Daily Devotional Sept 6 2021
Psalm 41, 52; 1 Kings 13:1-10; Phil. 1:1-11; Mark 15:40-47 Joseph of Arimathaea buys a ‘sindona’ to wrap Jesus’ body in. That’s a fine–and expensive!–linen cloth used as a shroud; Herodotus in one of his histories mentions how the Egyptians lay a cherry-red sindona over their linen-wrapped mummies. In the Bible, it’s a word used […]
Daily Devotional Sept 5 2021
Psalm 125 & Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; James 2:1-18; Mark 7:24-37 Is your neighbor a jerk? A sinner? A heretic? Dead wrong about politics, or football, or what hour to mow the lawn? Are they the kind of people who (gasp) don’t like artichokes? Oh the horrors… Mercy triumphs over judgment. We […]
Daily Devotional Sept 4 2021
Psalm 30, 32; 1 Kings 12:1-20; James 5:7-12,19-20; Mark 15:33-39 The Jewish historian Josephus, writing for his Roman captors a generation after the crucifixion, described the curtain which separated the Temple’s holy of holies from the outer courts. As a young man, a priest, he himself had seen it, and in his memory it was […]
Daily Devotional Sept 3 2021
Psalm 31; 1 Kings 11:26-43; James 4:13-5:6; Mark 15:22-32 When you start to read everything through the lenses of politics, the innocent suffer. That’s the problem with Jesus’ arrest and execution: the Sanhedrin see Him as a political threat, Pilate sees Him as a political cipher Whose execution will place the Sanhedrin firmly in […]
Daily Devotional Sept 2 2021
Psalm 37; 1 Kings 11:1-13; James 3:13-4:12; Mark 15:12-21 At the heart of the Christian message is the suffering servant, the One Who has done no evil and a whole lot of good and Who is still crushed with pain. Isaiah says that’s “the will of Lord to crush him.” That is, the crushing […]
Daily Devotional Sept 1 2021
Psalm 38; 1 Kings 9:24-10:13; James 3:1-12; Mark 15:1-11 Oh, the tongue, the tongue, the tongue. James is right: communication is a blessing, but it is also rife with potential disaster. Almost every problem in my life, even the out-of-the-blue health problems, had a communication component. Things left unsaid too long, or said without […]
Daily Devotional August 30 2021
Psalm 25; 2 Chron. 6:32-7:7; James 2:1-13; Mark 14:53-65 Mercy triumphs over judgment. It’s easy to be angry. It’s easy to be offended. The world is filled with slights and insults and misunderstandings galore, some of them intended, some of them not so much. I am pretty sure that I offended a gal […]
Daily Devotional August 28 2021
Psalm 20, 21; 1 Kings 7:51-8:21; Acts 28:17-31; Mark 14:43-52 The one I kiss is the man. So often, it’s the people who are closest to us who hurt us the most. Sometimes, they even do it ‘with intent,’ knowing full well that they’re hurting us. Every divorce–all of them–is always a study […]
Daily Devotional August 27 2021
Psalm 16, 17; 1 Kings 5:1-6:1,7; Acts 28:1-16; Mark 14:27-42 “Please, take this cup away, I don’t want it…but it’s Your call, not mine, Lord.” This is Jesus speaking in the Garden, right? And what’s the response from the Father? “This cup isn’t going away, but You won’t be alone. My love also never […]
Daily Devotional August 26 2021
Psalm 18; 1 Kings 3:16-28; Acts 27:27-44; Mark 14:12-26 Solomon’s wisdom in action: there is no way, in the absence of DNA testing, for him to have been sure which woman was telling the truth. And, in fact, the text doesn’t even seem to imply that he wasted time trying to do so. There’s […]
