Our mind is shaped by a culture that privileges experience and feeling above all other windows into reality.
We no longer even say, with the writers of love songs, ‘It feels so good it must be real’. We are content if it simply feels good, with no further questions asked. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical interpretation, Luke, textures | Leave a Comment »
Life with people often seems like a storm of chaos, intending to damage.
We are violent. If we cannot imagine striking out with our fists, then we destroy with a word, a sneer, the quick and lethal rolling of two eyes. With our need to voice disagreement with anything and anyone, as though the world waited breathlessly to know what I think about things that hardly matter. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Ephesians, textures | Leave a Comment »
The faint heart is often insomniac. What is it about the 3:00 a.m. hour, so full of worries, fears, and untimely wakefulness? As though on schedule, eyes open and the faint heart races. Life’s shadows loom taller and more menacing than usual. Improbable fears seem perfectly plausible. Things that will shrink into proportion in the light of day take the shape of lethal threats and impassable walls. The sixty-first psalm relieves us of at least one of our disabling fears: that we cannot pray because our heart is faint. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures | Leave a Comment »
A studied self-interest and the concern for community pervade the realism of the biblical Proverbs.
The wisdom of this anthology is neither romantic nor sentimental. The student applies himself to knowledge because there is a career to forge, a life to plan, a community to construct. Distractions abound, blind alleys lie to the right and left. The environment demands a certain steely, interested resolve. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs | Leave a Comment »
Bon appétit!, we say, and we tuck excitedly into the feast. Eyes bigger than stomach. So many dishes, so little time.
Where power is in play and self-restraint is absent, the banquet becomes a feast of death.
When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you have a big appetite. Do not desire the ruler’s delicacies, for they are deceptive food. (Proverbs 23:1–3 NRSV)
The Bible carves out a celebrated space for feasting. The biblical witness is no killjoy. It knows how to fast, when things come down to that, but it enjoys a good meal when they don’t. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures | Leave a Comment »
A proverb like this one is sometimes read as though it dismisses one thing in favor of another.
The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD. (Proverbs 21:31 NRSV)
By this understanding, the cavalryman’s preparation of the horse against the mortal engagement that awaits is seen as futile, because YHWH does it all anyway.
The is almost certainly not what the proverb intends. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Leave a Comment »
Although true religion can be prescribed, it can never be automated.
There is no mechanical predictability in the way we interact with our Maker. It is true that we must do the right things. But this does not mean that performance of the right actions simply elicits from God the response we require.
On the contrary, motive matters. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Leave a Comment »
A life that unfolds in the presence of YHWH is dynamic rather than static. Its investments are fruitful according to catalytic rather than summative patterns. Tit for tat and quid pro quo lose their explanatory power.
One gives, and then finds that she’s received more than she’s given. This latter observation is perhaps the most frequently declared testimony of those who have purposed to follow the LORD’s coaxing onto uncertain terrain. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Leave a Comment »
After detailing the radical bent-ness of the wicked, the writer of the thirty-sixth psalm finds himself overwhelmed by the ubiquity of YHWH. The LORD’s loving justice is everywhere.
Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD. (Psalm 36:5–6 ESV)
The Hebrew Bible does not traffic in the notions of omnipresence or ubiquity to which thoughtful readers of the Bible would eventually lay their hand. Its natural dialect is more concrete, more this-worldly. Yet, in spite of what might seem to our habits of thinking a limitation, the Hebrew poet knows how to say exactly what he wants to say. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures | Leave a Comment »
Bring on the loneliness, the incendiary thirst, the gnawing hunger, the near certainly of a relatively slow death!
I’ll take this, so the speaker of a proverb about domestic life stakes his claim, than live comfortably with that woman … :
Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife. (Proverbs 21:19 NIV)
Though spoken completely from a man’s point of view, the proverb’s roles are easily reversed. A ‘quarrelsome and ill-tempered husband’ is just as adept at draining the joy from comfort and companionship. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Leave a Comment »
Canter Bridge 