Contemplative Bible Reading

Daniel 3:28 (New Living Translation)

Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! He sent his angel to rescue his servants who trusted in him.

This statement by Nebuchadnezzar comes after the three Hebrews were tossed into the fiery furnace and walked out alive. Nebuchadnezzar credits an angel of God the Creator for being the messenger to pull the three from death.

How did Nebuchadnezzar ever learn about angels of God? How did he know about any kind of angels or any kind of super-natural or spiritual beings? The people in “ancient times” weren’t ignorance and they weren’t senseless. They sensed the presence and power of God. They knew that spiritual beings sent from God existed and worked among us.

How did we, in the post-modern or whatever we call it world, become so ignorant and senseless? And then we describe ourselves as being enlightened and smart and all that self-aggrandizing stuff.

Lamentations 3:64-65 (New Living Translation)

64 Pay them back, Lord,
for all the evil they have done.
65 Give them hard and stubborn hearts,
and then let your curse fall on them!

Lamenting the present world of woe, the writer asks God to “pay back” evil for the evil that the evil have done. Please God, hurt these others. (Should we ever ask that? Hmmm, well, it was the Old Testament and…)

One of the things the writer wants God to do is give the evil doers a hard heart. Other translations use the phrase “dullness of heart.” My paraphrase, “Please God, make it so that these people become apathetic. Nothing excites them for good or ill. Let everything in their lives be meh, blah, whatever, it is as it is, etc.”

God created us with the ability to be excited. Watch children. They feel the fullness of this gift of God. Imagine a child that sulks from moment to moment. That would be a horrible curse from God—removing one of God’s great gifts.

Please God, never let me curse myself with apathy and a hard or dull heart.

Ephesians 3:19 (New Living Translation)

May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

The love of Christ is too great to understand fully. I try, but if I could understand it fully, I would be greater that Christ and the love of Christ. That would make me God, and while I would like to … well, you know. It is folly, not fully.

The writer encourages us to experience the love of Christ, to live in it, by it, and through it. If we do, we will have the fullness of life that comes from God.

God gives us a full life. It is there, right in front of us. All I have to do (that phrase means I have to give up my self-promoted agenda, which is difficult for me) is reach and grasp the gift. My life will be full of the love of Christ.

What am I waiting for? Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Titus 2:11-13 (New Living Translation)

11 For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people. 12 And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God, 13 while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.

The English Standard Version renders this concept more explicit, the concept that God’s grace instructs us how to turn away from godless to godly living.

Saved by the grace of God, we live for a while in a godless world. Yet, we don’t have to live by the godless culture of the world. We can live with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God.

Praise God for the blessings—both eternal and temporary.

Luke 8:46-48 (New Living Translation)

46 But Jesus said, “Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.” 47 When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble and fell to her knees in front of him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. 48 “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

This is the conclusion of the (hi)story of the women who had a disease for 12 years and came to touch the robe of Jesus and be healed.

In the words of Jesus, her faith made her well. Her faith in Jesus led her to touch His robe. There is the faith, and there is the touch or the gerund, i.e., a verb used as a noun.

Try this exercise: replace touch with any other word.

• The walk of faith
• The talk of faith
• The taste of faith
• The love of faith
• The thought of faith

What does each mean to each of us? What word came to mind? Why that word instead of another one? What does each mean to each of us?

Isaiah 64:11-12 (English Standard Version)

11 Our holy and beautiful house,
where our fathers praised you,
has been burned by fire,
and all our pleasant places have become ruins.
12 Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord?
Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?

The prophet is lamenting the horrible state of God’s people and asking God for a return to better times. What catches my attention is the phrase, “all our pleasant places have become ruins.”

Oh, if I could just return to the good old days and the good old places. Oh, if I were in some place in some other time that wasn’t here and now.

What is it about the sinful human condition that causes us to disdain the here and now for the otherwise? Why is it that I struggle to appreciate the goodness and grace of God that I undeservedly enjoy right here right now? Yes, I have been in wonderful places at wonderful times in wonderful circumstances with wonderful people and wonderful…I could go on, but I think that makes the point. God has blessed me in the past. God blesses me now. Why do I think God blessed me more then than now?

Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Isaiah 59:3

Your hands are the hands of murderers,
and your fingers are filthy with sin. (New Living Translation)

your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness. (English Standard Version)

Permit me to mix English translation of this verse from the prophet Isaiah. The prophet is relaying from God how life will be when the people abandon God and the teachings of God.

The first part describes murderers. The second part describes mutterers.

They are equal in their evil. Equal? Muttering is as bad as murdering? Surely there is a mistake here? No, there isn’t.

Mutter wickedness. Murder a person. Same in the eyes of God. And that makes me…? I don’t like to read this stuff.

Thank you God for your saving grace. Help me in my unbelief.

Isaiah 32:1-2 (English Standard Version)

1 Behold, a king will reign in righteousness,
and princes will rule in justice.
2 Each will be like a hiding place from the wind,
a shelter from the storm,
like streams of water in a dry place,
like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.

The prophet relays from God how life will be when the people are righteous. Life in the land will be right and just.

I love the final line; I love the description of the shade of a great rock.

I was fortunate to have spent a week inside the Grand Canyon. I was fortunate and unfortunate that I was there in early July. The temperature was about 110 F—all day.

Now and then, here and there, I was able to stand in the shade of a great rock. Wonderful. Marvelous. Magnificent relief from the heat of the direct sun.

That is life with people who live according to the precepts of God. Righteousness. Let us be the shade to one another in a weary land.

1 Timothy 6:4-5 (English Standard Version)

…he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

There are many, many “modern” translations of the Bible available today. I like the variety. I like to study the different English words chosen by the different translators. These two verses provide on example.

Paul is writing to Timothy about false teachers and how their own teaching leads them to ruin or brings them from ruin to teaching.

“depraved in mind and deprived of the truth” What poetry. What a turn of phrase. I love it. I love how it clearly states the ruin of the false teacher. What a curse. What a wretched state.

I think a lot (at least I think I think a lot). Clarity of mind is important to me, maybe more than it should be. What is “true,” the things that can be measured and proven, is important to me. I wince when I consider the poor souls that have lost those things. Bless me, O Lord. Continue to bless me.

Jude 1:24-25a (English Standard Version)

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord…

I don’t stumble often. I mean in a physical sense. I don’t trip over a blade of grass and almost fall. I have been blessed with pretty good balance and I spent (probably too much) time in my youth learning to play ball and sports that developed balance.

I hate stumbling. There is something about it that marks me as clumsy or uncoordinated—and those were things to be shunned in my life.

Stumbling spiritually. Sigh, that is another matter in my life. I do that and I do that too often.

Stumbling prevention: that is a gift from God. God keeps me from stumbling spiritually. God removes the spiritual grass stains from the knees of my blue jeans and makes me spotless. How wonderful is that? What a miracle is that?

Thank you God. Let me never forget the wonder and power of your grace.