Contemplative Bible Reading

1 Timothy 2:1-2 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

¹ First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, ² for kings and all those who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

I am concentrating on the last phrase of verse 2. That one gives me peace and rest. Paul is urging us to pray for good circumstances in our society so that something may happen. I think Paul wants this thing to happen because it is good for us as Christians. That thing is a life that is tranquil, quiet, godly, and dignified.

Let’s look at a definition:

tran·quil (trngkwl, trn-)adj.

– The Free Dictionary

I have been moving towards a tranquil life for the last ten or so years. I want it. I am more tranquil now that I used to be. I have less commotion and fewer disturbances. I have less anxiety, tension, and restlessness. I am more steady. I have not reached tranquility, but I am moving to there.

I desire more dignity in my life. Again, a definition:

dig·ni·ty (dgn-t)n. pl. dig·ni·ties

– The Free Dictionary

I like these words. I wish one day to have them applied to me.

Please note, a tranquil and quiet life does not mean sitting on the couch watching TV all day and night. There are works of service and love to do all around us. We can and should do these so that those about us can see Jesus. Nevertheless, we can do them as part of a peaceful life. At least where I live, people will notice the peaceful life and ask of its source.

This is not a usual entry in this blog. Instead of commenting on scripture, I write a little about health care and what churches could be doing.

One of the missions of Christianity is to care for the poor. Churches in America have succeeded, but it is a success that ultimately may lead to failure. Moral imperatives from churches moved our government to collect taxes and use tax money to fund health care for the poor. This would be good were it not for the common failings of government. It seems that, regardless of the best intentions, government is largely inefficient and ineffective. One result is that persons following the Christian imperative to help the poor pay 30%, 40%, and more of their income in taxes and yet there are many poor who do not have adequate health care. The tax drain on the religious largely prevents them from contributing enough through churches to provide health care for the poor.

Consider that there are people in America who have jobs, but do not have health insurance. They have some money – too much for government aid and not enough for medical care.

For the most part, churches cannot pay health care bills for these people who receive no government aid. Health care bills for the uninsured are huge. A young man I know broke a leg last year. He had no health insurance, and the bill was nearly $10,000. His church could pay the bill for him, but that is only the cost of one person having one accident.

A modest proposal is to do what churches have done for centuries – medical missionaries. Churches have sent medical missionaries to Africa, Asia, and other places in the world for several hundred years. The concept was that these missionaries would attract the locals with a service they didn’t have – health care. Once the medical missionary showed love to the locals through medicine, the Bible would be taught. “This is what Christians do, and this is why.”

I propose churches do the same domestically – in America. Pay the costs for a person to attend medical school. That allows a person to become an MD debt-free. Instead of spending a large portion of their new MD salary on debt reduction, the debt-free doctor would spend a large portion of time (a third to a half) treating people at no cost. The same would be done for nurses and other medical professionals.

Such a plan would take time to come to fruition – probably eight years for the first group of debt-free doctors to emerge. After that time, there should be a steady stream of doctors coming every year.

One problem – will the government allow doctors to treat people at no cost? Will a doctor be allowed to perform surgery on people at no cost?

If someone in Congress would take up the cause, perhaps we can push this through. All that is left is for churches and others to step forward.

Jude verse 12 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

These are the ones who are like dangerous reefs at your love feasts. They feast with you, nurturing only themselves without fear. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; trees in late autumn – fruitless, twice dead, pulled out by the roots,

Jude is writing to Christians about “ungodly men.” He describes these ungodly men with several hundred words. Most of the words used by Jude draw pictures. Many of the words in the few verses of Jude’s letter caught my eye and caused me to draw such pictures. One phrase in verse 12 caused a particular mark in my mind – “waterless clouds.”

I once lived in a desert. It was dry there – I mean it was really dry there. For entertainment, (this is an indication of how bored we were) we would take a pair of blue jeans that were made of heavy cotton and soak them in water. We would take this dripping wet pair of heavy jeans and hang it on a clothes line to see how quickly it would turn stone dry. It didn’t take long. (For lots of entertainment, we would do the same in the dead of winter. The jeans would quickly freeze, but then, just as fast as in the summer, they would dry. Yes, we were bored.)

Anyways, we had plenty of clouds in this dry desert. Great big beautiful clouds in the otherwise clear blue sky. Practically none of these big beautiful clouds had any water. They just teased us with the thought of rain. They were worthless. Sure, they gave us a little shade now and then, but we didn’t need shade to live; we needed water, and these clouds didn’t deliver any water.

Jude tells us that this is one of the characteristics of ungodly men. They look like they can bring something useful, something we need like love, compassion, charity, patience, and many other things that godly men and women bring, but they bring none of that. They are merely waterless clouds. Worthless.

God, help me to be a cloud filled with water. Help me to bring what godly men and women bring to this world, what they bring to one another.

This is a little different contemplative Bible reading today as the words don’t come from the Bible but from a popular song. I was singing this song during a recent worship service when I noticed some words that I have never noticed before:

No more let sins and sorrow grow
Nor thorns infest the grown

This is from the second verse of “Joy to the World.” The words were written by Isaac Watts in 1719. The words describe conditions in our world and the hope that these conditions will cease.

The second phrase (nor thorns infest the ground) describes something that we see easily – thorns infesting the ground. These are weeds and weeds are anything that we don’t want to grow. I have weeds in my front yard; I have weeds in my back yard, and I have weeds in the plant that someone left on the table in my office at work when they vacated that office years ago. Weeds and thorns – they are everywhere.

The first phrase (no more let sins and sorrow grow) describes things we don’t see so easily. Well, we do see the sorrows. They are all around us in the people we meet every day. Anguish, pain, suffering, sorrows – I don’t know that we would know how to live if these things disappeared one day. Then there are the sins. We don’t like to talk about sins much. I mean, they have that tone of some things are right and some things are not right (we don’t like to use the word “wrong” much these days). But we don’t see “sins” much or at least we don’t like to admit we see them. In calmer moments when we have time to reflect, we do admit that sins are in the world. We do admit that much of the sorrows we see come from the sins that we don’t so readily see.

These two phrases describe conditions of the fallen world. Sin caused Adam and Eve to exit the Garden of Eden. They walked out into a world that had sin in it. They also walked out into a world that had weeds and thorns growing. They had to work hard to grow food around those weeds.

Life was certainly different in the fallen world than it was in the pure Garden of Eden. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. His coming set in motion a series of events that will culminate in a restored world freed from the problems of this fallen one. No more sins and sorrow, no more thorns and weeds.

2 Timothy 1:7 (New International Version)

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

This seems like an odd trio: power, love, and self-discipline.

From dictionary.com

Power: ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

Love: affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one’s neighbor.

Self-Discipline: discipline and training of oneself, usually for improvement.

These still seem like an odd trio, but this is what God has given to us.

I think God has given us the ability to train ourselves to act in a way that leads to the well-being of others. I am sure there are other ways to combine this trio, but that one will do for now.

2 Peter 3:3 (New International Version)

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.

This struck me as one of those obvious things. Scoffers will come and they will be scoffing. Well, what else what a scoffer do? (By the way, to scoff is to to speak derisively; mock; jeer.)

This brings to mind the relationships among words that we use, but don’t often realize or admit. For example, if a person lies (does not tell the truth), that person is a liar. Whoa, that is a tough label to assign to someone, but that is the definition. The Bible talks of liars.

Another type of person in the Bible is a divisive person. I have heard of lots of people called divisive, but a divisive person is one who divides things. A person who disagrees with you isn’t a divisive person because they merely disagree. If you tell them to leave because you cannot abide being near a person who disagrees, then you are a divisive person because you are dividing.

Strange how some words are.

Habakkuk 3:17-18 (New International Version)

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

We don’t have the luxury of choosing our circumstances.

Sometimes:

• the fig tree doesn’t bud
• there are no grapes on the vine
• the olive crop fails
• the fields produce no crops
• there are no sheep
• there are no cattle

Or, let’s bring it up to date and to the suburban world:

• the boss gives the other guy the bonus
• the grass grows too long and the lawn mower breaks
• the homeowner’s association cites the house for peeling paint
• the car has an oil leak
• my kid’s teacher wants a conference about bad behavior

Regardless of the circumstances, I can choose to rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in God my Savior.

2 Timothy 1:6 (New International Version)

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

What a great phrase – fan into flame.

I have a confession to make, a confession of a 50-something year old man acting like a little boy. I have a big magnifying glass, about 6″ in diameter. I have a lot of brown dry leaves in my back yard in the fall. I also have a lot of clear, sunny days in the fall. Do you know where this is going? Yes, I make a small pile of dry leaves, hit the leaves with a magnified spot of sun, and fan the smoldering leaves into a flame. I hope my daughter-in-law doesn’t read this as she may never let me play with my grandson again.

I read this verse and I feel myself blowing on the ember in the pile of leaves. I blow and wave and fan and a flame erupts in the leaves. I am thrilled – even at my age.

How thrilled was Paul to see Timothy’s gifts erupt? How thrilled is God when he sees what he gives us erupt into something more?

2 Corinthians 7:6 (New International Version)

⁶But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus,

In this simple little verse, Paul writes of an occasion when he and some other Christians were downcast – another way of writing that they were a depressed. God gave them some comfort. The form of the comfort – a visit by a friend named Titus.

Often, it seems to me that God works in grand and mysterious ways. He does that often.

Then there are times when God works in simple, little, almost trivial yet wonderful ways. Someone says hello; a stranger chuckles at something you both see while standing in a stalled line at the grocery store, and any of many little, simple, comforting actions.

Here is a simple little action that brings comfort.

Titus visited.

All we are told is that Titus visited. Titus didn’t perform any wonders; he didn’t manifest any miracles, he just visited. A friend from another place and another time comes to the here and now. We smile; we hug, and we renew joy.

This is simple, yet refreshing and recreating to the spirit and emotion.

Let God use us all as comforters. Let’s visit one another.

Acts 28:4-6 (New International Version)

⁴When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” ⁵But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. ⁶The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.

Here is another one of those “big change of mind” occasions we find in the Bible.

First, Paul was a murderer. I don’t make the connection of being bitten by a snake and being a murderer. That must have been part of the local folklore – only murderers are bitten by snakes or something like that.

Next, bitten by a snake meant that you would swell up suddenly and fall dead. I can buy that one. A poisonous snake latches onto your hand, has a while to fill you with deadly venom, and you die. Hence the adjective “deadly” attached to the noun “venom.”

Finally, Paul doesn’t swell up and suddenly fall dead. This is inexplicable except for one explanation – Paul is a god. Well, that explanation isn’t right. Paul had heard it a few times in his ministry, but it still wasn’t true. Paul was serving the one true God, and God had chosen for Paul to live instead of swelling up and suddenly dying.

Local folklore meets the power of God. The power of God holds sway – every time.