Small Scribbles

We were reading John 6 this morning and we came to the part where Jesus asked his disciples, "You do not want to leave me too, do you?" Peter responded, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." The kids were impressed with Peter's answer. "How come Peter's like that, Mama? How can he be so awesome sometimes and so stupid at other times? The power has been blinking on and off at our house for the past week and this is what I drew on for an explanation. "Well, it's kind of like the power around here. You know how everything is running fine and then the power blinks off and a few minutes later it comes back on? Peter is kind of like that. He has great faith but sometimes, under pressure, his faith shuts down for a little while. But the thing about Peter is that his faith, just like our power, always returns." A few hours later the power went off giving the children ...

One cannot come face to face with Jesus without either yielding to him or rejecting him. When one chooses to yield, transformation takes place. Paul offers the flashiest example of transformation in the New Testament but all who believe in Jesus are changed. I was looking for this as I read through John’s Gospel. I kept wondering, How did a fisherman learn to write like this? Why did God choose him? Who was this man? How did his encounter with Jesus change John? And because I wondered I searched for answers. THE BAD NEWS: JOHN’S ORIGINAL NATURE AMBITIOUS: This story found in Matthew 20 reveals that John was ambitious to be a prominent figure in Jesus’ kingdom. It also reveals that his idea of God’s kingdom and reality were entirely different. Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. "What is it you want?" he asked. She said, "Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at...

How does God love? Set aside a few minutes this busy love day and count ways... ABUNDANTLY: You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you." Psalm 86:5 EXTRAVAGANTLY: Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies." Psalm 36:5 SECURELY : How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 36:7 PATIENTLY: The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Psalm 103:8 FAITHFULLY I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself. Psalm 89:2 ETERNALLY: For great is your love toward me, you have delivered me from the depths of the grave. Psalm 86:13 COMPLETELY: Greater love has no one than this, that He lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 PERFECTLY : A new command I give to you, love one another, even as I have loved you that you love one another. John 13:34 To you who are fami...

The kids and I have been nibbling our way through the book of Isaiah for months. It's our first venture as a family into the prophets. We wrestle with the message. It's a book for our times. Isaiah wrote to his people, the people of Judah, at the dawn of a long season of international turmoil. Assyria ran rough shod over the Middle East, followed in quick succession by Babylon, Persia and Greece. According to Isaiah, each empire was brought down because of they were quick to gloat over their achievements but failed to give God the time of day. The sin of haughty eyes he calls it. I brown the meat and simmer the stew and slice a crusty loaf of Italian bread but do not bow my head before I eat. It's the little red hen complex. I ground the wheat and kneaded the dough and sliced the carrots. I don't take into account that I didn't make the carrots or the wheat grow. I forget to be thankful that there are groceries in the pantry and healthy children around the table. ...

John calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved in the Gospel that he penned. For years I thought this was perhaps false modesty on John’s part. Why couldn’t he refer to himself in the first person like some of the Greats before him? Men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Why choose such a wordy title when I, me and my would suffice. But do they? The disciple whom Jesus loved are words that have been weighing on my mind for the last week. John writes the best known verse in all the Bible, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. As he stood at the foot of the cross John was the only disciple to actually see how much God loved the world, to recognize how much Jesus loved not only the whole world, but more personally John himself. He couldn’t help but call himself the disciple whom Jesus loved and to be changed because of his certainty of Christ's love. JOHN: NEW AND IMPROVED G...

We turned the final page of the Gospel of John this week. We’ve been traveling with him since mid-July and I am sad to part ways. The kids and I have discussed in detail how John didn’t tell everything he knew. He relayed only what was important. The kids have been writing bug stories this week and we have edited ruthlessly so that only the ideas that tell the clearest story and create the best word pictures have remained. They get it. They have enjoyed the richness of John’s writing and they see the value in emulating his style. This is my first time studying John in depth and the beauty of this book and the genius of his writing have overwhelmed me. He writes tightly. He writes with a purpose and must leave much of what he witnessed in his time with Jesus out of his work. This enables him to pack a solid punch. All that is included in the twenty-one chapters supports the first sentence: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John is a book of ...

“Mom, Jesus is like a thread.” “What do you mean?” “Well, no matter what the Pharisees say, they leave loopholes and Jesus weaves his way through the holes and ties them up in knots.” Lauren made this observation as we inched our way through John 7-9. John wrote in pictures and the more I understand of the Jewish culture the more I feel like I watch rather than read his chapters. Come with me to Jerusalem. Leafy shelters line the side of the roads. Search for the stars in the night sky. Search but you will not find them as four brilliant candelabra burn at the temple and shower the city with their light. Give way to the torch carrying men as they dance and sing praise. Sing with them. The words you know well… The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.* Smell the acrid smell of sacrificial blood. Follow the procession to the temple as golden pi...

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, not your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 19:8-11 This is what God has to say about the Sabbath. The Pharisees took these three verses and turned them into thirty-nine rules with a subset of rules beneath each main rule. For example: No plowing was a chief rule. Dragging a chair on soft earth and thereby leaving furrows in the ground was listed in the subset of rules under no plowing. Dragging a chair on a hard surface however would be allowed. (2 ) A Jew could only walk a short distance from his house. However if he planned ahead the da...

It’s midnight. I’m nestled among my covers and pillows. The light on my side of the bed is on. My body is comfortable but my mind is uneasy. Pages are spread out over the top of the covers. I’m reading first hand accounts of slavery. Smallville is situated in the middle of cotton fields, fields that were once tended by slaves. In the 1930s, historians realized that the number of people who had been held in bondage by the chains of slavery was dwindling. Interviewers circulated among the remaining ex-slaves and recorded their stories. Their voices come to life in my mind. I can picture old Turner crying, heartbroken over the death of a kind white woman. I close my eyes after reading about a slave whose hands and feet were nailed to a board after running away. Closed eyes do not shut out the image. Anna, the daughter of a slave and a slave owner’s son reminisces about the good old days. For Anna, slavery was better than freedom. Frank described how after the war his master was reluctant ...

A rooftop scene. Use the wide angle to catch the stars. Zoom in on Jesus, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." Film Nicodemus' troubled face. "How can this be? Capture the patience on Jesus' face. Record the lengthy explanation that He gives and at the same time make the near silence of Nicodemus seem deafening. Zoom in again to catch the puzzled expression that Nicodemus wears. Insert a brief scene. Wide angle this time. Show a conversation between John and his disciples but leave the audience feeling unsettled about the last scene. Will there be resolution? Will Nicodemus see the light? Follow Jesus and his disciples down a dusty road, heat radiating and distorting their image. Film their backs and mute the conversation. Zoom in again on Jesus. Hot. Tired. Alone at Jacob's well. Pan out a bit to catch the approach of a woman. Pan out farther to show that she is a solitary figure. Zoom in to expose the wariness i...

Kathy of Sumballo has given us a tough assignment this week. We are to study the design of a Bible passage. Please do take a minute and visit her blog to view this lesson.She can pack more into a few paragraphs than I could in a whole book. It probably wouldn't be so tough if I would just pick a short passage and follow directions. (Some of you know me well enough not to expect that.) I had started writing a post of the structure of the gospel of John so that's what I'll post for this assignment. We came to the last chapter in Luke last week. I was sad to say goodbye. I don't like coming to the end of a book in the Bible because then I need to make a decision about where to go next. We took a vote at the kitchen table. Acts or John? Acts seemed to be the more logical choice for its author and timeline continuity but we chose John. We wanted to see Jesus in a different light. Luke focuses on the humanity of Jesus and John on His divinity. The gospel of John scares me. S...

I am so excited about a weekly feature on Kathy's blog, Sumballo . She is writing a post or two every week that provide tools for in-depth Bible study. This week, she teaches about pericope . It is a Greek word (pa-RIH-kōp-ee) that means “cutting around.” (I will be teaching the kids this word at the breakfast table this morning.) Interested? Stop by her site for more information. We've taken to callling them the Barrel of Monkeys books, Luke and Acts that is. You see, you cannot look at an event written in either of these books without looking at what comes before and aft. They all hook together like one long chain. To help my little ones understand this concept, I put it in kid terms, "Kind of like the way the monkeys hook together in the Barrel of Monkeys game." Their eyes lit up. They know about these monkeys. "Ooohhh!" And now each meal begins with the request, "Read the Monkey Book , Mama." I made some interesting discoveries this week in ...

I am fascinated by the geneologies in the Bible. Perhaps this stems from the fact that I can only trace my roots to my great grandparents. They fled famine in Ireland and military conscription in Hungary. I do not know the origins of my maiden name. It seems to be a truncated version of a longer name. Was it English or Scottish? Jesus' geneology winds its way through the Old Testament and is laid out for us in Matthew and Luke's gospels. Matthew starts with Abraham and ends with Joseph. This is the geneology that names Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba by name. This is the geneology that lists Solomon, Hezekiah and Josiah. The Jews remembered God's promise to David and looked for the Messiah to come from this line of kings. This was the geneology that gave Jesus his pedigree. His credentials. His name. In the seventh chapter of 2nd Samuel, Nathan delivered God's promise to David, "...I will raise up you offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, an...

The kids and I have been reading through the Gospel of Luke. The gospels are full of the Bible stories that I have known since childhood. It is so easy for me to read through them without really thinking about what I am reading. I have been asking God to teach me more than the obvious as we work our way through the chapters. I have been asking Him to show me how these familiar stories are relevant to the very minute I am living in . We read and discussed Luke Chapter 9 between slurping bites of Ramen Noodles and grapefruit this afternoon. A sticky meal. In verse one, Jesus gives all twelve disciples power and authority to drive out demons, cure diseases, and to share what they had been learning from Him. All twelve. Judas included. Judas who later turned informant. Judas who pocketed the amount of money one would receive for selling a slave when he sold information on Jesus' whereabouts. How could he do this? Judas had seen Jesus raise people from the dead, teach and heal crowds t...