Author: Bryan Richardson

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Re:Verse passage – Joshua 7:6-12, 20-21 (day three)

“Why is it that you have fallen on your face?”

God seemed to view Joshua’s posture of humility as a substitute for necessary critical thinking about important matters of moral responsibility. Joshua’s genuflection was a waste of Joshua’s energy and time when, instead, some attention and reflection on Joshua’s part would have made plain to him that he had failed to convey to his soldiers that violations of the ban were placing the nation in danger of spiritual and societal corruption. If total adherence was only a small thing in Joshua’s mind, his thinking would influence the troops to consider their excursions as a free-for-all, devoid of the sober-minded focus on righteous action. This perspective would eventually contaminate all Israel. God said, in effect, “Go do what you know you needed to do in the first place.” Unaddressed sin doesn’t fade away.

Re:Verse passage – Joshua 5:13-15; 6:1-5 (day three)

“The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.”

No longer in the future, Canaan was now. Each generation had ordered their lives around this longed-for now. This was the now Moses desired to see but only glimpsed from atop Pisgah. It was the now Joseph yearned for when he asked that his bones find rest there. It was the now revealed by God to Abraham in a frenzied dream that whispered of Egyptian captivity and return. Joshua indicated his willingness to steward this now well. How could he not remove his shoes at the arrival of this moment his people had taught him to yearn for? What we long for is what we will teach.

Re:Verse passage – Joshua 2:1-21 (day three)

“It was told the king of Jericho, saying, ‘Behold, men from the sons of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.’”

These two spies didn’t do much spying. What happened? Were they novices at reconnaissance? Were they overconfident? Did they intend to indulge in revelry prior to fulfilling their mission? Is that why they ended up at Rahab’s place? Whether they intended to avail themselves of Rahab’s services or not, the jig was up soon enough. Someone figured them out, and the manhunt commenced. The mission never took off, and now they were hemmed in, out of ideas. There is one savvy, resourceful presence in this account – Rahab. This ancestor of Christ ended up as the stealthy, unflappable agent Israel needed. Everyone but God would see only this woman’s outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

Re:Verse passage – Genesis 50:15-20 (day three)

“And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.”

Joseph’s brothers didn’t merely invoke God, but “the God of your father.” Their hopes hung on the appeal to their father Jacob as the last bulwark against disaster. Jacob had held the family together all these years, but he was gone. Now what? Death is an inflection point for families. How will life go on? Who will protect us from each other? Who will anchor the family? Will we just drift apart? Families will develop a delicate balance – often on the shoulders of one individual – so they can navigate the world with the least amount of agony. But the Bible reveals that families can learn a new way. Sometimes, one person’s risking tenderness, like Joseph did in his reply, will begin to move people from isolation to intimacy.

Re:Verse passage – Genesis 22:1-18 (day three)

“God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

Isaac’s spiritual formation occurred in a family who interacted with heaven regularly. Therefore, whether he was a child, an adolescent, or a young man at the time of these events (the Bible doesn’t specify his age), Isaac understood sacrifice, and he would notice anything amiss. But Abraham’s reply to Isaac’s question was not a diversionary tactic employed to keep Isaac in the dark. Abraham meant what he said. Life with God over the better part of a century had taught Abraham that with God, things were always better than he had imagined. By this time in his life, Abraham knew he could go where he did not know because he had come to know intimately the one calling him to go. That faith experience further formed Isaac that day.