Bryan Richardson

Ears

RE Verse reading–Psalm 40 (day three) “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.” People use their ears for more—much more—than listening. Often, ears function as filters: You hear what you want to hear. Ears also serve as early warning systems: You recognize the voice of someone you don’t wish to see, so you go somewhere else. God calls us to hear him—to stop even our religious observances lest they become a substitute for paying attention to him. Jesus often punctuated his teaching with a call for people to use their ears to take his words into their minds and think: “He who has ears, let him hear.” If we listen, we can ponder; if we ponder, we can pray. If we pray, we God will hear.

Think

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 32 (day three)
“Do not be like the horse or the mule…” A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says God functions as a substitute for thinking. A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says religion keeps people in an intellectual cave. A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says no one can really know what’s true. Actually, rote belief and slavish thinking have no place in the life of anyone instructed by God’s word. Control by bit and bridle is for mules, not for people. To understand the seriousness of sin, to confess to the Lord, and to learn from God how to live and not die—this is height to which God calls the human mind. God actually has a higher view of human beings than a society which claims that truth is out of reach for us.

Retreat

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 31 (day three)
“Those who see me on the street flee from me.” David knew how quickly friendships and loyalties could fire up and then fade. Mentors, advisors, friends, his own children—David knew such pain from every side. In the middle of such terrifying instability, words such as “refuge” (verse 1 of this Psalm), “rock”, “fortress”, “rampart”, and the like crop up frequently in David’s descriptions of God. These are the only terms David found that would come close to capturing the sense of sure-footed safety that he had come to know in God’s presence. David could live confidently in the presence of others because he retreated first to God. Jesus Christ stood firmly in this same spiritual rhythm. And he went further. His retreats with God fueled his love for others to the extent that he confidently laid down his life for our sakes.

End

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 22 (day three)
“All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord…” Solzhenitsyn famously stated the converse of David’s prophetic vision: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” What is the “this” to which he referred? Look around, and look inside your own heart. You will see. But creation is groaning, stretching toward the day when it will be renewed. And mankind, suffering in its own physical and spiritual squalor, will know God again. Some will reject him, as many already have. But even as David faced the cruelties of those who had set their faces against him, what he knew of God told him that it could not end like this. And so it is in our day. God will not be satisfied until this whole universe is restored. The end will be only the beginning.

Good

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 16 (day three)
“Apart from you I have no good thing.” Where there is good, there is God. The trouble is, the human heart finds it hard to determine what is truly good. We can marvel at a newborn baby or stand in awe of the photograph of a distant star coming into existence, and we can surmise that a Creator must be at work. But we can just as easily treat gossip like “choice morsels” (Proverbs 18:8). Sin has severely stunted our ability to tell the difference. It is true that where there is good, there is God. But we would do well to seek God first, and know that where there is God, there is good.

Worth

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 8 (day three)
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place…” Consider, then: 13.3 billion light-years away, a tiny galaxy (the rather clunkily-named MACS0647-JD) shines its light. That light travels six trillion miles in one year, and even at that speed, it needs 13.3 billion years to reach earth. The psalmist didn’t measure space like we do, but he knew: God’s heavens are immense enough that the human race would seem trivial by comparison. And yet, God is mindful of us. Jesus knew that our well-being depends on our knowledge of that mindfulness in this vast universe: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God…Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:6-7)

With

RE Verse reading–Mark 15:40-16:8 (day four)
“In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs.” The spirit within a man fears isolation. Part of what it means to be fully human is to live and move in a social context. From estrangement from family to solitary confinement to shunning by a community, isolation sets a person at the terrifying edge of the abyss of loneliness. God is the only person who will never lose track of you. Even in the midst of abandonment by friends, followers, and hangers-on—even as in the Pharisees’ eyes he became a pariah—Jesus knew God’s provision. Food, clothing, local arrangements for lodging—these women took seriously their privilege of caring for this man. At some point, “God with us” must manifest as “friends with us.” We can go to extraordinary lengths in excruciating circumstances if we know we’re not alone.

Path

RE Verse reading–Mark 14:10-11; 17-21; 41-50 (day three)
“It would be better for him if he had not been born.” The human will can devote itself to a certain path, and it can organize the mind, body, and social context of a person to help it stay on that path. The longer these things assist the will, the stronger the will becomes in its determination to stay the course–until it becomes difficult for the will to consider any other possibility. When this happens towards the things of God, we call it discipleship. When it happens towards the things of man, we call it destruction. The most Judas’s hardened will would register after his evil deed was a feeling of remorse. Repentance would have led to a new path and a forgiving Savior. But the remorse mustered by the hardened will of Judas found its only answer in suicide. The will is the heart of a human life. No wonder the scriptures tell us to guard it.

Useful

RE Verse reading–Mark 12:28-34 (day three)
“And they rebuked her harshly.” Suddenly, they championed the poor. Well, welcome to the entire Old Testament. God had been the poor’s champion all along, but these folks just now got religion, apparently. Except they hadn’t. While they were busy co-opting the poor to cover for their own love of money, Jesus saw a moment of beauty. While they found the poor temporarily useful, Jesus exulted in a display of extravagance that had no utilitarian purpose whatsoever. Beauty is rare in this broken world, and its presence always—always—signals that God has not abandoned us. And beauty is rarely “useful” in the sense of getting done what we want done. To find people useful, then, is the height of selfishness. To find people—and their extravagance born of love—beautiful is to worship God.

Afraid

RE Verse reading–Mark 12:28-34 (day three)
“And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.” Songwriters often fear performing their songs for an audience. Painters often dread exhibitions. Actors languish in profound anxiety waiting on the critical reviews after opening night. Their music or their canvas or their character are extensions of themselves, and it’s not uncommon for them to view critique of their art as a critique of who they are or who they’re becoming. So it is with belief. If we really believe something, that belief is part of who we are. To understand that we have believed something that turns out to be false is a prospect of which we are very much afraid. So if we never seek truth from the Lord, we don’t have to fear that we’ve been wrong all along, do we?