Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: scripture

  • Starting a Study of Proverbs

    Starting a Study of Proverbs

    The Sunday School class I co-teach is beginning a study of Proverbs. I’m not leading this one. I’m relaxing a bit, I hope. But I have indicated I’ll do a bit of blogging on the material.

    The assignment before the beginning of the study tomorrow was to read introductions to the book, both from the resource text we’re using (The Daily Study Bible volume on Proverbs) and from various Bible editions. I’m not going to try to provide my own introduction, except to note that I read multiple introductions that seemed to me to provide an excellent launching point for a new reader.

    My interest is the place of Proverbs in the biblical canon. Why is it that we have a collection of proverbs in the canon of scripture?

    While we work with the canon of scripture all the time, we don’t often think about it as much. The “canon” refers to those books which are canonical, which means they’ve been accepted by church law as authoritative in the church. This is a fairly strict legal definition in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. In Protestantism, it’s a bit less fixed. The general concept remains.

    People often start talking about scripture with the concepts of inspiration and truth, and if a book is determined to be “inspired,” it is then scripture. That’s not precisely how this happened. There was a long process of history, tradition, discussion, and finally definitive determination. The determination can be better termed a determination that a particular set of books was and is authoritative rather than that these books were inspired.

    Now that may catch you a bit off-guard. Surely these books are inspired! In fact, I believe just that. But being inspired is not sufficient to make them scripture. I personally hold that God has inspired other writings which are not scripture, but I do not advocate that such writings become part of scripture. The key difference is that the selected writings were seen as authoritative.

    “Authoritative” involves the value of the material over time and space. For example, an ancient prophet might have sent a message to a particular individual that was specific to that individual. That message might have been from God, inspired by God, and sent by God’s authority, but if we discovered it today, as interesting as it might be, it would not be authoritative.

    In my view, accepting the value and authority of scripture today involves accepting the validity of the choices made over time, and the belief that we have the inspired scriptures that God intended as authoritative scripture. God can and does act through the events of history and the actions of groups in order to bring the message.

    So in Scripture we have the central authority. The question then becomes why does this particular passage, or in this case this particular book belong in the canon, and as part of the canon what is it supposed to accomplish.

    It’s almost cliché to talk about different types of literature and how we interpret those. But it is almost equally cliché that we expect the end point of this interpretation to be some specific doctrinal conclusion. In other words, we expect all of scripture to end up providing us with data.

    I would suggest (and have suggested) that while scripture is valuable for forming doctrine and guiding practice, this isn’t the main thing. In my book When People Speak for God, I suggest that we come to the Bible for information, but God comes to us in scripture for conversation. And eventually this conversation is to result in transformation.

    Wisdom literature as a whole, and Proverbs in particular challenges a couple of assumptions often held about how we get scripture, and I think in turn about what scripture is to do for us. Wisdom literature comes from living. It’s collected wisdom of a culture. It leads us to ways of thinking, rather than to provide set conclusions. It’s not just about the wisdom it passes on, but it’s about how that wisdom is collected. It doesn’t come in visions, dreams, or direct divine speech. It comes through the process of living.

    As an example, take Proverbs 26:4 & 5.

    Don’t answer a fool according to his folly,
    lest you become like him.
    Answer a fool according to his folly,
    or he’ll become wise in his own eyes.

    Proverbs 26:4-5, my translation

    So which verse do I follow?

    (Hint: James 1:5)

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

    When People Speak for God
    From Inspiration to Understanding
    Inspiration
  • Psalm 119:140

    Psalm 119:140

    You’re word is thoroughly tested.
    Your servant loves it.

    Several translations use “promise” rather than “word” here. There is some reason to do that, but in this case I like “word” as having a broader meaning that includes “promise.”

    In what way is God’s word thoroughly tested? We talk about being sure of God’s word, of it being true, of God being faithful, but what drives us to believe that?

    This is a case where experience is very important. Many people play down experience as less reliable than scripture, and in one important way it is. The reason your experience is less reliable than scripture is that it has not had the same testing that God’s word given in scripture has.

    Scripture is a recounting of the experience of lots of people with God. Even when scripture records a specific statement with “the Lord says this,” that is an experience of God. If you don’t think hearing from God is an experience, then I hope you’ll have a chance to experience it. If you don’t remember such an experience, read that of some of the prophets, such as Ezekiel 1 or Isaiah 6.

    So if you have an experience of hearing from God, what’s the difference? The difference is testing. God’s word in scripture has been testing over the centuries over and over again and we have found it secure. We’re not questioning this any more. It has become the experience against which you can test your everyday experience for validity.

    I personally believe that God can still speak today. How will you know if that happens? There are many things I could mention, but the key one is this: Read that tested word in scripture and become so familiar with with it that you know God’s voice beyond doubt.

    Try listening for God’s voice today. Remember to check out the tested word as well!

    (Featured image generated by Adobe Firefly using a prompt created by Gemini AI. Yes, I’m experimenting.)

  • Psalm 119:130 – Light

    Psalm 119:130 – Light

    When your Word is revealed, light shines,
    giving understanding to the naive.

    This is a very important verse to me, and I think it is often misunderstood.

    I was raised on Bible-based materials. I studied that way in school. I spent a good deal of time with it in school. I had a disagreement with my mother about when I first read the Bible through. She said it was when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I recall reading it all the way through in my early teens. As an elementary student at a school with a Bible-based curriculum I memorized Bible passages in large quantities, including the chapter I’m writing about, all 176 verses of it.

    When I went to college and determined to study the Bible I majored in Biblical Languages, thinking this was the way to get back to the sources. With the weight I put on the value of scripture, I wanted to be as accurate in my knowledge as I possibly could because knowing the words contained in scripture was, I thought, of great value.

    It took me a very long time to get past the collection of words and data from and about scripture. I used the word “naive” in my translation of this verse, and I was naive in my approach to scripture. It was not only not possible for me to get to a 100% bedrock understanding, based only on my study, it was also not particularly desirable.

    That question drove me away from the church and from fellowship. I still enjoyed the study of and the text of scripture, but it was no longer a driving force as it had been. It was, instead, a bit of a hobby.

    Then I came back to it again. Marcus Borg wrote a book titled Reading the Bible Again for the FIrst Time. While I don’t agree with everything Borg teaches, I enjoyed the book. I empathized with the experience, because by the time I read his book, I had had a similar experience. The reading of the Bible became something very different to me.

    One very important change was that instead of looking for a simple, totally coherent system of beliefs about God, I began to seek to know God. When I began to seek to know God rather than about God I also began to see that the Bible points outside of itself to manifestations of God’s Word. By God’s Word were the heavens made (Psalm 33:6-9). This told me that God’s Word extended everywhere.

    I also saw in the Bible a great deal of diversity. Instead of seeing repetition of “sameness,” I saw God working in multiple ways in the stories of the Bible. I saw even more diversity in the way the stories of the Bible came to be presented as they were. I saw the way in which the Bible pointed to people who heard from God and who spoke for God. I saw a church in the New Testament where hearing from God and sharing were part of worship (1 Corinthians 14, for example).

    “Bible-based” no longer filled the requirement for me. “Based in the Word of God” came much closer, but only when we allow ourselves to understand that for those who are willing to listen, for those who are willing to see, for those who are willing to hear, and for those who are willing to imagine, God’s Word is everywhere.

    God’s word is just waiting for an opportunity to enter, an opportunity to make the naive wise.

    “I can never get away from your presence!” (Psalm 139:7b, NLT). No, for a God who is everywhere, that’s true. The problem is that we’re extremely capable of getting away from an awareness of God’s presence. The entrance of the data does not give light. The entrance of God’s Word creates knowledge and wisdom. It’s waiting for us to perceive the God’s presence.

    I’m amused by our common expression regarding an especially powerful meeting: “God was sure present in our worship service today!” That’s not how it works. God is definitely present. The question is whether the worship service is conducive to helping us perceive that presence.

    Similarly, a daily question, whether I’m in my home or my office, or traveling somewhere in my car, or taking a walk, or whatever I may be doing the question is whether I’m perceiving God’s Word in what I see. If I’m writing prose, poetry, or fantasy fiction, I can be perceiving God.

    Because God’s Word is absolutely everywhere.

    Are you going to perceive it today?

  • Psalm 119:83 – Burned Up (and Out)

    Psalm 119:83 – Burned Up (and Out)

    For I am like a wineskin in smoke,
    yet I do not forget your statutes.

    It’s not entirely clear what’s happening to the wineskin here (REB translates “though I shrivel like a wineskin in the smoke), I think this continues this series of verses on being out on a limb, out of options, and wondering what’s going to happen next.

    Mitchell Dahood states (correctly) that there really isn’t a satisfactory explanation for the “wineskin in the smoke” simile. We can think of ways to understand it, as I did in the previous paragraph, but it’s hard to be really convincing. Dahood proposes the translation “For I have become like one weeping from smoke.” Yet his linguistic explanation leaves me thinking, “Nice, but still just a suggestion.”

    Sometimes in translating the Bible, especially in Hebrew scriptures, we find passages like this. It’s truly difficult to determine precisely what the meaning is. So I’m stopping a moment to discuss uncertainty in reading scripture.

    We’re generally unhappy with any possibility of doubt as to the meaning of a particular verse. Surely God’s Word should give us a precise understanding! There are those complain about notes in their English (or Spanish) translations because these notes might give people doubts about the accuracy of their Bibles.

    But however much you may try to avoid it, the evidence is there. There are textual variations. There are verses where we are uncertainty of the translation of particular words. Or, as in this case, the definitions seem pretty clear but we don’t get the simile, or perhaps it’s a euphemism. We don’t know absolutely.

    We need to get used to this sort of variation simply because God has chosen to provide scripture in that form. It comes written by humans, copied by humans, and interpreted by humans. And guess what! Humans make mistakes. Even if none of these variations existed, you and I, as readers, would still be fallible.

    Now the fact is that the vast majority of the text of scripture is not in any real doubt. It’s only a small portion of the words that make us stop and scratch our heads. But if we take a broad look at scripture, and don’t just depend on a single verse, we’ll be able to figure things out.

    Sometimes doubt about meaning makes us feel like that “bottle in the smoke,” whatever that experience means. But if we listen for the story, and the message in the story, we’ll find that while we are not capable of certainty, we are capable of hearing God speak through these passages. It’s not that God can’t provide an accurate message. It’s that we, with our limited minds, can only understand in our limited way.

    That makes it a good idea to listen closely, and read more of scripture so we have a broader understanding. But mostly it means continuing to realize our dependence on God.

    Do you depend on God to lead you to truth?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • 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 119:48 – Meditating

    Psalm 119:48 – Meditating

    And I lift up my hands to your commands which I love,
    and I will meditate on your statutes.

    I haven’t been entirely consistent in how I translate the first word of each couplet in this section, but they begin with the Hebrew letter vav (or waw as is sometimes taught in classical Hebrew). This would be “and” or some sort of connective in English. Verse 48 is the end of the eight-verse section. Tomorrow we start on the letter zayin, which sounds like the English ‘z’.

    The first word in verse 49 is zekor, the imperative ‘remember’. Addressed to God. We’ll talk about that tomorrow!

    But the word ‘remember’ came to me as I thought about my project of meditating on this chapter. My practice has been to read the verse just before I go to bed, setting the subject for my mind for the following day. I read it again in the morning. It’s interesting to me how many times I can’t remember which verse I’m to meditate on when I get up, or how many times I might have to remind myself during the day. My mind doesn’t just wander. It charges berserkly from subject to subject and often doesn’t want to settle anywhere. I have quick practices I use to restore my focus.

    So what as it meant to meditate on these verses?

    First, because I intend to write something, I have had a focus for my thinking. What would it be good to say about this particular verse?

    Second, it has become part of the way I focus my activities of the day. If I find myself needing moment to refocus, reading the verse or remembering it and thinking about it provides me with a punctuation point for my day.

    I could have a worse way to restore my focus!

    This is also a different way of handling scripture, and I think it’s valuable. My normal focus is very factual. I started studying biblical languages because I wanted to get the meaning of scripture as precise as possible. I still value a precise reading of scripture and the attempt to understand what a passage meant to the person who first wrote it and those who first heard it.

    That process of exegesis, and critical analysis of every possible aspect of the text remains an anchor point. In studying these verses, I consult the original languages and ancient translations. I look at possible relationships between these words and those in other ancient languages. I always want to start with what the psalmist was likely thinking as he wrote these words.

    I cannot know that precisely. That’s one reason I call it an anchor point. It’s easy to conclude that if I can’t understand something perfectly and precisely I might as well not try. I compare this to the building of an aircraft. There are always tolerances in measurements. Nothing is perfect. But the builders can never forget working to those standards, or disaster will follow. History has shown us how that works!

    But scripture is not limited to being a source of data. It provides a way of thinking and a basis for thinking. That’s where meditation on scripture is so valuable. A scripture can shape your thinking about something that the original author didn’t even conceive. (I realize that God conceives of everything. I’m talking about the human author.)

    The process of deciding can point the way to how other decisions are to be addressed or to principles one can apply in many areas. The text can also simply provide the catalyst for other ways of thinking. Scripture is a written form of the powerful, creative Word of God, and that Word can empower things that previous readers or the original writers were unaware of.

    In reading from and meditating on God’s Word, you can provide the opportunity for you to hear God speak.

    What new approach could you take to benefit from God’s Word?

    (Featured image from Adobe Stock By Sensvector. Licensed. Not public domain.)

  • Psalm 119:17 – Order of Operations

    Psalm 119:17 – Order of Operations

    Deal fully with your servant,
    So I may live and keep your word.

    There are numerous translation questions, including differences of opinion about precisely what the word I translate “deal fully with” actually means in this context.

    Another good option is what Bob MacDonald does in Seeing the Psalter:

    Grow your servant
    I will live and keep your word.

    Bob MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, p. 381

    Again, let me remind you that I’m writing meditations, not expositions on these passages. There are many things one could get from a verse like this, especially considering the larger work that contains it.

    There’s an order of events in scripture that’s important to keep in mind, and it’s reflected in this verse. God grows, completes, matures, blesses, and the result is both life in the physical sense, and a good life, both produced by this initial action of God.

    It is often thought that Hebrew scriptures focus on human action, in which people keep rules, and God’s blessing follows. And there is a natural order that says that living in certain ways results in blessing. The world in which we live works that way. But Hebrew scriptures emphasize the power and action of God, prior to human action.

    “In the beginning God …” and then when there is a world and a garden, people are invited to live within certain parameters. I would suggest that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the ever available option of take the suboptimal path. The fruit metaphorically represents that option. But God’s gift of the whole creation, of the garden, and of life precedes the limitation.

    At Sinai, God comes on the scene as the deliverer from bondage before becoming also the lawgiver.

    Gift comes before requirement; grace before law.

    Are you remembering that gift?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:16 – Ways to Forget

    Psalm 119:16 – Ways to Forget

    In your statutes I delight.
    I will not forget your word.

    If this were not poetry, I might be tempted to talk about the rather optimistic promise of not forgetting God’s word. But then I remember how many times I have said, “I’m not going to forget that” in reference to some planned task or another. Most of the time I forget, but if I never make a conscious effort to remember, forgetting becomes 100%.

    So I got to thinking about different ways to forget God’s word.

    Having memorized large portions of it (not voluntarily) when I was younger, I could say that forgetting God’s word was like forgetting the words I had memorized. That would be literally forgetting, and I have certainly done plenty of that.

    But let’s consider some other ways of forgetting:

    • We can forget the creator when we look at creation.
    • We can forget to consult God’s word when it is applicable to our decision making
    • We can forget that God’s word comes in many ways, and that God’s truth is always applicable, however delivered!
    • We can forget God’s promises
    • We can forget what God has done in our lives in the past
    • We can forget the history of God’s actions in our families.

    How do you forget? Is it time to revive a memory?

  • Why I Still Like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

    Why I Still Like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

    Yes, I’ve heard the complaints, and those who say it isn’t actually Wesleyan or has deteriorated through the years, but I met it in the United Methodist Discipline before I first joined a Methodist church (though without the name) and I still like it.

    For those who may not be aware of the quadrilateral, it states simply that doctrine is formed not from scripture alone, but from scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. (I discussed the importance of experience in a 2015 blog post.)

    On this blog, I have discussed this several times before. Today I want to add a metaphor and expand a bit on the hermeneutic that I use as a result. As I have noted before, many intractable arguments result from discussing conclusions from scripture without discussing hermeneutics, the way in which we come to those conclusions. The other person may seem obtuse to you, but if you understood how they are coming to their interpretation, you might understand their point of view. You also might still abhor it, but you’d understand it!

    The metaphor I want to introduce here is the confluence of four streams. This metaphor uses “confluence” to suggest the way sources interact to help form doctrine.

    To help clarify this and its purpose, let’s start with its opposite. For many, scripture is a fixed source of data. You go to it, mine the data, and then directly apply it to your life or the life of your community here and now. We should have learned from the experience of the Christian community that it doesn’t work that way. Thousands of denominations and various church splits, carried out by people who thought they were (and generally think they are) faithfully following the Bible should have given us a clue.

    The nature of scripture itself should give us a clue. It is not organized as a compendium of knowledge. It is not organized like an encyclopedia, or like the Boy Scouts Handbook (a metaphor I’ve heard frequently), nor like the more modern FAQ page. It’s a collection of a variety of material produced in a variety of ways, organized and presented differently, and then collected and placed in one volume. Out around the edges, various of those denominations disagree on the details of what should be considered part of the Bible.

    I have this feeling that God accomplishes what God sets out to do, thus when I see a Bible that looks almost entirely unlike what so many people want it to be, I come to suspect that God didn’t want what they want. If God had wanted that, it would be what we have. We don’t, so God didn’t.

    I recognized the problem back in 1993 when I was considering a return to church after about a dozen years, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to express it. For a number of reasons that seem to me providential, I visited what was then Pine Forest United Methodist Church (now Wilde Lake Church), and generally liked what I heard, but I’m an idea-driven person and I wanted to know what these Methodists believed. On being asked, the pastor thought and finally handed me a copy of the United Methodist Discipline.

    As I read that document (the first 100 pages or so, not the organizational stuff in the back!) I encountered the description of what is often called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. I loved it. Not because I thought it was a good prescription for how to do Bible study, but because I thought it described how people study the Bible.

    We bring to our study what is in ourselves, such as our observation of the world, our thinking about various things, our experiences with others, our knowledge of past events, things we know work for us, things we know do not work, and our relationships or community, in whatever shape that community bears.

    The simple explanation for why our interpretations differ is that we differ. Those differences are not just in us, but in the way in which we are connected to others both in space and in time. These are not things we can escape; they are part of us.

    The Bible looks a great deal like it was produced by people much like us.

    Do I mean by this that there is nothing special about the Bible or that there is no divine inspiration involved? Not even a little bit! What I mean is that I see Divine action in a community of people that stretches not only through space around the world but also that stretches through time. It is a diverse book delivered through diverse people who lived in diverse communities to a wide diversity of other people and communities across the span of time.

    Does this mean that I can learn nothing from the Bible? Not at all! What it does mean is that I can’t reach into the Bible and grab a rock to throw at you or at anyone else, and truthfully call the rock “divine.” And I think that’s a good thing. Possibly even a Divine thing.

    As I was thinking about all of this, I was also looking at some pictures of river confluences (if anyone cares, along the Essequibo River in Guyana and its tributaries), and I thought, “A confluence of four streams comes closer than anything else I’ve thought of to the way the quadrilateral actually works!”

    Of course, there’s nothing quadrilateral about this metaphor. Well, except the “4” part.

    Let me note what I see as the problems of the previous metaphors, especially my own. The whole “quadrilateral” metaphor tended to make four elements equally authoritative in forming authoritative doctrine. In many ways, we’re still looking for that rock to throw, but we want its authority to be derived in a different way.

    My own response with the four-layer filter, in which I suggested that a doctrine should be tested by all four elements, suffers a similar problem. I don’t find it entirely unuseful, but as with many metaphors, it needs a “don’t stretch” warning label. My metaphor of the four-lane highway, a critique metaphor, similarly starts with our hoped-for conclusion and then tests it against the four, in this case looking for a lane that will work.

    The four streams metaphor suggests several things, including that the streams keep flowing. They are not actually static. The water in the stream that results is a mixture of all four, which may vary by season, situation, and geography.

    Is any of this safe? No, but nothing is safe. Doctrine is not a static object that exists outside our community. It is formed in community, practiced and taught in community, and it belongs to the universal church, not to you or me personally.

    This does not make me take the Bible lightly. In fact, it suggests to me that I need to immerse myself in scripture and also in my community of faith in order to be guided by the God who guided the community over time and continues to guide it and me. No superficial glance intended to prove myself right and someone else wrong will do for this.

    We embrace a diversity of interpretations that fit within the streams that meet at the confluence to produce doctrine. It is a continuing journey, along with that “great cloud of witnesses” led by Jesus, the “author and finisher.” (See Hebrews 12:1-3 with reference to Hebrews 11.)

  • Pious People Popping Platitude Pills

    Pious People Popping Platitude Pills

    Tacky title, eh? I don’t apologize. I had fun constructing it.

    The other day someone asked me whether there were any scriptures I liked to go to when I was having problems. I gave the answer immediately and then explained, but I’m going to do the opposite here. I’m going to explain and then tell you the most helpful passage of scripture for me when life varies from irritating to frightening.

    Well, I lied. I’ll give you part of the answer. There aren’t any “nice” passages of scripture that I use to give me comfort. In fact, when people quote those at me, I get annoyed. I already know them. If they were going to help me, they would have already.

    What good does it do me to be reminded that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills? Send some of those annoying animals to market and pass the money on to me!

    What good does it do me to be reminded that God heals all my diseases when I have a headache and stuffy head and can’t concentrate on my work? Heal my disease, and do it now!

    Besides, it’s likely I can give you sound exegetical arguments for why those passages don’t apply to my situation.

    It isn’t that I don’t believe in prayer, or God’s healing, or God’s provision. I can cite plenty of examples.

    Counterexamples, too.

    My father was healed in a manner I regard as miraculous. One day in 1971 he was told he would never work again, and would be dead in 10 years. Two weeks later, after he called for the elders of the church and they anointed him with oil and prayer, he was back at work, and was the sole physician for a 54 bed hospital, on call 24/7 for a year. He lived another 35+ years.

    Then there was the time when a friend of his had a heart attack. Despite his prayers and his best efforts as a physician, he was unable to revive and stabilize the man. It was the longest and hardest he had ever worked on anyone. He didn’t want to give in. But the man still died.

    A friend asked me to pray with him for $1500 to pay his mortgage so he wouldn’t lose his house. I did so gladly. The next day $1500 arrived in his mailbox.

    My thoughts? Where is my rent money for my mobile home? I’m honestly not resentful that people have bigger houses. (I do sin through jealousy and resentment about other things, but I like my mobile home.) But I was having a hard time coming up with the rent at the same time as, apparently in answer to my prayer, my friend got his mortgage payment.

    I was asked to go on a mission trip to do some teaching. I’d just gotten back from a month overseas, and had nothing with which to pay for a trip. I flippantly said, well, the Lord has to provide, because I’m tapped out, but I’ll go of God provides. Within the week the trip was paid for. As I was preparing to leave I found that I had no spending money. I figured I’d survive. God had, after all, provided the cost of the trip. A friend drove up in my driveway and said, “You’re going to need some spending money on your trip.” He handed me two $100 bills.

    No, no negative “balance” story this time.

    Sometimes I’m just whining and crying, but sometimes God doesn’t make it easy. God doesn’t intend to. What I never appreciate is a platitude I memorized a long time ago.

    Yes, a passage of scripture can be a platitude under the right set of circumstances.

    In scripture, one can balance great promises of good things with times of trouble, times that are ordained by God. We do ourselves and everyone else a disservice by reading the nice stuff and skipping over the bad.

    In Sunday school, we hear the story of Peter being freed from prison (Acts 12:3ff). We rarely mention that this comes right after James is beheaded (Acts 12:1-2). We like Samuel and Kings and the message that if we do what is right, God will bless, but we’re less happy with Job, in which a person identified as righteous suffers substantially. Or we have Ecclesiastes 9:11 which seems to tell us that our efforts don’t matter, and instead of proposing an alternative of God’s will, says “time and chance happens to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

    In fact, to some extent we are promised trouble, particularly persecution. Perhaps when life is going too well we should ask ourselves whether we are doing what we should!

    The problem is one I’ve observed regarding Hallmark movies. The boy doesn’t always get the girl (or the girl the boy), your parents don’t always reconcile at the last minute, your business isn’t always rescued from bankruptcy by a helpful crusader, and no, your child doesn’t always get better. It’s nice to have a movie that says so, but it’s not always our experience.

    I remember standing at Disney and listening to them singing about wishes coming true. I was standing there crying while everyone laughed, because I knew that my wish was not coming true. I was fighting that knowledge, but it was still there. My son was not going to be staying with us; he’d be going on to glory. I hated that song in that moment.

    In our dealings with others, we need to be prepared to recognize the nature of life and not to say or to imply that God will always solve every problem immediately and according to our preferences.

    So what do I find is the most encouraging passage?

    Job 38.

    Yes, that one.

    You see, I know that I’m darkening counsel by words without knowledge. I know that I’m pretty ignorant. I know that God knows much more.

    Infinitely more.

    But what it also tells me is that while I’m thinking I’m alone, while I’m thinking there is nothing left, God is there. God doesn’t promise that you will not have troubles, but God does promise to be there. I can get that.

    God’s promises are quite valuable, but like everything else they need to be taken in context—in the context of life, in the context of the passage of scripture, and in the context of the overall story.

    I have two friends who suffer from health issues that many of us would consider overwhelming. Both of them, to the contrary, see God working through their situation. Their prayer is not for healing, but for God to use them in the situation they’re in. I would imagine they would be happy if God decided to heal them at some point, but that is not their focus in life.

    They have the promise that God will be with them no matter what the problem.

    That is a message I can truly appreciate and appropriate.

    (Featured image credit: Openclipart.org.)