God's Word

The Desert Fathers knew something about the importance of God's Word. This quote impressed me:

"Let Your tender word wear a hole in the hardness of our hearts; so as we hear Your word frequently our hearts will be opened to rightly fear God."

The Veritas Forum

This is a plug for a website I'm happy to have found. Although I had listened to a couple of lectures from the Veritas Forum, I only recently thought to look for their website. What is it? "Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life."

The link below lists various topics that speakers have addressed over the past dozen years or so. They are scholarly, yet fascinating and accessible. The few presenters I have heard were outstanding. I am currently listening to "Is Jesus the Old Testament Messiah?" by Richard Pratt.

Here's the list of topics: http://www.veritas.org/media/topics

More Christians should avail themselves of good teaching like this. I hope that an increasing number of people will utilize this site.

Enjoy!

What Men Live By

The title of this post is the title of a short story by Leo Tolstoy. Short stories are great because they can be read in a single setting and can be re-read frequently. This particular short story is one that I discovered last week. I plan on reading and sharing it many times--it's a good one.

So, if you have a bit of time, do yourself a favor and read this work of beauty. I feel sure that it will bless you. If you don't have time now, you can copy, paste, and print it. Then you may read it later at your leisure.

So, here's What Men Live By, by Leo Tolstoy.
(Click the title for the link.)

Enjoy!

Long Time No Blog

Was it the kiss of death to entitle my last entry "Ideas Aplenty"? Who would have thought that such a post would be followed by a 3 month silence? 

Well, when last I wrote I was reading Leviticus. Now I've reached the middle of Job. There are several things I've been impressed with, but the last 2 chapters of Luke have made me want to read the OT with an eye for Messiah. There is an artificial distinction between the Old and the New Testaments. I want to see the interplay between the two--one complete story. 

So...back to Leviticus. I was struck by the way this book talks about the "holy." It almost seems to be a synonym for "whole." Why does God require that sacrificial animals be without defect? The requirements for physical wellness point to the idea that God wants us to be spiritually whole. HE is whole, entire, complete, perfect. He is wholly good, wholly right, wholly pure, wholly loving, wholly mighty.... Is that a coincidence that in English "wholly" and "holy" sound the same? I don't think so.

A professor of mine, Lawson Stone, scoffs at the notion that 'holy' means 'separate.' Why would the elders around the throne continually cry out, "Separate, separate, separate is the LORD God Almighty!"? Holiness must mean something more. If we are holy, we are set apart for His purposes in the sense that we are wholly His. But it also means that we are flawless, perfect, and complete. Sin is imperfection. God will make us perfect. "Be holy as He is holy" means that we are to be complete, perfect, and whole as He is. We are to be real humans...to be what He created us to be. As the King's X song says: "We are finding who we are." 

The New Creation is holy, without blemish in Jesus Christ.

Be wholly His. Be whole. Be holy.

123 Meme

A friend of mine, Michael Halcomb, just "tagged" me to participate in this interesting "meme" (a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. --dictionary.com).

What you're supposed to do is:

1. grab the nearest book that contains at least 123 pages (no cheating)


2. turn to page 123


3. read the first five sentences


4. then quote the next three sentences in a blog entry


5. and, finally, tag five more people to do the same.

So, when I got this message at school the nearest book was 4th Grade Spelling. Right now, I'm at home and the nearest book is my Bible.

Page 123 is in Exodus 18. The sixth through ninth sentences are as follows:

Moses went out to meet his father-in-law; he bowed down and kissed him; each asked after the other's welfare, and they went into the tent. Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the LORD had done to Pharoah and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardship that had beset them on the way, and how the LORD had delivered them. Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the LORD had done to Israel, in delivering them from the Egyptians.

I tag Darina Brackeen, Jessica Maples, Allison Brown, Joseph Bishara, and Helen Hickman

Side note: This "draft" has been sitting idle for almost 2 years!

Ideas Aplenty

I've really been blessed by the decision to read through my Bible this year. The problem is that in order to maintain the pace to finish this year, I need to read 4 chapters a day (if I read the Apocrypha as well, as I intend). Why is that a problem? Because there have been so many things that I'd like to look into more fully. Right now I'm in Leviticus. While many pass over this book, thinking it dull or irrelevant, I'm finding it to be a jewel. I hope to blog a bit about Leviticus this week.

Seeing as how time marches on (and I have a job and a family!), I don't think I'll get to blog about all the things I'd like to comment on. Therefore, I'm jotting them down here. Maybe someday...

• Beer-sheba is such a signifcant locale in Genesis. All of the patriarchs seem to have major encounters there. After Genesis, it just kind of falls off the map, becoming a reference for the southern boundary of Israel's inheritance. I'd like to study the occurrences at Beer-sheba more closely.
• Saved through water--how many times is this image going to crop up in the Bible? Noah's ark, Moses' basket, the Sea of Reeds (Red Sea exodus), baptism... It's amazing how God uses the vital, yet everyday elements of water, light, bread, etc. to speak and to act in the history of His people. The importance of water (it's cropping up again in Leviticus) and blood (Jesus' side) astounds me.
• Bridegroom of Blood--This incident in Exodus 4:24 is a mystery to me. Why was God going to kill Moses, and how did Zipporah's actions avert God's wrath? I've read a bit on this, but I definitely want to know much more.
• God shows up enshrouded in a dense cloud in Exodus 19:9, 19:18, and many other places. I'd like to look at these occurrences. Are they the same as the description used for God at Mt. Sinai, the Mount of Transfiguration, Psalm 18, etc.? What's the connection between a cloud (or smoke) and theophany? What does that tell us about God's nature?

I know there are other things that have intrigued me, but I can't find where I wrote them down at present. It's late--Giants just won the Superbowl!--and I should get to bed.

God is so good. Hope to blog a bit about Leviticus soon.

Exodus Quote

I'm moving through Exodus now, and I ran across a good quote in Murray Andrew Pura's introduction to the book. He describes the Israelites' trek to the Promised Land as "a spirituality of journeying...an invitation to the children of Israel to put their roots not into land or houses, but into God himself."

I like that.

It fits into the idea of life as a pilgrimage (and as wandering--see also "The Way of the Desert" on Murray Pura's site, above).
This quote serves as a much needed reminder for today of where our true identity lies.