Bryan Richardson

Awesome

Re:Verse passage – Acts 2:42-47 (day three)

“Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe.”

“Everything is awesome” can be a pretty irritating statement to hear from others because you experience many, many circumstances that are not awesome in the least. And it’s not just the way you’re looking at those circumstances. Suffering happens, pain exists. Well, it’s a good thing the scriptures don’t actually claim everything is awesome. What the believers in Acts 2 experienced was not the awesomeness of everything, but the reality of the good, the presence of the beautiful, and the nearness of wonder. Those who count on Christ will feel a sense of awe as they find that their deepest longings – to be welcomed and treasured by others, to mend broken friendships, to learn that they matter in this universe, to live again with loved ones they’ve lost – are the very things God desires for them.

Energy

Re:Verse passage – 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 (day three)

“Finally, brethren, pray for us…”

A closing prayer, or, as in this passage, a closing request for prayer, seems unremarkable. It’s almost perfunctory, routine, rote. It’s expected in a customary sense, like the credits rolling after a movie concludes. Some people remain in the theater to look at the names scrolling by, though for most, that list serves as the signal that the movie has ended (unless there’s a surprise post-credits scene, but whatever). When understood in such a way, a prayer is simply a marker of finality: “This concludes our communication.” But Paul’s closing request for prayer was no formality. It was a solicitation of energy from the spiritual realm – power to continue gaining a hearing for God’s goodness, and strength to recover from the discouragement evil brings. A call for prayer is a plea for heaven-sent confidence.

See

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 6:17-20 (day three)

“Be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”

Some folks will tell others what’s really going on in their lives; many – perhaps most – will not. There are reasons for this: shame, fear, regret, confusion, distrust, or the like. Sometimes groups – even a church – will place a high value on conformity, which dissuades people from inviting each other into their questions, doubts, heartaches, and failures. How then can a church care for one another? Paul says to remain alert. Tune in to a person’s words, both spoken and unspoken. Is someone speaking about God’s goodness and yet clenching his or her fists? You have a clue about how to pray for that person. And that’s true when someone sees such body language in you. As we pay attention to each other, we can pray for each other.

King

Re:Verse passage – Esther 7:3-7 (day three)

“Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus?”

Does it seem to you that people in power are often the last to know about any number of important matters? In the Bible, Achish king of Gath happily received David – in his outlaw period on the run from Saul – as a trustworthy vassal while David systematically executed raids on all the king’s allies, annihilating their cities. The king’s administration was dubious of David’s loyalty, but the king himself reveled in his supposed good fortune. David in turn, years later, turned out to be the last to know of his own infant son’s death. Those surrounding monarchs and potentates frequently shield their overlords from unpleasant news. The same held for Ahasuerus. He thought Haman was great. King Jesus is the one ruler who’s in the know.

Small

Re:Verse passage – 1 Kings 19:3-8 (day three)

“[Elijah] requested for himself that he might die…”

Maybe Elijah’s depression commenced when he realized Carmel wasn’t going to yield lasting spiritual change. At Horeb, God seemed to reveal that he’d brought the fire because Elijah had asked him to, but that long term turning of hearts to heaven would be a work of God through faithful disciples living daily with people face to face. God spoke softly, then showed Elijah the wind, the earthquake, the fire — none of which manifested God’s presence. Instead, God inhabited the quiet hours in the cave. Elijah had sought lasting renewal through an encounter with a God big enough to shout down a nation’s idolatry. Spiritual transformation for the long haul, though, will happen by way of a God small enough to enter each person’s experience, calling that person by name through you and me.

Encounter

Re:Verse passage – 1 Kings 18:30-39 (day three)

“Then Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come near to me.’”

Elijah didn’t treat this occasion as a scolding, but rather as a time of participating in the forgotten ways. He didn’t keep the people at a distance like an audience at a lecture. His method was “show, don’t tell.” He drew the men and women close to him so they could experience the reality that an alter used to point beyond the material realm. It used to speak of heaven. It used to appeal to God for help, for mercy, for forgiveness, for hope in a tired world. The priests of Ba’al had exhausted themselves and their followers. Elijah tenderly bids the people to move in close, foreshadowing Jesus’s invitation to all who are weary and heavy laden: “Come to me, and I will give you rest.”

Fix

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 18:6-11 (day three)

“Why then did you not strike him there to the ground?”

Was Joab loyal to David? Or was he instead opportunistic? Sure seems like the latter. Joab’s cold calculus left no room for the emotional dimension of the human experience. Joab left emotion to David – who was plenty emotive – while he himself had apparently decided a long time ago that the acknowledgement of his own emotions produced a vulnerability that was too risky for him. David, on the other hand, embraced emotion but excluded empathy and curiosity, so others around him – family or not – found themselves on their own without any support. David would feel, and Joab would fix. The arrangement worked very well from a political standpoint. But the price was high for David. David’s fixer broke his heart. This is how it goes when the only pain you feel is your own.

See

Re:Verse passage – 1 Samuel 17:38-51 (day three)

“And David put his hand into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead.”

Saul and the army of Israel saw a physically imposing battle-hardened vanguard of the Philistine juggernaut. David saw a Philistine military vulnerable enough to present as their best move an over-confident blowhard past his prime and unprotected against severe head trauma. If God does not see as man sees, and if David was a man who followed that pattern — “after God’s own heart” — then this is what that looks like in action. May we learn from God to see like that.

Peace

Re:Verse passage – 1 Samuel 16:5-13 (day three)

“[Samuel] said, ‘In peace; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’”

There’s a reason Samuel took time to speak of peace when he arrived in Bethlehem. Saul had turned the nation into an extension of his paranoid patterns of thinking and acting. Surveilling the populace, using informants, exterminating people on trumped up charges of disloyalty – these tactics had given rise to an ethos of suspicion and distrust that blanketed Israel with fear. Into that dark night came Samuel with the sober, steady promise of a new day – one which would prove hard-fought, but which would nonetheless provide Israel with a glimpse of what a Savior would one day do for a world cloaked in fear. David would become a metaphor by which believers would understand the Christ’s office of King of kings. The peace of Samuel anticipated the Prince of peace.

Body

Re:Verse passage – Judges 16:15-21 (day three)

“She … called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair.”

The evangelical church seems to be of two minds regarding the body’s importance. In attempting to honor the truth that the body is a temple, the church often focuses solely on warning of behaviors that would degrade it. Simultaneously, the church sometimes refers to death as a leaving behind of the body, implying that one’s destiny is something higher than the body. Both emphases can suggest a view of your body as a location of shame – mostly a magnet to degradation from which it’s good to escape. Not so. The passage not included in this week’s text says that Samson’s hair began to regrow, and that as it did, his strength began to return. God treasures your body as a place to draw near to you.