusalem – the City of Peace – from a distance and weeps. I think that means he broke down and cried tears.

His sorrow came because His people, those from Judah, did not realize that the peace that cannot be understood was right in front of them. Note the last phrase of verse 44, the people did not recognize God’s coming.

Excuses? Yes, the people had plenty of them. They had heard the promises of a Messiah and interpreted them to mean something that made great and perfect sense to them. They had interpreted poorly.

Today? Do we interpret any better? Are we looking for what God will bring? Will we recognize God’s coming? We like to think that the answers to these questions are a matter-of-fact yes. We won’t, we can’t, be mistaken like the people who lived in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. Or will we or can we? Of course we can. Will we? Let’s pray that we will be better than those who went before us.

John 14:26 (New Living Translation)

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

After Jesus ascended He sent the Holy Spirit. One thing the Holy Spirit would do for those who followed Jesus day to day was remind them of everything Jesus told them.

Note, the Holy Spirit would not put new words in their minds (at least not mentioned here). The Holy Spirit would tickle those parts of their minds that held what Jesus told them. Those words were in their minds, waiting to be recalled.

God created us in the bodies we have. He gave us our minds and muscles and all those things. Now and then I find a passage that pushes me to believe that our created bodies are far more capable than we might imagine. We have (hi)stories in the Bible of people doing amazing physical acts. Here, I believe, we have a (hi)story of people doing what we would consider amazing mental acts: remembering everything – not just the gist or main points but everything –  Jesus told them over a three-year period.

We have truly amazing created bodies. Would it be worthwhile to realize the full potential of these created bodies? Or might that only lead us into foolish pride?

Matthew 27:19 (New Living Translation)

While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”

I tend to notice Bible passages that notice dreams. Perhaps I put to much emphasis on these dreams because I seem to have dreams and dream patterns that don’t match what those who study sleep say average people have. I can fall asleep, dream a dream, and wake – all in less than two minutes. But I digress.

Here we have Pilate’s wife interrupting him during the judgement of Jesus. “I had a dream,” she proclaims.

Did God give her that dream that brought much suffering? Does God give us our dreams today? All of them? Some of them? Just one every now and then?

God created us. He created our minds. He created the need for sleep and He created sleep. He created dreams.

I believe that God talks to us through our dreams. I can’t prove that and I could be absolutely wrong. Still, we have cases in the Bible where God spoke to people through their dreams.