Daily Devotional Sept 17 2021
Psalm 69; 2 Kings 1:2-17; 1 Cor. 3:16-23; Matt. 5:11-16 One of the great translational issues with the Bible is that English sometimes has a restricted vocabulary. We don’t have enough words for love: Greek has four or possibly five quite distinct shades of meaning with different words, Hebrew has two, English lumps ’em […]
Daily Devotional Sept 16 2021
Psalm 70, 71; 1 Kings 22:29-45; 1 Cor. 2:14-3:15; Matt. 5:1-10 I often think that St Francis of Assisi is so admired because, having seen how hard his example is, most of us (including me) have simply chosen not to try following that path. Same with Mother Theresa. We admire, but we don’t imitate. Same […]
Daily Devotional Sept 15 2021
Psalm 72; 1 Kings 22:1-28; 1 Cor. 2:1-13; Matt. 4:18-25 And why, exactly, are there no great paintings of this story from I Kings? False prophets frothing at the mouth and wearing viking helmets, kings gorgeously arrayed in armor, a single true prophet sulking in chains in the corner. It’s a scene made for TV, […]
Daily Devotional Sept 14 2021
Psalm 98; Isaiah 45:21-25; Philippians 2:5-11; John 12:31-36a HOLY CROSS In 335 AD, on Sept 13, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was officially dedicated, with a wooden artifact which was believed to be the actual cross of Christ brought into the building the next morning in a moving procession through the […]
Daily Devotional Sept 13 2021
Psalm 56, 57, 58; 1 Kings 21:1-16; 1 Cor. 1:1-19; Matt. 4:1-11 Jezebel does what the wife of any good tyrant would do when her husband is sulking: she has the stubborn Naboth, so utterly unreasonably attached to his ancestral property, kangaroo-courted and rushed to the gallows, and seizes the property as a birthday gift […]
Daily Devotional Sept 11 2021
Psalm 55; 1 Kings 18:41-19:8; Phil. 3:17-4:7; Matt. 3:13-17 There are times when the spot-on rightness of the Lectionary can dazzle you (as a reminder, our lectionary cycle was set up by an ecumenical body of Canadian and American churches in 1992 as a way to ensure that Christians of all stripes were at least […]
Daily Devotional Sept 10 2021
Psalm 40, 54; 1 Kings 18:20-40; Phil. 3:1-16; Matt. 3:1-12 Everything is about resurrection. ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’ But resurrection isn’t just from physical […]
Daily Devotional Sept 9 2021
Psalm 50; 1 Kings 18:1-19; Phil. 2:12-30; Matt. 2:13-23 Do you see what Ahab does here? He’s the problem, on all fronts–his religious policy, his tyrannical habits, his foreign wife, from the perspective of traditional Israelite religion and politics, everything Ahab touches is poisoned by the touch. And yet he blames Elijah for all […]
Daily Devotional Sept 8 2021
Psalm 119:49-72; 1 Kings 17:1-24; Phil. 2:1-11; Matt. 2:1-12 ‘Look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.’ Paul (even the most skeptical of scholars is in accord that this is a ‘genuine’ letter, or better yet collection of letters, from the pen of the apostle himself) here settles the age-old […]
Daily Devotional Sept 7 2021
Psalm 45; 1 Kings 16:23-34; Phil. 1:12-30; Mark 16:1-8(9-20) So where does Mark really end? This is one of those (rare, despite what the History Channel or Dan Brown novels might say) places where the New Testament manuscripts differ in very, very important ways. And we have to decide which variant we think is most […]
