Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ephesians, textures on September 26, 2014| 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. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on September 17, 2014| 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. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on September 10, 2014| 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. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on August 19, 2014| 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. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on August 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The thirty-second psalm is all but drunk with sweet release.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Psalm 32:1–2 ESV)
Like most durable truths, this one has been hard won. Whatever the shattering failure of the writer, it led to writhing that seemed a sickness unto death:
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah
I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on August 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes a biblical proverb seems to deserve the ‘Well, duuhh …!’ response.
Usually this signals that we are missing something. We should figure out what it is, if only because we do not look our best in the light of historical ignorance.
Proverbs 21.3 illustrates the point:
To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice. (Proverbs 21:3 ESV)
Because we have long since lost our appreciation for the weight of cultic regularity, this proverb seems to declare a truism. Who needs a verse that simply tells us what everybody already knows? (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on August 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »
We have learned to be cynical about both leaders and leadership, and so we are slow to capture the rich blessing that a good leader produces for the fortunate community that surrounds him. To modern eyes and ears, the biblical account of kings and princes is sometimes embarrassingly lavish. Yet this impression fades when the relative restraint of the Hebrew Bible with regard to human leaders is contrasted with the sometimes slavish hyperbole that characterizes Israel’s ancient neighbors when they set to chronicling—and lionizing—their kings. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on August 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Ah, to be young!
What glory. What fun. How awful.
Biblical wisdom is not as quick to glorify youth as we are, besotted by tan lines and taut skin. But neither does wisdom deny the splendor of the young. It gives them their due, in this case admiring the strength of young men.
The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair. (Proverbs 20:29 ESV)
At the same time, biblical wisdom is not satisfied by monochrome obsession with any one of life’s stages. As it admires youth’s undeniable beauty—who would want to deny it!—wisdom knows too the dignity of old age, in this proverb the splendor of an old man’s gray hair. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs 20, textures on August 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »
We fool ourselves—quite literally—when we imagine that spontaneous means genuine.
It is a snare to say rashly, ‘It is holy,’ and to reflect only after making vows. (Proverbs 20:25 ESV)
The Hebrew text is a tough one to penetrate. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs 20, textures on August 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »
For a course of instruction that is all about observing how the world works and then turning that understanding to shaping that world, the book of Proverbs’ counsel to just let go delivers a jolt:
Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you. (Proverbs 20:22 ESV)
In the face of the possibility of revenge, wisdom’s studied activism turns suddenly still. We are waved away even from imagining how good vengeance would feel. How righteous it would be. How justified my setting things back in balance by striking back at the one who has taken from me. (more…)
Canter Bridge 