Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse reading–John 3:1-21 (day three)

The wind blows wherever it pleases.

What about doctrine?  What about order?  What about truth?  What about sin?  What about right-and-wrong?  Usually, questions like these have already been answered a long time ago in the minds of the ones asking.  In fact, they’re not really questions, but signals—signals that we’re the ones standing strong against the howling winds of ungodliness, that others are wrong, and that the fate of the world hangs on whether people will listen to our unbending answers.  What others perceive as good news, the religious establishment always views as threatening, even if Jesus is the one saying it.  Perhaps especially if Jesus is the one saying it.  We reveal that we’re still holding onto our age-old tower-building dreams.  Then along comes the Lord who essentially says to Nicodemus—and to us: You must be blown away.

Re:Verse reading–Mark 9:14-29 (day three)

Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene.

From actual to virtual, from “Crucify him!” to lynch mobs to online bullying, people do not behave well in crowds.  Before a crowd could have time to form, Jesus did his necessary work with a community of tender, troubled people.  Crowds reinforce.  Communities relate.  Crowds criticize.  Communities confess.  Crowds excoriate.  Communities edify.  Perhaps smaller is better at first, so that community can take root and grow.  It’s no wonder that Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name…”  From that small community, the church will grow into a beautiful, worldwide representation of the eternal community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Re:Verse reading–Hosea 1, 3, 14 (day three)

Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness.

Nothing ever hurts like family.  Family can nurture and encourage and teach and give.  But family can also strip-mine your soul until your life is a wasteland of scarred earth.  With family possessing that kind of potential for joy and sorrow, it’s no wonder that the Lord would point to Hosea’s family story in order to reveal the depth of sorrow, anger, and betrayal that arises within God himself when those whom he loves turn their devotion and allegiance and attention away from him.  The resulting woundedness did not spare even God from desertion and death.  And still he longs for a home with human beings.  Those who turn toward him seeking reconciliation will find all is not lost.  There is a family to come home to after all.

Re:Verse reading–Daniel 6 (day three)

We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.

In a world in which the faces of out groups—be they religious minorities or other socially or economically marginalized factions—change with the ebb and flow of revolutions and empires, the prohibition against religious tests for public life has loomed large in the formation and development of our nation.  The Founders recognized that to view a human being through the prism of a belief system you do not share is to discount his character, or at the very least to fail to examine it.  That wisdom came directly from the influence of Christian thought.  Are you holding this truth to be self-evident?  Treat that out group like you are one of them, because one day, you will be.  It has always been so for Christians.

Re:Verse reading–Jeremiah 29:1-14 (day three)

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.

You like to tell yourself you don’t want to “settle”, so you keep looking past this moment for something better.  But you really don’t know what you’re looking for.  Much of the history of the Old Testament can be summarized thusly: If you won’t live here, you won’t live anywhere.  Later, Jesus said the same in various ways. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  And, “Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”  There’s nothing that you are afraid to do at this moment that you’ll have the moral courage to do in some idealized future.  The Lord draws near now.  Live.

Re:Verse reading—Psalm 27 (day three) 

The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?

Come on.  Even David felt fear.  It’s what fallen, finite human beings do.  This passage wouldn’t have us believe David belted out these verses as if they were taunts against hostile forces.  This isn’t bravado; it’s meditation—an examination of the self, a questioning of otherwise knee-jerk responses.  “Whom shall I fear?” is not a declaration.  It really does pose a question: What do I actually know about God?  Specifically, does God’s vision of human life rise above political machinations?  Does his wisdom rise higher than geopolitical intrigue?  Is there a love that remains when families fall into strife?  David shows us that in perilous times, if we will survey the soul, we will open our lives to a flood of courage from a God who’s still sure.

Re:Verse reading—Psalm 23 (day three)

The Lord is my shepherd.

Can we imagine a type of caring in which the vulnerable—subject to harm against which they have no defense—find themselves in the care of the powerful?  And can we imagine this care being all-encompassing, such that provision for the vulnerable is not a reaction to circumstances, but an anticipation of them?  We can, but only on a lower order.  Shepherding has formed part of the human enterprise for a long time, so we know some animals live in this kind of care.  The human spirit longs for it, yet has all but given up on the possibility of its existence.  David’s turn at shepherding became a door of revelation, and someone met his longing full on.  It turns out this type of caring does indeed exist, and that it’s better than we imagined.

Re:Verse reading–2 Kings 5 (day three) 

Is this the time to take money?

Three people lose it, one keeps his mind steady.  King Joram sees disaster looming should he fail to reverse the illness of his oppressor’s top general, now in his care.  That general, Naaman, livid with rage at the Israelites’ lack of respectful protocol, dismisses the entire nation as inferior.  Gehazi, himself driven by ethnic disdain and greedy to exploit Aram’s wealth, manipulates and deceives Naaman, then lies about it.  Each of these people sees a moment–and hope–drawing to a close: Joram’s luck has run out; Naaman’s sickness has doomed him to worthless backwaters; Gehazi desperately grasps at the security of riches to outrun poverty’s reach.  In the middle of these occurrences stands Elisha, who can see reality: With God, each circumstance is not an end but, a beginning.  It’s not doom, but dawn.

Re:Verse reading–Ruth 2:1-12, 17-23; 4:1-14 (day three)

May your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah. 

What happened after Ruth’s encounter with Boaz at the threshing floor?  Eyebrows went up all over Bethlehem, that’s what.  Yes, Ruth and Boaz took steps to keep it quiet, but it ended up in the Bible anyway.  News like that tends to get out.  That’s not to say a sexual indiscretion occurred; it is to say that unless Ruth were to become the mother of a rich man’s baby, the sinkhole of abject poverty in which she and her mother lived would swallow them whole.  Whatever the original plans with the inebriated Boaz, Ruth ended up in the crucial moment just being straight up with him rather than trapping him in scandal: “Make me your wife.”  She took the risks, and her strength won the day.  The town took note.  Our Savior’s lineage owes as much to scandalized or sexually exploited women—Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, Mary, each of whom spoke with courageous voices—as it does to the men who make up that same family tree.  God raises up women whom this world has attempted to silence.

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 37:14-28, 50:15-21 (day three) 

Here comes that dreamer! 

We mostly can’t be trusted with the future, though one can find exceptions.  Many prophets—not all, but many—have stewarded their knowledge of the future with great skill.  But they tend to have difficult lives and die early.  So yeah, the future’s a hard thing to handle well.  What happened when the deficient trustee of prophetic insight was a vision-casting, favorite-son-status-occupying, flashy-attire-flaunting seventeen-year-old kid?  In a family already prone to scheming, that kid’s pontificating came off as one more threatening agenda.  Joseph was right about the future, you know.  But rightness is a most dangerous quality.  The arrogance that often accompanies it will harm others.  Hardship—not least his brothers’ damnable human-trafficking transaction—transformed Joseph’s arrogance into wisdom.  And in God’s providence he became a life-saving steward of the future.