Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Books

  • No Resting Place – Lamentations 1:3

    No Resting Place – Lamentations 1:3

    3 Judah has wasted away through affliction
    and endless servitude.
    Living among the nations,
    she has found no resting-place;
    her persecutors all fell on her
    in her sore distress.

    Lamentations 1:3 (REB)

    Actual events can be both real and metaphorical. Behind this verse, we can hear the history of Judah, taken into exile by the Babylonians, and then finally returned to their homeland under the Persians. At least, that is to say, a portion returned.

    I’m looking at this history and the lament it produced in this Bible book for ideas as to how each of us can deal with life today. But we shouldn’t forget the horror of the history involved. The Bible records that sorrow in the form of a lament–five chapters’ worth. And we’re on the third verse.

    Many of the nations which were exiled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians lost their identity entirely. The fourth line of the verse tells this story of exile, of removal from your home, family, and everything familiar. It’s easy to lose identity in such a situation. Forgotten, it is easy to forget, to go along with the crowd. One way to get away from persecutors (5th line) is to lose that identity, to become indistinguishable from surrounding society.

    I’ve heard many discussions of why Jews have been persecuted through the centuries, and continue to face antisemitism. One reason is simply that they have maintained their identity. They haven’t faded into the background and become indistinguishable from the rest of society.

    In the New Testament, God’s people are referred to as strangers and exiles (Hebrews 11:13). This is a part of our identity, of who we are. If we want to find a resting place, we’re going to have to do so knowing who we are and whose we are. There’s a put-down in telling someone to know their place. This is used on someone the speaker presumes is getting above themselves, out of their lane, anywhere they don’t belong.

    But we, as Christians have an identity as those who belong to God. Wherever we are we are strangers, but we are also at home with God who has chose us. We are those God has chosen, and we are those who choose to find our identity in God.

    God is, in fact, our resting place.

    What we must fear, therefore, is that, while the promise of entering his rest remains open, any one of you should be found to have missed his opportunity.

    The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Heb 4:1 (Emphasis mine)

    Even as exiles, we too can have that resting place. Can you feel that rest?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI)

  • Alone – Lamentations 1:2

    Alone – Lamentations 1:2

    She weeps bitterly in the night; tears run down her cheeks. Among all who loved her she has no one to bring her comfort. Her friends have all betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

    The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996), La 1:2.

    I want to be clear about something as I go through these passages. Too often Christians read the Hebrew scriptures from a platform of judgment. We are looking to see all the mistakes those Israelites made, and that we, being more advanced, have overcome.

    But one of my purposes here is to talk about honesty, particularly honesty with ourselves. When we look at the Israelites with judgment, we are not honest. In their situation, with their knowledge, I doubt we would have done any better. I get this doubt from watching us today. We have the weaknesses of the Israelites, because we both have the weaknesses of humans. As we begin looking at the verses that talk about the reasons why the city, Jerusalem, is desolate, I will bring this topic up more and more.

    So let’s read this book, not as people who are doing well, but as people who have things to regret and to correct.

    This verse brings into focus one of the great problems of lament in the church. The person who is lamenting is very frequently alone. My own experience has been that I have found those who sympathize, those who encourage, and who help in my most difficult moments. I don’t have a personal complaint here. But I have seen many people who were in difficulty, grieving, or suffering who have been left alone.

    The person who weeps is often a very lonely person. As a church, we should be companions to those who mourn, to those in trouble. Those who weep bitterly in the night need our companionship.

    But I need to turn and point to myself again. One of the reasons I have always found people so helpful is that I am so rarely willing to tell them what my difficulties are. My natural reaction to being in trouble is to isolate myself.

    This is a problem with at least two facets: 1) We don’t want to spend time with the troubled person. It’s a great deal of work. It tends to be a downer. 2) We don’t want to be the troubled person, because we know, deep inside, how we might react.

    These things involved an inappropriate judgment. Just as we tend to read Hebrew scriptures from a seat of superiority, one to which we are not entitled, so we tend to see people in trouble from the position of one who’s life is so much better.

    We’ll have more time to discuss this as we read. But there’s one key lesson: God is there, waiting for the person who knows how bad their condition and their situation is, ready to act. In the honesty of lament lies a path to healing.

    (Featured Image Credit: RBompiani Photo on iStockPhoto.com)

  • Deserted – Lamentations 1:1

    Deserted – Lamentations 1:1

    The book of Lamentations sounds pretty dismal. It’s right there in the name. Read a few verses. It’s still dismal. We usually quote Lamentations 3:22-23, “The LORD’s love is surely not exhausted, nor has is compassion failed; they are new every morning, so great is his constancy” (REB). If one hasn’t read Lamentations, one might conclude it is a book of encouraging sayings.

    But it is not. Oh, there is encouragement there, but that is not the starting point. The starting point is devastation, and a lament regarding that devastations.

    Walter Brueggemann laments the loss of lament in Christian circles. You can find some discussion of his words on Alistair Adversaria.

    I would choose a slightly different emphasis. I think the loss of lament has a great deal to do with a loss of self-honesty. You can’t be honest with God if you’re not honest with yourself. And a lack of honesty is going to hinder you both in your relationship with God and in your daily activities.

    Job says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21b). Good for Job! I’m talking here about those who can’t yet get to that “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” part. Often when we encounter someone in that kind of hardship, we say, “Trust in God!” and then moments later, “Are you trusting in God yet?”

    In Lamentations, there are a lot of sad verses between “deserted” and the unfailing compassion.

    In those verses, we see the struggle of Israel. One view of Jesus as the Messiah sees him recapitulating key moments in the history of Israel, and getting it right. We can also see in the struggle of Israel an example of what individual life is often like. I don’t mean getting stuck in the mud. I mean recognizing the mud and recognizing who we all actually are. You will not seek the good unless you recognize the difficulty, even the evil.

    I’m planning to blog through Lamentations. Right now this task seems daunting. It troubles me to spend this much negative time. But I am thinking there may be value in the experience. So tomorrow we’ll get to weeping in Lamentations 1:2. Won’t that be fun!

    And that’s the starting place: Deserted!

    Note: This series will differ from my earlier verse-by-verse series on Psalm 119 in that I won’t always try to keep the message contained in the one verse. I’ll be spending more time connecting the dots with the rest of the book and related history and personal experience.

    Featured Image Credit: Maria de Fatima Seehagen (iStockPhoto.com)

  • Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    I cried out with all my heart.
    Answer me, LORD!
    I will observe your statutes.

    If you have spent any time in prayer, you have likely spent time wondering if an answer was coming, and if it was coming, when would that be.

    This is not just our experience in prayer, but our experience in almost any relationship. The time between a request and response seems very long.

    I suspect this is inevitable. Everything takes time, but we like to see results immediately. Waiting in line is difficult for us. We wonder why the line doesn’t move faster, or why the store doesn’t take action to open more checkout stations.

    Near my home there is a railroad track that leads into a nearby chemical factory. Frequently we have trains going in and out of the plant, often adding more loaded cars over a period of time. As a result, one can wait quite a long time for these trains to get out of the way. Traffic can line up for a long ways down the road on either side.

    I am not so patient. I’ll frequently take a detour around the train, crossing the track some ways away. Sometimes this gets me to my destination faster, but frequently by the time I’ve completed my detour, I find that the traffic has dissipated, and I took longer getting around the delay than I would have taken just living through it.

    There’s this natural desire to make things happen if they aren’t happening. We’d like everything to work on our timetable. But when we’re waiting on God and going on our own detour it’s possible that, like I do with the train, we might miss what’s going on because we’re so busy working our way around. We are seeming to accomplish things when we’re just occupying time on detours.

    With the psalmist, we cry out with our whole heart. We ask for an answer. We promise God our obedience, our observance, our careful attention. But it’s easy to play busy, rather than to wait.

    There are times to be busy. We don’t want to miss those. But there are also times to watch and wait, to look to the Lord for the answer. Like Habakkuk (2:1), we need to climb up on the watchtower, stand guard, and wait to see what the Lord says.

    Can you manage to wait for God today?

  • Psalm 119:67 – Afflicted

    Psalm 119:67 – Afflicted

    Before I was afflicted, I went astray,
    but now I keep your word.

    What is your reaction to difficult times? I’m not a terribly optimistic person, and I don’t take to it all that well.

    I’ve noticed that modern Christians have inconsistent responses to trouble. On the one hand, they’ll say that if God is in it, everything will be there. Sometimes they go so far as to say that Christians shouldn’t really have any trouble if they’re “in God’s will.” I always run this view up against the lives of the people listed in Hebrews 11. No, it’s not always easy for God’s people.

    On the other hand, people will say that the person who’s having trouble is being attacked by the devil, usually because that person is doing things that threaten the devil’s kingdom. I always want to ask how they’re sure it’s not because they’re not in God’s will.

    Experience suggests that you will have hard times and good times. That’s how the universe works. I believe in both God’s blessing and in God allowing us to experience difficult times. So there is a third option. Perhaps things are going wrong not because I made the wrong choices, but because others did, and I’m collateral damage.

    Let me suggest a response to affliction, which can be any sort of difficult season in your life. Rather than trying to figure out just what God is doing, perhaps we should simply ask what we, ourselves can do.

    No matter whether you are suffering the normal vicissitudes of life on this crazy planet, or God is trying to teach you something through hardship, or the devil is trying to block you because he doesn’t like what’s you’re doing, the best next move is to do right as best as you can while relying on God.

    And that reliance on God is important. It isn’t an excuse not to act. It is an assurance that when you act, you will accomplish more than you could do on your own. It is also the assurance that even in failure, you’ll be part of God’s family.

    Exodus 2:14-15 tells us that when he realized that the fact he had killed an Egyptian had become known, Moses was afraid. Hebrews 11:27 records that he left Egypt, not afraid of the king’s wrath. That’s the faith view of our actions.

    In what ways do you need to work and trust today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:58 – Favor

    Psalm 119:58 – Favor

    I seek your face with all my heart.
    Show me favor according to your word.

    A friend commenting on Facebook mentioned ancient translations, so I thought I’d mention a few of these over the next few days just to give a flavor. If you’re not that interested in this kind of detail, skip the section between the divider lines.

    I looked at the Septuagint (LXX), the Vulgate, and the Peshitta (Syriac). In the LXX, the Psalms were likely translated in the 1st century BCE, while the Peshitta for the OT is 2nd century CE, and the Vulgate 5th century CE. All these dates should be regarded as tentative and approximate. How’s that for a line … tentative approximations.

    In this passage, the differences seem to me to be in the emotional sense. The Hebrew text suggests wearying oneself to illness through seeking God’s face, with the request for God’s favor. The relationship between the two lines is not marked in the text. This is common in poetry. It is not necessary to assume, as some do, that the implication is that God should give favor because of the extreme nature of seeking.

    As I read the LXX, while seeking is still “with the whole heart,” I don’t see quite the same emphasis as in Hebrew. “Give me mercy,” or “have mercy on me” has a semantic range close to that of “show me favor” as in Hebrew. The Syriac uses a word that emphasizes to me the force of the search, rather than a result, while asking for pity in the second half. (I would note that my Syriac reading is slow and rusty, and I don’t trust my own sense; this seems to be in accord with the lexical aids I’m using.) The Latin follows the Greek of the LXX here closely.

    While there are different nuances, these are not serious difficulties. What should be noted, in my view, is the similarity. We’ll observe if that continues in the next few verses.

    Alden Thompson, one of my undergraduate professors, from whom I took 2nd and 3rd year biblical Hebrew, titled a chapter in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? “What kind of prayers would you publish if you were God?”

    Answering that question can help us understand how to read the Psalms. In addition, we might ask what kind of hymns, laments, and so forth. The Psalms have people talking to God in various ways.

    I spent a good deal of time today thinking about just how the two lines of this verse relate. How vigorously do I have to pray to God in order for God to keep a promise God has already given?

    If I pray more, will God do more? It seems to me that many of us operate on this basis. The more people are praying and the more time they are spending in prayer, the more likely it is that God will act. In this model of prayer, God is reluctant to be faithful, but if we are adequately persuasive, action will result.

    So am I advocating less time spent in prayer by less people?

    As Paul might say, “Let it not be!”

    What I am saying is that I think we need to detach our prayer performance from God’s promise keeping. It’s not our diligence in anything that makes God gracious. Unfortunately, we tend to go to the corollary, which we assume to be that if our performance isn’t going to make God do things, we needn’t bother with it at all.

    This brings me to the purpose of prayer. It’s a conversation. It’s two way. There’s a need to hear from God and to open oneself to the favor God bestows. I frequently see the saying on signs: “Prayer changes things.” We should first improve it to “God changes things.” But even more importantly, “Prayer changes me/us.”

    I don’t deny that the Bible indicates that God has chosen to respond to prayer. God has also chosen to use human agents to accomplish much of God’s work on earth. I don’t know what the relationship between the two things actually is. I’ve simply observed that prayer is a time when God works on me.

    What do you need God to change in you?

  • Psalm 119:57 – Still Mine!

    Psalm 119:57 – Still Mine!

    You are my portion Lord.
    I have said that I will keep your word.

    It’s interesting to look at multiple translations of this. Many of these translations reflect ways in which my meditation was going even before I read them. Some are straightforward, such as the NRSV: “The LORD is my portion; / I promise to keep your words.”

    Note that in Hebrew we don’t have a verb or anything to indicate person. The NRSV uses “The LORD is …” 3rd person singular, while I place the first part as addressed to God, matching the second line. As literally as possible, that first line reads “My portion YHWH.”

    The Message reads:

    Because you have satisfied me, God, I promise
    to do everything you say.

    Psalm 119:57 (TM)

    Notice that Peterson also reads the first part of the verse as addressed to God. Further, notice how “I promise” is on the first line of the couplet. That is the division in my printed Hebrew text. I think it’s best to read the “I have said” or “I promise” with the second line.

    Now this all gets a bit technical, though I’m skipping over a great deal. This is part of my process for meditation, hearing the words in different renderings. I’m first interested in what the Psalmist himself thought, but I see scripture as living, and as an element of God’s presence in the community of faith, I’m interested in how other readers have taken a particular text.

    This was reemphasized to me in studying Leviticus from the commentary by Jacob Milgrom. (I’ll put display of some of is books at the end of this post as well.) Milgrom is a Jewish scholar, yet his study of a passage runs from the earliest prehistory of the text all the way through Christian interpreters over time. I had an inkling of this before reading Milgrom, but his thoroughness provided an example that led me much further than I might otherwise have gone.

    As a spiritual activity, Bible study is a community activity. This is not to deny individual study. I have been individually studying even while I reference various translators and commentators. What I write here is molded by what I experience in the church and in the broader faith community. An isolated interpretation may be technically correct, but it is almost certainly dead.

    When the Psalmist says God is his “portion” that evokes a couple of things. First, a portion of an inheritance or another division of possessions. Second, it evokes the contrasting statement of Deuteronomy 32:9, “For the LORD’s portion is his people.” In Christian thought I’d relate this to “Christ in me” and me “being in Christ.”

    I call God my God. That doesn’t mean God is in my possession, but rather that there is a singular relationship there that God has created through a covenant and through that covenant God has made promises. It is one thing to try to control God, as we often do in prayer. We treat prayer as a sort of magic where if we say the right words, God is required to take a particular set of actions.

    This differs, however, from simply expecting our God to be our God and to fulfill all those promises. I, in my community, relate to God through covenant.

    And it is “in Christ” as someone deeply and permanently connected with God through covenant that I make any promise. “I will keep your word,” will be a boast if I am trying to do it on my own power to gain God’s favor. But when I say that in covenant, it connects with all God’s promises.

    What promise might you have forgotten that you need to connect with today?

  • Psalm 119:53 – Rage!

    Psalm 119:53 – Rage!

    Rage seizes me because of the wicked,
    Those who abandon your instruction.

    As I read this I remembered one interesting point about reading the Psalms. These are largely a record of what people said in worship of, or in honor of God, and not necessarily instructions for us.

    I immediately want to temper that with another thought: They are, however, an example for us. This poetry is the result of a deep and serious experience with God, and it became part of scripture through long use and recognition of its value.

    There’s a reason many of us react negatively to a thing like this. We are concerned about strong emotions. Rage makes people do things they later regret. Rage can poison your life over time and even kill you. More frequently it kills other people. Rage is dangerous.

    Our Christian response, one we regard as Christlike, is that we need to forgive. Often this need to forgive turns into passivity, a sort of forgiveness before the act which prevents us from reacting. I would suggest that forgiveness is not very real if it involves defanging the original hurt. Forgiveness says, “You hurt me. I’m forgiving you by God’s grace.” Passivity says, “That’s OK. I don’t matter in any case. I’m hear to be kicked around.”

    When the rage is at those we perceive as wicked, there is also a question of witness. What possibility of sharing the gospel, or acting in accordance with the command to “love our neighbors as ourselves” do we have if we let rage at their perfidy overcome us?

    Finally, how sure are we that we correctly recognize true wickedness, true abandonment of the way of righteousness? And again, this is a two-edged sword. Here, instead of fading into passivity because we deplore strong emotions, especially those perceived as negative, we are paralyzed by doubt about a correct course of action. I’m reminded of the military aphorism, mostly said of responding to a tactical situation, “Sometimes a bad decision is better than no decision.”

    There is a time to be angry. There is even a time to act on one’s anger. The key question is to always ask ourselves why we are angry. The time to ask that question is not when you are seized by rage, as the Psalmist describes. At that point, your judgment may be bad, even disastrous. You need to think about what is right and wrong as opposed to what annoys or angers you.

    If you are enraged because somebody doesn’t show you the respect you are due, it is not the same as being enraged at someone who is engaging in violence against those who are helpless. A person who sees a child being starved, beaten, or otherwise abused, becomes angry, and takes effective action is acting morally. Their emotions should be strong.

    On the other hand, most of us have the tendency to see our way of life as normative without ever considering what is actually right or wrong. We more often tend to get enraged by infringement of our personal preferences than we do by actual harm.

    Frequently, this type of rage occurs because we do not fully recognize the other person as a separate entity with a right (morally if not legally) to their own viewpoint and their own habits when they are not harmful to others.

    It is important not to reject strong emotions. At the same time we are beings with both a spiritual nature and minds, and it is important not to let strong emotions become the driver.

    This leads me back to two things I’ve been talking about a great deal in this series: meditation. People who have to respond to difficult situations spend time training to handle them, thinking about how to handle them, even practicing for the eventuality.

    What things in our world should enrage you? What things should you push aside as mere annoyances?

  • Psalm 119:52 – Finding Comfort

    Psalm 119:52 – Finding Comfort

    I remembered your judgments from ages past,
    Oh Lord, in them I found comfort.

    The division of this verse into two lines seems slightly odd. I’ve taken it as a chiasm, a b b’ a’: (a) I remember your judgments (b) from ages past (b’) Oh Lord, (a’) I found comfort. It’s interesting to watch for chiasms in the Bible, because it places emphasis on certain concepts. I may be wrong about the division, but if I’m right, the form places the emphasis on God’s eternal nature and God’s enduring judgments.

    And that format led me to think about human tendencies, and two opposite things that we tend to like, not always consistently. First, we like to think of stability. The idea that a practice or a law has been done for a long time and has been successful gives us a feeling of stability. We also have a drive to change, which challenges that stability. We’d like to have complete freedom combined with absolute stability.

    In the real world we can’t actually have both. Freedom and innovation always challenge safety and stability. We live with this sort of tension all the time, often resolving it by considering our own innovations as just natural developments, not threatening the fabric of society, while the innovations of others are clearly destructive and must be stopped!

    In scripture, God is presented as being on both sides of this. God is the creator, a continuing creative force. God is also ancient, reliable, providing comfort to those threatened by hostile changes.

    Am I speaking scripturally?

    “I am YHWH, I do not change ….” Malachi 3:6

    “Look! I am doing a new thing! …” (Isaiah 43:19)

    Sometimes when asked if I think there are contradictions in the Bible I say, “Yes! I think they’re the best part!”

    What exactly is God up to? Is it new or is it eternal? I like to think about this with what I call “orthodox Christian thinking,” by which I mean thinking formed by doctrines such as the trinity and the incarnation. “God is three, but God is one.” “Which?” “Yes!” … or … “Jesus is fully human and fully divine.” “Which?” “Again, yes!”

    God never changes. God is doing a new thing. It’s really a beautiful and powerful contradiction.

    “I am YHWH, I do not change. Therefore you sons of Jacob have not been finished off.” (Malachi 3:6)

    Because God is faithful to God’s promises, because having chosen, God doesn’t give up, Israel will not be destroyed.

    “Look! I am doing a new thing! Right now it’s springing up! Can’t you see it? I’m raising up a path in the wilderness, in dry places, rivers!” (Isaiah 43:19)

    Wonderful thing, context. Useful to read each verse completely.

    The end of each verse is this: God is redeeming Israel. God is not giving up. God is staying the same. God is doing something new.

    What new path does the unchanging God have for you today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:51 – Confidence

    Psalm 119:51 – Confidence

    The arrogant taunt me scornfully,
    but I do not swerve from your instruction.

    The most common reason people express to me for not talking about their faith to others is that someone may make fun of what they believe.

    Now I can’t tell you that people won’t do that to you. They will. And it’s more universal than you might think. I’ve found that many Christians are unaware of what their comments on atheism sound like to an atheist, or actually to anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. When we produce “zingers” or “mic drops” regarding people who do not share our beliefs, they may cause high fives among those who share the taunter’s viewpoint, but they don’t make friends, and they don’t convince.

    Actual confidence in your beliefs doesn’t require you to put others down. Confidence will, however, give you a defense against those who taunt you. You know that the snide remark doesn’t actually make your own beliefs wrong. It’s the result of under-confidence and over-expression.

    This doesn’t mean that you can’t have dialogue about your faith or even debate it. But the dialogue of a confident person doesn’t require demeaning one’s opponent or trying to get cheap, but ignorant laughs. Dialogue requires that one listen to an opponent’s point of view and respond to what that person actually believes.

    This also applies to debating with or having dialogue with Christians in other tradition streams. For example, the Calvinists I encounter don’t resemble the Calvinists described to me by fellow Wesleyans. On the other hand, the descriptions I often hear from Calvinists of Wesleyans don’t much resemble anything I believe.

    This verse gives us antidotes to all of these problems: Sticking to God’s instructions. Doing so will help you to withstand taunters and to avoid being a taunter yourself.

    Who in your world might you need to understand better?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)