Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Psalm 119:107

    Psalm 119:107

    I’m weakened by so much trouble,
    Bring me back to life according to your Word.

    The Message manages a rather good translation of this verse, I think, expressing the feeling of the poetry well.

    Everything’s falling apart on me, GOD;
    put me together again with your Word.

    Psalm 119:107 (MSG)

    As I write this I feel the pressure of just keeping up. I am trying to keep a business going while being a caregiver for two people. In fact, “the pressure of keeping up” implies that I’m doing better than I am. I’m not keeping up. People who have expectations are very nice to me, and I’m grateful for that, but the feeling of not accomplishing what I think I should, what I expected to accomplish weighs on me.

    I don’t write this as a complaint. I complain to the Lord, as did the psalmist. I tell the Lord what’s wrong. Here I am, despite everything. In fact, objectively I can look at things that have improved. Objectively, I can compare my situation to others, and I know that there are those who have greater difficulties than I do. I pray that God will guide them.

    I feel every word of this verse. I use the word “weakened,” which is not used by most translations. It’s an option available as a translation of the word used here, often translated “afflicted.”

    What is one to do when faced with a situation in which one feels too weak to deal with things that are necessary?

    The answer comes in the second half of the verse. The one who created you is also the one who sustains you. That’s the only ultimate answer. There are many things that are done within that. I can never accept that it is right to skip one single thing that I actually can do. I don’t say, “Look, God, I quit. You do it.”

    But there’s the other side of that, and that is to recognize the point at which I have done what I can and have come to the point where I must stop and take time to rest and be restored.

    Pray today with me that God will identify clearly the stuff to do, but also, critically, the stuff not to do.

  • Psalm 119:106 – Determination

    Psalm 119:106 – Determination

    I have sworn and I will uphold it
    that I will keep your righteous judgments.

    Not everything in scripture is something you ought to do. Even if it’s written by a good person.

    Let’s consider for a moment Jephthah’s oath as he heads off to battle with the Ammonites. You’ll find the whole story in Judges 11. He promises to offer the first creature that comes out to meet him when he comes home as a whole offering to the Lord (verse 31). When he returns, he is first met by his daughter, his only child (vv. 34-35). It is possible that you shouldn’t follow the example of this rash oath.

    On the other hand, you might think a rash oath, or asking for a sign, or various similar things are always wrong. Then there’s the story of Abraham’s servant who was looking for a wife for Isaac. He asked for a sign in a way that I might question, but the Lord honored his request for that sign (Genesis 24:10-27).

    Now you might think I’m preparing to say that this verse represents a bad idea that we shouldn’t follow. How can a Christian who believes in grace and rejects any form of salvation by works accept a statement such as this. Shouldn’t I be finding a way around it?

    I do actually have a way around “it,” if by “it” you mean that this verse means our eternal salvation is tied to our ability to keep an oath such as this. But in this life we still live in a world in which you reap what you sow, and that’s if you’re fortunate or blessed. Frequently, you’re reaping what someone else has sown. I heard a tragic story today of a young man killed by a drunk driver. The driver sowed and the young man reaped.

    Grace, and with it the love of God and the fact that God views us as his children, tells me that we remain children of God, that God loves us and is near to us when things go terribly wrong, and we remain God’s children. Grace hasn’t abrogated the law of sowing and reaping. What it has done is tell us we remain in Christ. We belong to God.

    It’s a good thing to make choices. It’s a good thing to determine to do right, or just to do better than we have on something. Every morning I have a list of things I’m going to try to get done. My life right now is very unkind to schedules. I can’t really change that. So when I make a mental list of things I’m going to try to do, I know that I’m very likely not to have the time I am hoping for. But I don’t know that. So I try.

    If I got up in the morning and said, “I’m going to be interrupted so many times today that I won’t get anything done, so I might as well just not bother,” I’d get much less done than I do. The determination is important, even knowing that it’s not going to be fulfilled.

    Why don’t I leave some things off, so that I can feel better at the end of the day with more of my list checked off? Or maybe all checked off?

    Because as soon as I take my eye off the goal, I start falling back. I determine to do what might be possible of all goes well. When reality intervenes, I recognize reality and readjust the list. Well, that’s another determination. I determine to recognize reality, and that based on interruptions, I have to adjust. Accomplishing that is hard. I want all that stuff done.

    The psalmist is expressing his determination. He’s promising to do. Somewhere along the line, he, like the rest of us, likely didn’t keep up with that.

    When that sort of thing happens to you, you have two options. You can pick yourself back up and keep your eyes on the prize, no matter how distant it is, or you can be discouraged and decide not to bother. You can decide to bring the goal down to your level.

    The psalmist is giving an example of aiming high. He has an answer for those bad moments to. Spoiler alert! He ends the Psalm by saying he has gone astray like a lost sheep and asking God to seek him. That’s a knowledge of God’s grace.

    What will you make your goal today? When life intervenes, will you remember the God who seeks you?

    (Featured image credit: ID 337125867 | Ambulance Accident Scene ©
    Yaroslaf | Dreamstime.com)

  • Psalm 119:105 – Light

    Psalm 119:105 – Light

    A lamp for my feet is your word,
    and a light for my path.

    This text begins the next eight verse section of Psalm 119. We’ve been looking at the value of God’s Word throughout the Psalm, but especially in the last several verses. This verse is well-known and evokes many other verses from scripture.

    We can start in Genesis 1:3 – And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” The chaos of the deep covered by darkness is captured by the light. The light is brought when God speaks, a physical manifestation of God’s Word. God’s Word is found in the Bible, but it is much, much more than that. Psalm 104:1b-2 describes this light as covering.

    Exodus 13:21 ties these elements together as God goes before the people as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night providing guidance no matter what the state of the natural light. Light thus evokes both God’s creative and God’s guiding power.

    Jesus picks up this theme when in John 8:12 he says that he is the light of the world. Anyone who follows him will not walk in darkness. This also connects the light (light of life) back to the Word, which is the subject of our text today, as well as of the entire Psalm. God’s Word is more than words on paper, it is “alive and active” and represented in the person of Jesus and in the presence of Jesus in the world through his church.

    This takes us to Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.” The light stretches from creation to divine guidance for God’s people, to God’s people providing that light. I connect this with the principle of God’s blessing, expressed in Genesis 12:2 – “I will bless you … so you will be a blessing.” We receive light to be light.

    How then are we to react to the works of darkness?

    With the proclamation of the light! By sharing the connection to the guidance God has given us. Let me translate me from my own poetic paraphrase of Isaiah 58. This selection begins in verse 11:

    God will guide you continually,
    satisfying your needs in the wilderness.
    God will strengthen your bones.
    You will be like a watered garden,
    like a water spring,
    one flowing year-round.

    You’ll rebuild old, despairing ruins;
    You’ll restore ancient, strong foundations.
    You’ll be called the one who repairs broken walls
    and restores streets lined with homes.

    Henry Neufeld, “Isaiah 58 – A Slightly Poetic Paraphrase” – The Jevlir Caravansary

    Where will you spread light in the darkness today?

    (Featured image generated in Adobe Express [which uses Adobe Firefly] according to my description.)

  • Psalm 119:104 – Truth Matters

    Psalm 119:104 – Truth Matters

    From your precepts I improve my understanding.
    Therefore I hate every false path.

    It’s time to underline the difference between these meditations and exegesis. I study the verse first, looking at precisely what it says, and then I meditate on where that can lead me through the day. Sometimes that meditation leads me to other scripture, but often it leads me to other sources of knowledge and current events..

    In this case, the verse is really making a simple, straightforward contrast. There is a way defined by God’s precepts, and then there are alternatives. The psalmist accepts the wisdom that comes from God through those precepts. He rejects what does not. It is important to remember the breadth of what he sees in God’s law.

    But the direction my thinking took was this: How important is a firm commitment to truth? Now you can see how the verse suggests the topic for my meditation, but it doesn’t examine the details. It just lays out a contrast.

    In our postmodern world we have a tendency to say “in our postmodern world” a lot. Not necessarily in those words. We say it in a variety of words. “These young people are not like we were when we were young.” “In the good old days….” “It’s just getting so you can’t trust anyone any more.”

    One of these claims is that media, such as the internet and social media especially, have somehow made us less concerned with truth. The variety and volume of assorted voices makes it impossible to determine what is true and what is not. Falsehood and disinformation are entirely recent phenomena.

    We need to learn to hate every false way. Here are some examples.

    • I just don’t know what to believe. There have always been those who just don’t know what to believe. There have also been those who tended to believe convenient lies just because they were too lazy to seek out the truth, or they were afraid they wouldn’t like the truth. In the “good old days” you’d have to go to the library and consult an encyclopedia. Now, despite the multitude of voices, it’s quite possible to find information quickly. You have to want to find that information. You have to care. You have to be ready to spend the necessary time. If you don’t know, don’t blame others. Failing to take responsibility for your own beliefs is an excuse, and it’s one you can’t afford.
    • There are so many voices. Yes, there are many voices and many sources of misinformation. There are also, however, many sources of truth. Face it, most people who don’t bother to check on the truth of material on the internet wouldn’t have checked the gossip about their next door neighbor before believing it and passing it on. The problem isn’t the number of voices. It’s a refusal to be responsible and to take responsibility for what goes into your mind and what comes out of your mouth.
    • All of my friends believe it. This has been the tribal thing for years. We don’t want to differ from the people around us. When we do differ, we want to do it with a group behind us who will shout the other side down. It doesn’t matter what your friends believe. What matters is what they can support. If they can’t deal with disagreement, find better friends.
    • There are so many important issues! I have to take a stand! Yes, take a stand, but take a stand on what you’re going to regard as important, specifically important enough for you to express an opinion. There is a false standard that suggests you have to have and express an opinion on every topic. You don’t. You can choose your battles. As a publisher, I have a great option here. I can point people to an author I publish who provides a better discussion of a topic than I believe I could. Choose your ground and stand on that. Don’t allow anyone to force you to stand on theirs.
    • It’s not important what I believe, so why bother! You might think from the previous point that I think this. I do not. It is very important what you believe. That’s why you should choose carefully what you choose to debate. You should be sure you’re expressing something you can support as truth. I don’t mean you always need to be right. We will all make mistakes. But care in what we express and how we express it is important. Blathering on every topic even when we don’t have the needed knowledge is a very dangerous false way.
    • Confusing our opinion with the truth. This is a very common false way in Bible study. People present their view of the Bible or of a theological issue as though their interpretation is the very word of God and any who disagree are disagreeing with God. You and I are not the writers of scripture. We are not God’s special messengers blessed with infallibility. It is not humility to say, “This is just what the Bible teaches.” It’s dangerous arrogance. Let each person be taught by God. Show your work and speak in such a way that others can follow the steps and decide for themselves.
    • Fear of sources of knowledge. There are those who are afraid to look outside the Bible for their information. That is fear. It may sound godly, but it is not. There are those who find a human source of knowledge and then stick with it no matter what, because they are afraid of being confused. That is letting fear guide you. Hearing more than one viewpoint is part of checking the view you already have or building a new one.

    God speaks in many ways. Humans learn in many ways. Take control of what you take in. Take control of what you let out of your mouth or send through your keyboard.

    In loving truth and hating falsehood what will you speak today? On what will you keep silent?

  • Psalm 119:103 – Tasty & Sweet!

    Psalm 119:103 – Tasty & Sweet!

    How tasty are your words to my lips,
    sweet in my mouth.

    This verse calls to mind Psalm 19:11. You might consider reading all of Psalm 19 at this point.

    I don’t know how you respond to reading, hearing, or discussing scripture. I’ve discovered a wide variety of attitudes toward it over the years. For some, it’s largely boring reading. They’re not quite sure why they should bother. For others it’s a source of a few nice verses that are encouraging, sometimes taken out of context. For many, it’s read as a duty. I’ve met quite a number of people who say they read scripture as a duty, and find that they get very little out of it.

    I don’t want to make scripture reading another “work,” something you have to do because God requires it and you might be lost if you don’t read or hear enough. God created a variety of people and knows there are a variety of reactions to reading anything, much less something as varied and complex as the Bible.

    There are those who claim that it’s all very simple. These people usually only read the parts that fit into whatever simple scheme they’ve created in their mind.

    For me, the Bible is a critical part of life. I don’t have a scheduled daily time for reading it. I turn to it frequently. I use it’s words as part of my thinking about other subjects. I can’t stay away from it. Even while I spent 12 years away from church entirely, I still read it from time to time, and when I did so more on my return, I still had the language skills needed to read in the original languages.

    I studied biblical languages because I thought that the Bible was the one place to learn the truth, to come to understand God. I thought that to do that I had to pick my way to an understanding of every detail. Even though I was passionate about the Bible, it also often was tiring, because I found very often that I couldn’t make things are clear as I wanted them to be.

    Still I continued to study. I’m a addict. I need my time with the Bible, which is also, for me, time with God. Jody has told me that she recognizes a particular look I get when reading, and that it indicates to hear that I’m spending time with God and enjoying it.

    For me, God’s Word is alive and active. God’s word extends well beyond the Bible, because it is by the Word that God created everything. But God’s word provides the structure by which I understand that, a structure presented in the form of words. This literary form is the way in which I understand the Word. There are those whose language is math, or music, or even the mysteries of quantum physics, something I don’t comprehend at all.

    My suggestion here is to find the way God can speak to you and spend time in that communication. You may not be a word addict, one who can’t find enough words to satisfy. God will find ways to communicate with you.

    I wrote a poem about this, titled What Was It Like?. I can’t get away from words, but I can celebrate those who do. But the message will be there in one form or another.

    Where will you feel God today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:102 – You Have Taught Me

    Psalm 119:102 – You Have Taught Me

    I do not turn aside from your judgments,
    for you have taught me.

    A couple of days ago, meditating on Psalm 119:99, I discussed teachers. I mentioned the idea briefly of allowing the Holy Spirit to be the teacher.

    I want you to notice the form of this verse. The second half is not an accomplishment that results from his good actions. Rather, the second line explains the first. The psalmist is faithful to God’s decisions, judgments, because it is God who has been doing the teaching.

    There is a line in the prophecy of the new covenant recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34 that is often ignored. Verse 34 reads “No longer need they teach one another, neighbour or brother, to know the LORD; all of them, high and low alike, will know me, says the LORD….” (REB). We don’t see this now, but I think we need to recognize this as a goal in the church.

    Too much of our teaching energy is spent making sure people understand and accept the things that we, as teachers, believe. I definitely include myself in this. Too little time is spent helping people find their own relationship with God.

    No the word “relationship” has been used in some questionable ways, particularly as a way to avoid actually studying and thinking about God and the world in which we live. But no matter what we may feel or want, there is always a relationship between each of us and God as in created being to creator, and that relationship is important. Relationship doesn’t negate doctrine, understanding things. Rather, relationship is necessary to any learning about God.

    Consider Ephesians 3:18-19: “… may you, in company with all God’s people, be strong to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth (19) of Christ’s love, and to know it, though it is beyond knowledge.” Technical knowledge isn’t sufficient. Personal knowledge is required. But personal knowledge is not exclusively individual knowledge. We know “with all God’s people.”

    As teachers in the church, we should be constantly working ourselves out of a job, constantly relying on the Holy Spirit, and constantly expecting that the Holy Spirit will guide others. We live in a new creation. We are a new creation. So is everyone we teach.

    This means that while we still have a teaching and discipling role, that role is one that is mutual, that is, we learn along with all God’s people. We make it easier for everyone to learn from God. That means there is a difference in teaching and mentoring in the Christian community. We do not build a dependence on what we think or have to say. We look to join together and grow in our dependence on God.

    How can you encourage someone to grow in their knowledge of what is beyond knowledge today?

  • Psalm 119:101 – Evil Paths

    Psalm 119:101 – Evil Paths

    I have kept my feet away from every evil path
    so that I might keep your word.

    Too often we think of keeping from doing things that are wrong as a point-by-point effort. Make a list of things we shouldn’t do, and avoid those things.

    This can be a dangerous trap if undertaken independently of other reforms. It leads to an a sort of “goodness accounting” in which we count deeds done correctly, and use this a sign posts on our road to being better people. One of the more humorous, and yet destructive things this can lead to is keeping count of sins not committed, and considering these great accomplishments.

    This happens in dieting, a process with which I’m somewhat acquainting. It’s easy to tell yourself that you didn’t eat that dessert after lunch, and thus you can be excused for having an extra slice of cake at dinner. This kind of accounting results in forgetting the totals, and providing oneself an excuse for whatever one wishes to eat. Trust me, you’re not going to keep an accurate account. You don’t really want to.

    If you want to get to a destination, you need to get on a path that goes there. About three years ago various lab tests informed me that I needed to make a serious change in lifestyle, eat less, eat better, and get more exercise. One possibility is to try to count the things I was doing better, and do those until better numbers resulted in my lab test. The alternative was to change paths, to choose a new lifestyle that involved healthier eating and more activity. Once you get on that path, details become easier, because you realize that everything has to be different and it needs to stay that way. There is no day coming when cakes, pies, and ice cream from a substantial part of the diet, and there is no time coming when you can afford to go back to couch potato ways.

    Turning back to myself, I had to decide to change paths. I knew that, because I know myself well enough to know that any haphazard approach involving singular acts of self-sacrifice would end up with as many acts of self indulgence and no actual gain in health.

    (Please here this in the context of God’s sanctifying grace and reliance on divine power. I’ve discussed that before while meditating on this psalm and that hasn’t changed.)

    To look at another issue, and one on which I have had much less success, consider a balance in work and rest. Again, picking out this or that to change, drop,, or add to the schedule is likely to drive one crazy and increase tension. What is needed (I tell myself) is a change of approach overall. You see, I can’t say with the psalmist that I have kept away from every evil path.

    And here we need to consider “evil.” Some may be thinking, “A little bit of overworking, or even lots of overworking isn’t evil.” You see, we want to think of overwork as diligence. Then we try to keep things manageable by dropping this or that task, or taking a moment here or there instead of looking for a balanced way to approach life and work.

    Killing yourself by overeating or overworking is not really morally better than killing yourself more intentionally. It just looks better, feels better, and comes with a false sense of pride and self-justification.

    But in the end that balance, and simply following the ideal path that God lays out is the one path that leads anywhere helpful.

    What path are you on?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:100 – More Understanding than the Elders

    Psalm 119:100 – More Understanding than the Elders

    I have more understanding than the elders,
    for I have kept your precepts.

    One of the difficult things to keep in balance is respect for one’s elders and at the same time the realization that those elders are not always right. In fact, those elders can be corrupt.

    Rather than my own discussion of this, I’m going to take a different approach. There are some Greek additions to the book of Daniel which are part of the Old Testament Apocrypha, accepted as scripture by Roman Catholics, Orthodox and some others. One of these additions is the story of Susanna.

    Susanna is a godly and beautiful women. Two elders develop lust for Susanna and contrive to catch her alone in her garden, as she has sent her maidens away. They tell her they will testify that they saw her with a young man if she does not yield to them. She stands firm.

    They take her before the other elders and testify that she is an adulteress and she is sentenced to death. A young man, Daniel by name (surprise!) is disturbed by the verdict and through his wisdom catches the men in a lie, finding that they contradict themselves about the type of tree under which they had encountered her with her supposed lover.

    As a result, Susanna is set free and Daniel becomes famous.

    The English Revised Version of this story is available online. The NRSV Catholic Edition is available on BibleGateway.com.

    Some time ago I created a retelling of the story on my Jevlir Caravansary blog.

    (Featured image credit: ID 193588715 © Nicoleta Raluca Tudor | Dreamstime.com)

  • Psalm 119:99 – Teachers

    Psalm 119:99 – Teachers

    I have more understanding than all my teachers,
    for your testimonies are my meditation.

    It’s nice to do a meditation based on a text about meditation!

    The advantage and disadvantage of a meditation, as opposed to exegesis of a passage is that your meditation can lead you in a direction other than what the writer was intending. I did that today. I meditated about teaching.

    The first question that crossed my mind was how could I, as a teacher, keep my students from deciding they are wiser than I am since they meditate on God’s testimonies. An immediate answer came to mind. If I, as a teacher, am meditating on God’s testimonies, doesn’t that keep me ahead?

    It wasn’t long, however, before I was asking myself whether I should be concerned if my students were, or become, wiser than I am. And there’s an immediate answer to that. If I’m worried about my students getting ahead of me in any way, I have the wrong attitude. I should be delighted if any student of mine is wiser than I am or learns more about the subjects I teach than I know.

    Some years ago my nephew introduced me to someone as “the person who taught him how to program.” That’s true in only a most minor sense. I helped him with a few things when he was just starting out. He’s now a senior software engineer at Google and knows things in depth that I have no understanding of at all. And I’m very, very proud of him.

    The possibility of seeding some small thing into the life of a student and then seeing that student reach heights the teacher has not imagined is, I believe, as great a joy as any teacher can have.

    Now there are those, especially in religion and theology, who think the task of a teacher is to make sure the student stays on the straight and narrow way. The student must learn to believe the same things and teach the same things as the teacher, or the teacher has failed. If that is the goal, then the Psalm 119:99 student would mark failure, and the teacher would forever have to deny the insights of the student.

    I was to teach at a conference on prayer many years ago. I expected to have an hour, and I had a good hour’s worth of notes. Those who know me will realize that I only use notes to keep myself on the program. If I don’t use notes, I can easily fill an hour, and then the next, and so forth. Notes are, for me, a necessary discipline, telling me when to shut up!

    In this case, previous speakers kept pushing things later and later, and I realized that unless I wanted to keep people from their lunch, which the conference leader would doubtless not allow, I’d have less time. I kept hearing the nudge of the Holy Spirit: “Let me do the teaching.” So I chopped my notes down to size, and given a half hour, I took 20 minutes. Again, those who know me, will realize the miraculous nature of this self-restraint!

    Following that session I was approached by one pastor. I won’t go into the details, but that contact became one of the most encouraging and helpful contacts of my life. I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t have happened if I had been my normal wordy self. And I would definitely say that pastor, my student for 20 minutes, has more understanding than at least this teacher.

    Who can you encourage today to go beyond your example, your teaching, or even your imagination?

    (Featured image credit: Jovanmandic, licensed via iStockPhoto.com)

  • Psalm 119:98 – Wiser

    Psalm 119:98 – Wiser

    Your commands have made me wiser than my enemies,
    for they are mine forever.

    There’s an interesting translation issue here as well, as there often is with poetry. The first part of the verse uses a plural “commands,” but the second half uses a singular. Most translations, starting way back with the Septuagint accommodate the first to the second, using a singular. I think it is more likely that the singular in the second half is intended as collective.

    One of the great values of God’s revelation to us is good ideas. This may sound weak. We want to make lots of pious statements about scripture and God’s law(s), such as that they are eternal, authoritative, beyond human capacity. All these things may be true, but in elevating the law we can also miss its simple value.

    I’m reminded of how I sometimes answer the question “How are you?” with “Functional.” Frequently I’m then asked, “Oh! What’s wrong?” Well, I thought “functional” was pretty good! It’s much better than not functional.

    Thus with God’s law. There are some great theological points to be made, but in some cases we need to just look at the value of law in general and of the order that allows us to function. I’ve been emphasizing the more general idea of revelation, beyond rules. But we should stop and consider the value of rules.

    Again I’m reminded of the humorous statement; 186,000 miles per second: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law! The fact that there are constants like this in the universe is, to put it very mildly, critical! There are also things that are critical to living well and constructively as humans.

    Laws are wise when they prevent things from going wrong. Good traffic laws, for example, save lives, and facilitate people getting where they need to go in predictable lengths of time. When these things don’t happen, we’ll talk about bad laws or ineffective enforcement.

    It’s quite possible to have bad laws. Bad laws make things function less effectively. (Amazing, I know!)

    I’d suggest that when we properly understand God’s laws, we’ll find the laws that function best in the universe God created. This is the simple message of our verse. God’s laws are wise laws, and by making them ours we gain wisdom. It’s an eternal gift from God.

    Look today for ways to handle your life that reflect God’s law. You won’t attain this perfectly, but you’ll be blessed by looking in that direction.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)