The Good Portion

In the centuries after David and Solomon, Israel’s shepherds—the kings and prophets—led God’s people astray. My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains. From mountain to hill they have gone. They have forgotten their fold. All who found them have devoured them, and their enemies have said, “We are not guilty, for they have sinned against the Lord, their habitation of righteousness, the Lord, the hope of their fathers.” Je 50.6-7 In the days of the prophet Jeremiah, Israel, was taken into captivity by Babylon. Their Babylonian captors believed that because the Jews were sinners suffering God’s righteous judgement, they had a right to abuse them. God did not, however, approve of Babylon’s arrogance and cruelty. He judged them for it, handing their empire over to the Persians. By the time of Christ, six hundred years later, the Babylonian and Persian empires were gone. The Jews, though under Roman rule, were back in the ...

My childhood home was a place of conflict. My room was my retreat. It’s where I did my homework, drew pictures, read books, ate my dinner, and watched TV. Alone. I felt safest there, alone, or sometimes with a friend. I’ve spent my life since trying and failing to find safe people and places. Looking around, I see I’m not the only one. Social anxiety is epidemic. The American ideal of rugged individualism and self-determination has given way to a culture of rugged trampling and being trampled. Thirteen years ago, after a lifetime in and out of churches, I came to Christ. Since then I have watched Christians leave the church, one-by-one. A few rejected the faith outright. Others expressed their frustration or dissatisfaction with church. Some had been abused. I am sympathetic to them all. “Me and Jesus” is a siren’s song. I, too, have been dissatisfied and frustrated. I, too, have witnessed and experienced abuse by Christians. I, too, have been tempted to give up on church ...

Paul wasn’t like the celebrity preachers the Corinthians were welcoming into their churches. He didn’t carry letters of recommendation boasting of his prominence. He wasn’t famous for his flamboyant preaching. Also unlike them, he had “renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways” and refused “to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word” (2 Cor 4.2). The Corinthians were prone to confusing price with value, arrogance with greatness, impressive vocabulary with true wisdom, charm with love. This made them easy prey for false apostles, “peddlers of God’s word,” who saw preaching as a way to promote their own wealth and status. These peddlers abused Paul’s converts spiritually, financially, possibly even physically, and the church welcomed it (2 Cor 11.20). Paul, on the other hand, like an ordinary clay pot holding the world’s greatest treasure, came to Corinth humble, weak, covered with scars. He arrived without pomp but carried in his heart and in his message “the light of ...

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”  Romans 8.14-15 As someone who’s never experienced the love of a father, the cry of the Spirit of adoption sounds like a voice in a foreign tongue. Fear, not love, is my native language. It’s hard for me to believe in God’s love or accept his grace. I try to earn it. And when I can no longer fool myself that I am a good enough person, I hide. When I do seek forgiveness, I try to find ways to repay the debt. When that fails, I cower in fear of condemnation. Fear, not love, also characterizes my relationships with people, especially Christians. Seeing them as God’s representatives, their rejection feels like his rejection; their judgment feels like my condemnation. That is the spirit of slavery. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, b...

Seven years ago, after five years of following Christ, a series of painful experiences shook my spiritual life like an earthquake. When the dust settled, all that was left was a firm foundation and a stable frame. The foundation was Christ, the framework my conviction that the Scripture is the word of God. So, with Christ as my hope and Scripture as my guide, I determined to rebuild. I began by rethinking the methods I had used before, to ensure I didn’t make the same mistakes again. The ruins showed me that one of my biggest mistakes was in allowing God’s word to lose its priority in my life. The shift had been slow and subtle. I had gradually drifted from the Bible itself to books, articles, discussions, and debates about the Bible and doctrine. Though what I was taking in was by and large biblical and contained plenty of Scripture references and scriptural concepts, I had begun to rely on hearsay, so to speak. Over time I accumulated my favorite group of authors and preache...

Once upon a time, people measured time by the rising and setting of the sun, the cycles of the moon, by the changing seasons, by genealogies, by birth and death. In those days, childbirth and childhood disease, war and plague routinely cut life short, and men imagined magnificent structures, drew up plans, and set to work building great cathedrals they knew full-well they would never live to see completed. Generations devoted themselves to building such architectural wonders. They built them in hope and labored in faith that generations they would never see would continue to worship God as they did. Many of these structures have stood firm, towering over centuries and generations. Today their pinnacles overlook a landscape of scurrying people - people measuring their time by minutes, seconds, and nanoseconds. In our time, speed is of the essence. Our heads down, our focus narrow, the wisdom of the ages eludes us. As we focus on maximizing our moments of pride and pleasure, the ...

I am not a great woman. I am damaged and scarred by a lifetime of sin. At the age of forty, I became convinced of the kindness of God and began to trust him. I became a Christian. That was over twelve years ago. Ten years ago, I married my husband, Paul. I entered this marriage determined to be a good wife. I studied and read books to teach me how. Based upon the books I read and a shallow understanding of the Bible, I worked up a hand-written list of rules I thought a good Christian wife should follow. It sounded very spiritual, and I was very proud of it! After we were engaged, I showed my list to Paul, expecting his approval. He told me to tear it up and throw it away! He didn't want that wife. That wife was nothing but a blank slate to write on. He wanted me, the real me, wounded, abandoned, and prone to depression. Me, the uptight woman who worried more about what others thought than what he did. But Paul saw more in me than my failings. He saw a friend whose wounds and...

The story of mankind is an epic tale of truth versus falsehood. Eden, the perfect garden that God planted for Adam, was home to a beguiling serpent whose chief desire was to undermine God’s truth. The fact that the serpent was allowed in the garden that God had declared “good” shows us that He always intended the people He created in His image to be discerners of good and evil. God’s way of dealing with Adam was straightforward. He created him, provided for him, gave him dominion over the earth, and gave him all the wisdom he needed to do it. Then God gave him a wife, a partner made from his own flesh, to rule with him. Their responsibility was blessedly simple, just believe God’s words and respond accordingly. We can only spec ulate as to what kept Adam from entrusting his wife with all the wisdom God had given him, but her response to the lies of the serpent make it clear that he had not. Eve was not stupid. She was inadequately educated. When confronted with alternative “fact...

This is the third time I’ve written here about Psalm 15, and by now you might be wondering why, out of the whole big Bible, I have stalled over these five verses. If I answered that it’s because I love God so much that all I want in life is to sojourn with Him in His tent, that would be partly true. I say “partly” because this side of heaven, I’m not sure anything about me will be entirely sincere. And that gets to why this Psalm has such a hold on me. Life is hard. People can be cruel, judgmental, and deceptive. But God’s tent is a safe place. It’s full of people who can be trusted, people who have each other’s back, who laugh and cry as one, who genuinely want the best for each other. After the life I’ve lived and the heartbreaks I’ve suffered, what more could I ever want than to be loved by God and surrounded by people who love me? But when I read this Psalm I also realize that I don’t belong in that tent. Though I wish it weren’t so and in spite of all my prayer and effort...

“O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent, who shall dwell on your holy hill?”  Ps. 15.1 Photo via Visual Hunt I went to a lot of churches, for a lot of years, before finally trusting Christ at age 40. During those years, I picked up a lot of ideas about God and heard a lot of talk about holiness. Several of those churches put a lot of emphasis on speaking the right words to build faith, to appropriate God’s promises, and to ensure I remained safe under the umbrella of God’s protection. Speaking the wrong words would open me up to the curses of Deuteronomy 28.I went to a lot of churches, for a lot of years, before finally trusting Christ at age 40. During those years, I picked up a lot of ideas about God and heard a lot of talk about holiness. One church I visited refused to let me in because I was wearing slacks. But since I was the guest of an influential person, the ushers hurried to get a special dispensation from the pastor to allow me entrance. Permission was gra...

This week my Bible reading plan took me to Psalm 15, which took me back 43 years. The little girl’s name was Sooner, because she was born too soon after her parent’s wedding date. Pawned off, she was raised in squalor and treated like a slave. Her only friendship was with a wild bird she rescued and nursed to health. It wasn’t clear whether the bird couldn’t fly or whether it wouldn’t, only that it never did. It followed the child with the careless trust of having known nothing from her but kindness. When Sooner was rescued by a young childless couple, the bird came with her. All cleaned up, Sooner went nervously to school and made her first human friends. When they came to visit her at home, they saw the bird hopping after her wherever she went. She told them it never flew because it didn’t want to. They set out to prove her wrong. They stomped at it. When it didn’t fly away, they picked up stones and began throwing them. Sooner watched, eyes wide, silent. Then she stooped, to...

Photo credit sagesolar via Visualhunt  CC BY My neighbor’s house was built out of straw bales. For a year, its progress through my kitchen window was my entertainment while I washed dishes. Watching a building rise up where there was none before is fascinating. The Scriptures show me that I am not alone in that fascination. Jesus’s disciples marveled at the stones of the temple, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” Jesus’s reply shocked them: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Peter would later use the imagery of a building to explain what God is doing in the church. Though the stones of Herod’s temple would indeed be thrown down, it was part of God’s plan: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” In the same Psalm where the people sang, “Blessed is he who comes ...