Contemplative Bible Reading

Philemon 1:7 (New Living Translation)

Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed the hearts of God’s people.

Paul is thanking Philemon. Philemon has allowed God to work through him to refresh hearts with joy and comfort through kindness.

Philemon didn’t have to do that. Philemon could have concentrated his life on other pursuits. It is a sacrifice to allow God to work through us. That sacrifice is our spiritual worship of God (see Romans chapter 12).

Paul recognizes that sacrifice in Philemon and thanks him.

If you see that sacrifice in someone, be sure to thank them.

Habakkuk 1:16 (New Living Translation)

Then they will worship their nets
and burn incense in front of them.
“These nets are the gods who have made us rich!”
they will claim.

The prophet is pleading to God for mercy. Invaders will come and do as they wish with God’s people. No small fact, but God’s people deserve what is coming due to disobedience.

The invaders will become rich from what they take from God’s people.

Note: God’s people have something worth the cost of an invading army and all that comes with it. God’s people are worth the trouble of conquering. God has blessed them so much.

Hmmm, the blessings of God become a curse to the disobedient. The blessings of God made them rich in worldly goods. If you are in the business of invading, conquering, and plundering…well, go to God’s people.

In many ways, I am rich in worldly goods. God has blessed me in many ways, and some of those ways have led to worldly riches. So, now what do I do? Am I ripe for plundering? Am I disobedient? Does any of that matter?

Please God, help me to serve and love and care daily. Please help me in my unbelief.

Exodus 1:8-10 (New Living Translation)

8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. 10 We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”

While the Israelites lived in Egypt (led there by Joseph), they prospered. God blessed them, they were fruitful, they multiplied.

Generations pass, and a new king rules Egypt. He has a “problem.” There are multitudes of Hebrews living in Egypt. These Hebrews continue to multiply. Simple demographics warn him of a future of an Egypt populated and controlled by Hebrews.

There are several dangers. One of the more difficult to notice is the last sentence in the verses above, “Then they will escape from the country.” The Hebrews will leave Egypt.

Problem solved, right? Wrong.

The new king recognized the value that the Hebrews brought Egypt. They were healthy, and they created wealth. The people of God brought God’s blessings into Egypt.

If the people of God left, what would be left? The king recognized that the absence of God was not good for him and his kingdom.

Erase God from our current land and culture? Think about it a while before acting.

I will post this in a different format than usual to emphasize the differences in translations and meaning.

The fear of the Lord is a phrase commonly used in the Bible and just as commonly misused by us when reading and explaining. One concept that is repeated in scriptures is the beginning of wisdom. In Psalms we find it here. I use the King James Version as it is the traditional statement.

Psalm 111:10 (King James Version) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

What is meant by “beginning?” That is where we start. If we want to find wisdom, we should start at the right place. There are many places I can name as the wrong place to begin in the search for wisdom. Examples: magazine rack at the grocery store, fill-in-the-blank section at the book store, Facebook, YouTube, and fill-in-the-blank-with-another-web-or-other-on-your-mobile-device.

Here is the New Living Translation of the same Psalm:

Psalm 111:10 (New Living Translation) Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.
All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.

I like this translation as it agrees with my interpretation of the classic translations. Fearing and respecting God is the foundation, the base, the place where I start if I want to find wisdom.

Only by living in God can I truly seek and find wisdom. All other starting points will point my in the wrong direction. I can spend a lifetime or more seeking wisdom in vain if I start in the wrong place.

Fear the Lord. Seek wisdom. In that order.

Jonah 1:15-16 (New Living Translation)

15 Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! 16 The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.

Jonah, allowing the Lord to work through him, was one of the great evangelists of all time. All alone (physically), he converted one of the greatest cities in the history of mankind.

Before that, we see above that Jonah leads a bunch of sailors to the Lord. Admitting he was wrong and the cause of a great storm, Jonah convinces the sailors to toss him into the raging sea. The sailors, with a strong sense of right and wrong, do so.

God stopped the storm.

The sailors were awestruck. They immediately sacrificed to God and changed their lives. What was Jonah’s sermon? Uh, well, we don’t seem to have one. Simply, “Toss me into the sea.”

1 John 3:11-13 (New Living Translation)

11 This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. 13 So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.

Let’s start at the end—as Christians, we shouldn’t be surprised when those outside of Christ hate us. It has been this way since the beginning, the hatred of the unrighteous towards the righteous.

Recall Cain and Abel. (Back up a step in the above verses.) Abel had been righteous; Cain had not. Cain’s hatred of the righteous brother led him to murder.

In America today, we are fortunate—the vast majority of us are. The unrighteous don’t murder the righteous (again, the vast majority).

Hate? Do the unrighteous still hate the righteous? We don’t like to use the word “hate” when it comes to religious belief in America, but…

Back up one last time in the above verses: we should love one another. Simply said, easily said, but easily done? Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Jeremiah 6:15 (New Living Translation)

Are they ashamed of their disgusting actions?
Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush!

blush: verb, develop a pink tinge in the face from embarrassment or shame.

The prophet is relaying the words of God to the people. The people have been performing disgusting acts. Their reaction? Nothing. No shame, no embarrassment, nothing.

There are various passages in the Bible that speak of hearts that have been seared, burned so much that the flesh has become hard and brittle. This inability to be embarrassed reminds me of the seared hearts.

There are days when life is difficult. There are seasons when it is overwhelming. People do just about anything to survive. Long seasons of the survival lifestyle dull our memory of right, wrong, and shame.

Then there are times when life is good, but I am disgusting. Please God, please have me never lose the ability to blush in shame.

1 Peter 2:11 (American Standard Version)

Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;

It is easy to focus on the second part of the above verse—abstain from those things that are tugging at us from the flesh. Some of those things war against our souls, i.e., they hurt us. They may be fun—eating ice cream for breakfast everyday is fun—but they hurt us.

Consider the first part of the verse: we are pilgrims on a journey that is taking us through this current life and situation. The writer tells us to continue our journey as pilgrims. Keep going, don’t stop for long and tarry. There are things about us that may tug at us and cause us to pause too long.

My life is blessed. It is pretty good, folks. I like it here. Some days I like it here a bit too much.

I am a pilgrim, not a resident. Continue on the journey. Please God, help my feet to keep moving.

Jeremiah 9:15-16 (New Living Translation)

15 So now, this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: Look! I will feed them with bitterness and give them poison to drink. 16 I will scatter them around the world, in places they and their ancestors never heard of, and even there I will chase them with the sword until I have destroyed them completely.”

God is speaking to His people through the prophet Jeremiah. They have continued to disobey, and punishment is coming.

They will be scattered to places whose names they don’t even know. “Where are we?” will be the cry of despair. Can it become worse than that?

Back in the 2000s, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. Persons were rushed onto airplanes and flown to evacuation centers scattered about the country. Upon landing, many of the evacuated persons asked, “Where are we?” When told, many—who didn’t have much knowledge of US geography—asked, “Where is that?”

Ignorance, not knowing, is frightening. Not knowing where I am is terrifying. The more frightening aspect of not knowing where I am is not know how to return home. Home is the place of comfort and safety. I don’t know how or if I will ever be safe gain.

Truly a dreaded punishment. Let us obey the advice of the Creator. God does know what is best for me.

Proverbs 20:17 (New Living Translation)

Stolen bread tastes sweet,
but it turns to gravel in the mouth.

A generation or two ago, a counter culture hero in America wrote a book about how to steal everything needed to get by. There was some quote about how stolen food tastes better.

Well, every culture, every generation or two, has such counter culture heroes who teach shortcuts to life and such. Read, however, the above Proverb. It all eventually turns to a mouthful of gravel.

And if you have never fallen unexpectedly and had a mouthful of gravel, try it, or don’t try it and take my word for it…it is pretty bad. The taste, texture, and odor are quite…distasteful.