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Posts Tagged ‘biblical reflection’

the foolish in spirit: Psalm 116

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 24, 2012| 1 Comment »

Jesus memorably elevates a status that is widely viewed to be lamentable.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3 ESV)

Nobody wants to be so impoverished. Broken down, crushed under an unbearable burden, bereft of emotional strength. It is a state to be avoided when possible, regretted when not, survived if one can.

Or so we thought, until Jesus taught us that holding title to his Father’s rule in this world and the next requires one to experience just such broken poverty. (more…)

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dawn comes: Psalm 112

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Light dawns often in the biblical text.

Whether because the dawn is in human experience such a reliable expectation or because the move from night’s darkness to morning’s shining is so dramatic, the image lends itself to the vocabulary of hope and of hopefulness.

One of life’s great enigmas—and therefore a subject matter for the probing poems we call the Psalms—is why the righteous suffer. Why, in a well-governed world, should good women and men know the darkness and the confusion of night at all? Why is theirs not a perpetual stroll from light to brilliance? (more…)

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pause for reflection: Psalm 111

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Biblical wisdom insists that life is a classroom. Those who live it best engage life as its students.

The logic of this approach to living life as a learning experience assumes that the way of things is not immediately apparent. Short attention spans need not apply.

Things that are worthwhile require prolonged scrutiny. Circumstances and phenomena do not give up their truth quickly. The best of reality simmers slowly. The patient cook—and his or her loved ones—enjoy the richest meal.

Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111:2 ESV) (more…)

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centrifugal goodness: Psalm 67

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The knotty old words of the priestly blessing in the book of Numbers, chapter 6, were to be pronounced for uncounted generations over ‘the sons of Israel’.

Yet there is in biblical Israel’s shalom a marked potential for good that flows far beyond that little people’s boundaries. The patriarchal narratives of Genesis tell us, a little enigmatically, that all the nations of the earth shall find their blessing in Father Abraham.

The sixty-seventh psalm discerns in these two resilient threads of biblical tradition—blessing for Israel, blessing for the nations—authorization to unite the venerable words of the priestly blessing to a fervent hope that the whole earth might go giddy before the righteous judgements of Israel’s God. Shalom, for this poet, is open-ended. No zero-sum game, it is capable of embracing all who will come. Love need not love its first object less in order to expand the circle to seconds, thirds, and more. (more…)

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through fire and water: Psalm 66

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 14, 2012| 5 Comments »

Because of the quality of the relationship that binds YHWH and the psalmist to each other, even the most excruciating suffering is rarely if ever distanced from YHWH’s hand.

The psalms’ theodicy—their attempt to make sense of God’s behavior—is complex rather than simple. The Psalter cannot bring itself to remove causality from the list of explanations that describe God’s involvement in our pain. In my pain. (more…)

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the capacity to bring down: Daniel 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The biblical book of Daniel delights in narrating the temporary collapse of the Babylonian king who held the Judaean exiles in captivity. Simultaneously, its author asks the reader to learn from the royal demise. If this kind of thing can happen to a pagan king, we are urged to consider, it can happen to anyone.

While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: ‘O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: The kingdom has departed from you! You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will.’ Immediately the sentence was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven away from human society, ate grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws. (Daniel 4.31–33 NRSV)

The king goes animal before us. (more…)

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wise and wiser (II): Daniel 2

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 6, 2012| 3 Comments »

The best way to become wiser is to be wise in the first place.

Wisdom is a progressive ordering of one’s life. It is cumulative. The more one learns, the more one can learn. In the context of that blending of wisdom and apocalyptic traditions that occurs in the book of Daniel, a key criterion for Daniel’s reception of divine revelation when failure would have meant death was to have become wise prior to the crisis. (more…)

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wise and wiser (I): Daniel

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It is not as though Daniel and his friends in the biblical book that bears his name lack credentials. The book’s introductory narrative places them among the cream of the Israelite exiles.

Then (the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar) commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace … (Daniel 1.3–4 ESV)

These men come from good stock and have made the most of the opportunities that good circumstance affords. They are scholar-athletes who have not apologized for the exertions required to discover wisdom and cultivate knowledge. Our populist ideology might fault them for having ‘pursued learning’. The text, by contrast, considers this to be evidence of their honorable nature. They are socially poised. Put these guys in any situation and they’ll know how to handle themselves.

Their shoes are shined. (more…)

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heroism came later: Daniel 1

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

Daniel stands out in a superficial reading of the book that bears his name as a Golden Boy, a larger-than-life Man of Principle who was destined before time to stare down the powers and prove the superiority of Israel’s God in a pagan environment.

No reading undercuts the true nature of the text more easily than this facile understanding of heroism as a thing that simply had to be.

Real human beings never experience heroism as predetermined, an indelible script written into their days. After the glorious deed, the heroic figure is often more surprised than anyone that he turned out to be … well … a hero. (more…)

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terra firma: Proverbs 12

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 2, 2012| 2 Comments »

The land is solid and unimaginative.

Meetings of farmers—men and women who work the land seldom sentimentalize it—are not hotbeds of speculation. Men and women of the soil are sensible folk with down-to-earth concerns and an eye on the bottom line.

You don’t debate the land. The land is what it is, a given.

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. (Proverbs 12:11 ESV)

Biblical wisdom, too, represents an existential terra firma. It is not given to flights of fancy, ruminations about the unseen, esoterica wrapped up in shiny paper. The wisdom tradition finds it hard to respect speculators. They are, at best, a distraction. At worst, they are fools. (more…)

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