Contemplative Bible Reading

Zechariah 8:16-17 (New Living Translation)

16 But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other. Render verdicts in your courts that are just and that lead to peace. 17 Don’t scheme against each other. Stop your love of telling lies that you swear are the truth. I hate all these things, says the Lord.”

We live in the era of fake news. Perhaps this “era,” like many others, will pass quickly—maybe by Christmas.

Yes! Those people lie all the time and hide it in social media. “Those people” always seem to be “them.” And ask me on any given day who “them” is today. “Them” never seems to include “me”—at least not in my mind.

Here’s a tip. Next time I hear someone (you know, one of them) say something scheming or that isn’t true, I say, “That’s not true. That isn’t helping anyone.”

Perhaps everyone will quickly tire of hearing me say that. Perhaps everyone, including them, will stop.

I don’t know. I do, however, know that the Lord hates all these things.

John 19:11 (New Living Translation)

Then Jesus said, “You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above.

Jesus is talking to Pilate. Pilate is having one of those days when you ask yourself, “What did I do to deserve this?” Pilate is hanging out in his political job when the Jews, the troublesome lot they are, come screaming to him about a fellow Jew who should be executed. The Jews, conquered and bereft of power, can’t legally execute someone, so they come to you screaming that you kill someone for them.

What a headache. Then this fellow that the Jews want executed looks at you and says the above. These Jews and their religious fairy tales. Why wasn’t I assigned province in Germania or Brittania or somewhere else?

How many days do I go to work or somewhere and shake my head and ask the same question as Pilate? Really, what did I do to deserve…

Well, I did nothing to deserve the blessings from God that I can neither count nor measure. Woe is me? How about…blessed is me. What did I do to deserve these blessings.

Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Amos 5:15 (New Living Translation)

Hate evil and love what is good;
turn your courts into true halls of justice.
Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies
will have mercy on the remnant of his people.

This one is pretty simple. Yet it is one of those that we tend to forget to or regret.

Hate evil and love what is good. How could we possibly mess up on that one?

Turn your courts into true halls of justice. Again, how could we possibly mess up on that one?

Somehow we do mess up on these. Note that there is a lot of “we” in this post. These are admonitions for society, not just for me. Still, I am part of my society and I have a large role to play in doing what God tells us all to do.

Hebrews 12:1-2a (New Living Translation)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, …

Let us run the race God set before us…God has given us all a task. The writer of Hebrews, among countless others, is one of us running this race. We are not alone like in track and field races. We have a group with us. We will not be embarrassed all alone in the open with our gangly running style.

And let’s look to the grandstand. This isn’t PE class where no one is there. Jesus is sitting in the front row cheering us. (Try to imagine that picture for a moment or two.) And Jesus isn’t alone. With Jesus is a huge crowd of witnesses to the faith in God. A bunch of the more famous witnesses were mentioned in the previous section of text (we know it as Hebrews 11 or “The Faith Hall of Fame.”).

And on top of all this support from friends, neighbors, saints, and Jesus Christ Himself, we don’t have to carry any burdens. We don’t have to think about monthly bills, or what we might have to eat, or what the boss thinks of us, or our grade point average, or my sore back, or my bad eyesight, or my extra pounds I carry, or anything. We are allowed to discard every weight—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—that might slow us.

Wow! Stand back and watch me run! Or maybe I, well, uh, you know. There is so much going on in my life and…

Please God, help my in my unbelief.

Hebrews 4:16 (New Living Translation)

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

This is priest language. It is used to describe how priests would enter the temple to come near to God. They were special persons from birth. Us? Not born special, but made special by the blood of Christ. Let us come to God confidently (as He has promised us this access if we believe).

Why come to God? So we can have His mercy, i.e., His forgiveness of our sins. So we can have His grace, i.e., God’s favor to help us in time of need.

Do I approach God often or at all? What is wrong with me? Where is my confidence? Why don’t I fully realize the gift of Jesus Christ? Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Joel 2:13 (New Living Translation)

Don’t tear your clothing in your grief,
    but tear your hearts instead.”
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
    He is eager to relent and not punish.

“God’s gonna getcha for that” (George Jones and Tammy Wynette)

This is often our view of God. Have a little too much fun and stick your toe across some line drawn by some person and WHAMO! God gets me for that. God is just sitting up there watching for me to slip up so He can punish.

Hmmm, what  is the last phrase of the above verse? Relent and not punish? That disagrees with good old George and Tammy and if you can’t trust a classic country song, well, what can you trust?

And then there are the preceding phrases about mercy, compassion, and unfailing love. Hmmm. Have to think about those, too.

There is much I can write about becoming a slave to sin. Let’s save that for some other day and other blog post. For today, let’s consider God’s mercy, compassion, and how He desires to relent on the punishment.

Joel 2:13 (New Living Translation)

Don’t tear your clothing in your grief,
    but tear your hearts instead.”
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
    He is eager to relent and not punish.

At the time and place of the prophet Joel, people tore their clothes as a sign of grief. Their torn clothing signified the rip in their lives that had occurred in some way or another.

Well, as we often do, persons had come to abuse this form of showing grief. Perhaps something happens that should break my heart, but I’m not too broken up about it. After all, if those other people were hard working and worthwhile and smart and clever like me and all sorts of other things…they wouldn’t be in bad shape and I wouldn’t have to feign grief over them. So…I’ll put on a shirt that I was about to toss in the Salvation Army bin and tear it a little so everyone can see that I am expressing the obligatory amount of grief. Aren’t I a good person? Huh?

And God will only see the surface like the persons around me and…ooops. God will see into my heart and know that I am putting on a show and don’t really care about those folks who should have been good like me and all that selfish stuff. Funny how God can see inside me and tell when I am putting on a show.

Sorry folks. Sorry me. God wants true grief when grief is appropriate. God wants true concern for my fellow man. God wants the truth in my life. Please God, help me in my unbelief.

2 Peter 1:1b (New Living Translation)

I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior.

This is a letter to those who share the same precious faith that the writer has. What is that same precious faith mentioned here? (We can have faith in a lot of things.)

It is the belief that, even though we didn’t see it with our own eyes, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and came here to take our sins away so that we can be blameless in the sight of God.

That faith in the unseen is a precious one. It has been the basis of life for countless persons for 20-some centuries and continues today. It is a precious faith.

Luke 15:31 (Holman Standard Christian Bible)

Son, he said to him, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

This statement comes at the end of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The father is talking to the older brother. I have always stumbled through this parable. There is something or other that doesn’t fit right in my way of thinking.

Why didn’t the older brother know that everything the father had was his? How could he miss something so simple and important?

Like I wrote earlier, there are things about this parable that just don’t fit with me. Perhaps one day.

Mark 2:27-28 (Holman Standard Christian Bible)

27 Then He told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath is rest. It is God’s gift to man—rest for the weary.

Jesus came to take away the sins of the world. The give us all rest from the burden of our sins. Jesus is the rest of rests. The premiere relief from toil and suffering. The highest or Lord of the Sabbath rest.

Thank you God for rest from our burdens. Thank you that Your Son took our burdens and gave us rest.

Note: looking through this blog, I find that this is the third time I have written about Mark 2:27 with each having a different commentary. Such is the richness of the Word.