Contemplative Bible Reading

Hosea 9:1-2 (New Living Translation)

O people of Israel,
do not rejoice as other nations do.
For you have been unfaithful to your God,
hiring yourselves out like prostitutes,
worshiping other gods on every threshing floor.
² So now your harvests will be too small to feed you.
There will be no grapes for making new wine.

Growing crops is an odd endeavor. Sometimes the plants don’t grow; sometimes people aren’t fed by the crops. That’s just the way it is.

Good crops come most of the time. It is easy to take for granted a projection of good crops to come. It is easy to take for granted the blessings of God in crops.

It is easy to take for granted the blessings of God in a lot of endeavors.

Good doesn’t come most of the time just because that is the way it is. Good comes as a blessing from God. God, please don’t let me forget this.

John 15:19 (New Living Translation)

The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.

Christians are no longer part of the world. We have opted out for something else. That is one of the reasons that those in the world hate Christians – we have rejected the world.

Perhaps we can spin this and say that we have chosen Christ and not really rejected the world. Well, choosing Christ implies a rejection of the world.

No one likes being rejected. No wonder they hate us.

Romans 2:1 (New Living Translation)

You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.

Who, me? Just as bad? This must be a misprint or something. The words must be out of context.

I can think of all sorts of excuses why this verse doesn’t mean what it says, but those are just excuses. Yes, I am just as bad as the other guy. And I am just as forgiven as the other guy. Praise God for His grace.

Amos 2:6 (New Living Translation)

This is what the Lord says:

Romans 1:25 (New Living Translation)

They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.

This is a problem in man. We worship the first thing we see. We don’t tend to look beyond the immediate to what brought the immediate. Look back to verse 20 of this chapter:

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

God’s creation shows His qualities and power. Do we worship God or what He created. Too often the answer is the latter.

Romans 1:16-17 (New Living Translation)

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. ¹⁷ This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”

I love the New Living Translation’s wording of these two verses. Simple, direct:

This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight.

Without the good news of the one anointed to take away our sins, we are lousy in the sight of God. (“lousy” is a very charitable word) With the good news of the one anointed to take away our sins, we are made right in the sight of God.

Simple, direct, plain. I love the translation.

Acts 10:2 (New Living Translation)

He gave generously to the poor and prayed regularly to God.

Read that description of a man. Read it several times. How would you describe that man? What comes to my mind is:

He was a good man.

He gave generously to the poor. He prayed to God regularly. Yes, a good man. That is my description.

What was he doing in Acts chapter 10? He was seeking the Messiah, the Christ, the one anointed to take away the sins of the world. All this “good man” stuff was and still is insufficient.

Consider the rest of the chapter. This man – a Roman officer – sent for Peter to learn of the Christ. He accepted Peter’s teaching and became a follower of Jesus of Nazareth – the son of God.

John 4:4-7 (New Living Translation)

⁴ He had to go through Samaria on the way. ⁵ Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. ⁷ Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her,“Please give me a drink.”

Who? The Sycharian woman?

Funny how we attach titles to passages in the Bible. John chapter 4 is about the Woman at the Well. Everyone (well, almost) knows that story. And where did this woman live? Many people can come up with “Samaria” as an answer because the Samaritans were to be shunned by the Hebrews, and it was odd that Jesus would speak to such a Samaritan. How many people can name the village near the well?

The Sycharian woman is one of the best-known persons in the New Testament. It is just that everyone knows her by a different title.

How does the story change if we call it:

• The Sycharian woman
• The woman of five husbands
• The thirsty woman
• The lone woman

and so on.

2 Chronicles 15:5-7 (New Living Translation)

⁵ “During those dark times, it was not safe to travel. Problems troubled the people of every land. ⁶ Nation fought against nation, and city against city, for God was troubling them with every kind of problem.⁷ But as for you, be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.”

I work in project management. One of the fundamentals of that is something called risk management. The fundamental question in risk management is,

what could possibly go wrong?

Years of asking this question has brought long lists of problems to mind. Something that I have noticed is the vast majority of these possible problems don’t happen. They are possible and some are likely, but most don’t happen.

Not so in the verses above. At that time, in that place, God allowed every kind of possible problem to occur. That must have been awful. Imagine you have four flat tires on your car this morning as well as a dead battery. Far fetched? Not really as it is possible. Then when you work past that, the fire department has the road blocked because they are fighting a fire. Far fetched? Not really as it is possible. I could go on.

God grants us peace in our lives every day. He doesn’t trouble us with every kind of problem as He did during the time described in these verses.

Thank you God for your peaceful hand in our lives. We don’t deserve it, but we certainly enjoy it.

John 3:19-21 (New Living Translation)

“And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. ²⁰ All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. ²¹ But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

Sometimes I forget everything in the third chapter of John’s gospel except 3:16. Here is something I find important – the simple discussion of light and dark. Jesus is speaking in these verses. He speaks of simple things:

God’s light came into the world

This pulls me back to the creation (hi)story in Genesis 1:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Suppose we only had tiny fragments of the Bible. If we just had these two little pieces from John 3 and Genesis 1, we would probably have more than we needed.

There was darkness in the world, and God brought light. The End.