Category: Devo180

Large Letters (January 17, 2013)

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…Opening To…

When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

…Listening In…

Look at the large letters I’m making with my own handwriting! (Galatians 6:11; context)

…Filling Up…

The third thing you may not know about the Bible (and specifically the New Testament) is that it wasn’t compiled into the form we know today until a couple of hundred years after the individual pieces were written. (The Hebrew Scriptures followed a similarly haphazard construction, but it’s much less historically verifiable, so we’ll stick with the New Testament for the purposes of this devotional.)

Beginning in the middle of the first century (perhaps the year 49ce, which is when many scholars think Paul penned First Thessalonians), the authors of what became the New Testament started writing. But they had no idea they were writing the Bible. The individual accounts of the Gospel were used in local churches and perhaps passed around to the surrounding environs. Paul’s letters include things such as Paul bemoaning his own handwriting and asking a friend to get a room ready for him. Nearly three hundred years after Paul disclosed embarrassment about his penmanship, the four accounts of the Gospel, letters from various folk, a sermon, an account of people spreading the good news, and a revelation found places in the “canon” of the church. The canon is the starting lineup of texts that the church decided were the best guiding documents for the church’s future. (These documents also helped to form the church, so you’ll find yourself in a chicken-and-egg quandary wondering which came first.)

I think it is simply wonderful that the folks who wrote the New Testament didn’t realize they were doing so. Somehow, this ignorance of their own importance for the life of the world lends a rawness to their writing. The texts display the whole range of human emotion: fervor and fear, hope and hubris, joy and anger. I wonder how much would have been scrubbed out had they known what their writings would become?

…Praying For…

Dear God, you were with your servants when they wrote because you had touched their lives. Help me to touch the lives of others because you have touched mine. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, hoping for an encounter with you as I read about your presence in the lives of your people.

Chapter and Verse (January 16, 2013)

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…Opening To…

When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

…Listening In…

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. (John 3:16; context)*

…Filling Up…

The second thing you might not know about the Bible is that the chapter and verse numbers are nowhere to be found in the original texts. The chapter breaks became fashionable in the early thirteenth century (over a thousand years after the last New Testament letter was composed), and the verse separators weren’t added until the mid 1500s, well after the printing press had started churning out Bibles. (Of course, our modern Bibles have many things that the original texts did not have: spaces in between words in the Greek portions and vowels in the Hebrew portions, to name a few.)

So why, you might be wondering, is it important to know that the chapters and verses are not original to the texts? Think about it like this. When you go to the theater and watch a (non-digital) film, the movie projector runs one frame at a time, 24 frames a second. Because the frames flit by so quickly, your eye doesn’t register that each one is a discreet unit, a single snapshot in a line of thousands of other single snapshots. Reading the Bible verse to verse is something like watching a film frame by frame: you get the gist of what’s going on, but it’s certainly not the way it was intended to be watched.

You see, when we give undue weight to the verse separations, we run the risk of taking single verses out of context simply because someone 500 years ago decided that, for convenience, it would be nice to divide the texts of the Bible into smaller units than the chapters. Of course, the verse numbers are great in that they tell you where you are, but that is as far as folks should ever use them.

When the Bible was broken down into individual verses, it became even easier to take a verse out of context and use it to prove a point you are trying to make. This is not a good way to use the Bible. It’s better to let the verses live and breath in their own natural environments — the chapters and books to which they belong. When we encounter our favorite verses “in nature,” as it were, maybe they will encounter us differently than they ever have before.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you gave countless people the grace to be witnesses for you in the texts of the Bible. Grant me that same grace so that I may be a graceful, grace-filled witness today, always proclaiming your love. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, hoping for an encounter with you as I read about your presence in the lives of your people.

* (the most famous verse taken out of context everyday)

The Library (January 15, 2013)

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…Opening To…

When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

…Listening In…

The king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD. (2 Kings 23:2; context)*

…Filling Up…

The first thing you might not have known about the Bible is that it isn’t a book. I know what you’re thinking: have you ever seen a book before? It looks exactly like a book! It’s true: the Bible is cunningly disguised as a book. A small enough one will fit in your pocket. You could download it on you Kindle. The dusty one in your church sanctuary could be used for bench pressing. I even called it a book yesterday when I mentioned its overwhelming popularity.

But it’s not a book. The Bible is actually a library. Way back when ancient Greek was just normal Greek, people called the Bible “ta biblia,” which happens to be plural. The Bible was not “the book,” but “the books.” Nowadays, we get the Bible in a single, handy bound volume, but when we look at it, we should picture a shelf of books rather than a single tome.

Here’s why. When we mistake the Bible for a book, we are primed to make the next logical mistake, which is to think the Bible speaks with a single voice. But the Bible was written by hundreds of people down through the centuries. The texts affirm and contradict and reference and ignore each other. They speak with myriad different voices, espouse several understandings of God, and cover dozens of genres of literature. But they all have one thing in common: they were all written in response to encounters with God. The richness of the Bible is found in the varied encounters with God that all those varied people experienced. Mistaking the Bible for a book can lead us to miss out on the kind of wonderful variety that reinforces our own varied experience with our God.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you encountered the people in the Bible and you continue to encounter people today. Help me to use the library of the Bible to search for you, that I notice you more readily when you find me. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, hoping for an encounter with you as I read about your presence in the lives of your people.

* Many scholars think that the “book of the covenant” that King Josiah reads here is Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah.

Opening the Bible (January 14, 2013)

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…Opening To…

When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

…Listening In…

After he took his seat at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he disappeared from their sight. They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” (Luke 24:30-32; context)

…Filling Up…

The texts of the Bible have guided people for thousands of years. Before the earliest pieces of the Hebrew Scriptures (what many Christians call the “Old Testament”) were written down, the oral tradition guided people in their walks with God. Then the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled in written form and became the guiding documents for the faith of Israel. Those documents were the Bible for the folks who wrote the second part of the Christian Bible, what is commonly called the “New Testament.” The combined texts have come down through the centuries to us because people from the first telling of the story to today have known that it was important enough to save.

The Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages. It has easily outsold any other book on the planet. And yet, most people – even many who go to church every Sunday – don’t know much about it. Indeed, before I went to seminary, I had read perhaps thirty percent of it. Even with three years of seminary under my belt, I’ve never finished the entire thing (though I’m working on it right now). Even though the Bible is the most popular book of all time, the pages inside many of them have never been turned. The words have never been read. And because we haven’t turned those pages and read those words, we have missed out on encounters with the God who encountered all the people who filled those pages and wrote those words.

And so for the rest of this week, we are going to talk about a few things you might not know about the Bible. We’ll start tomorrow when we discuss the fact that the Bible isn’t really a book at all.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you write the pages of my life even as I read the pages of those whose lives you wrote in the past. Help me to use their knowledge and love of you to develop my own. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, hoping for an encounter with you as I read about your presence in the lives of your people.

In Your Very Skin (January 11, 2013)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a)

…Listening In…

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin.” (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone)

…Filling Up…

We have come to the final day of our first Harry Potter week on devo180. And no week about the first book would be complete without a discussion of the sentences above. Read from the perspective of a follower of Jesus, Dumbledore’s words about love drip with the power of the resurrection. In a sense, we know that resurrection is real because the love we have for those who have died doesn’t go away. True love is never one-sided. So when our love lingers for a deceased loved one, then we can be sure the love of that person lingers as well. How could it possibly if the person is dead?

All love is held in trust by God. Whether we acknowledge it or not, all love passes through God because all love is of God. Our deceased loved ones are even closer to God’s presence than we are because of the power of the resurrection. And therefore, their love for us still matters in our lives.

Dumbledore doesn’t speak in such theological terms, but J.K. Rowling, it seems to me, illustrates this understanding of love through the image of Lily Potter’s loving, self-sacrificial protection of Harry. Her love for him lingers in his very skin. Voldemort doesn’t understand this (what C.S. Lewis might have called a part of the deeper magic from before the dawn of time). Voldemort is obsessed with cheating death, so he never seeks to understand that there is a power beyond death that one can only access once one has passed through death’s gate.

Harry’s mother’s love does not evaporate when she dies. Instead, it “leaves its own mark.” It’s an invisible mark, though Harry seems to think Dumbledore means Harry’s scar. This mark resonates for me with the scene in the Gospel when the resurrected Jesus invites Thomas to touch the marks that Jesus’ own self-sacrificial love has made. Lily’s love illustrates Christ’s. Later in the series, Harry will follow the same path. But that love lingers in our very skin. And this is how we know resurrection is real.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are love, and I am only able to love because you desire me to have the capacity. Help me to love others with the unselfish love of your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad to know that, even though I am a muggle, you still weave your magic through my life.

Destroying the Stone (January 10, 2013)

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…Opening To…

Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a)

…Listening In…

“You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all – the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.” (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

…Filling Up…

Albus Dumbledore sure has the measure of the human race. Near the end of the first Harry Potter book, Dumbledore and Harry are talking about the Sorcerer’s Stone. Nicholas Flamel, the owner of the Stone, and Dumbledore decided to destroy it rather than risk it being stolen and used for malevolent purposes.

This was the best decision they could make considering the lengths Voldemort goes to get the Stone. I assume Dumbledore wished that he had made such a decision long before – destroy the Stone, rather than hide it. But Dumbledore knows better than most that “humans…have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”

He’s right, of course. But why do we make life-negating choices when we could make life-affirming ones? What is it about our makeup that propels us down the paths to destruction? As followers of Jesus Christ, we strive to walk behind the One who is on the right path precisely because we know that if we weren’t following so closely, we’d go astray – like sheep without a shepherd.

The choice we have to continue making, then, over the course of our entire lives, is a simple one. (A simple choice, but with great consequences.) That simple choice is between following Christ and not following Christ. We have to make that choice every day because every day we are tempted to make an easier choice, which is to follow where are own footsteps lead. This is an enticing option because it’s a path of lesser resistance and it will seem exciting for a time.

But it is not the path of life. Dumbledore has the measure of us, all right. But by reaffirming every day our commitment to following Christ, we can practice choosing the things that are best for us. And with God’s help, perhaps we will, over time, counteract that fundamental human failing.

…Praying For…

Dear God, your Son is ever walking one step before me. Help me to see his footprints ahead of me in my life, so that I may always choose to follow him. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad to know that, even though I am a muggle, you still weave your magic through my life.

Through the Trapdoor (January 9, 2013)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a)

…Listening In…

“We’ve had Sprout’s, that was Devil’s Snare; Flitwick must’ve put charms on the keys; McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive; that leaves Quirrell’s spell, and Snape’s…” (Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

…Filling Up…

The climax of the first Harry Potter book finds the three heroes – Harry, Ron, and Hermione – past Fluffy, the three-headed guard dog, and down the trapdoor. To reach the Sorcerer’s Stone, they must defeat the barriers put up by the Hogwarts teachers. Several of the teachers have lent their expertise to protecting the stone, so each barrier tests a different strength of each of the heroes. What’s wonderful about this series of challenges is the fact that any one of the heroes would not have been able to make it to the stone alone.

Hermione remembers that Devil’s Snare likes dim and damp places, but she forgets that she can conjure fire from her wand until Ron reminds her. In the key room, Harry’s prowess as a Quidditch seeker comes in handy as he tracks down the right flying key. Ron is the only one who is good at chess, so he plays and wins the living chess match. Hermione’s logical mind solves the riddle of the seven bottles. And Harry bravely stands up to Quirrell and Voldemort at the end of the line.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione use the special gifts each has to get past the barriers. One alone would not have made it but together they succeed. They are better together. While Harry always seems to end up alone at the end of each book, he would never have gotten there without his two best friends.

I am positive J.K. Rowling constructed the challenges at the end of Sorceror’s Stone to highlight the giftedness of each of her heroes and their strength as a team. So my questions are these: what groups, families, communities, and teams do you belong to? What special gifts do you bring to them? How do others in those groups make up for your deficiencies? Where do you see God in your own giftedness and in the giftedness of those around you?

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are the giver of all good gifts. Help me to recognize the gifts of those around me, so that I may discern how my own gifts fit in with those of the people I am blessed to be with. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad to know that, even though I am a muggle, you still weave your magic through my life.

Standing up to our Friends (January 8, 2013)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a)

…Listening In…

“There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom.” (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

…Filling Up…

Day two of our first Harry Potter week on devo180 has come. As the story reaches its climax, Harry, Ron, and Hermione resolve to sneak out of Gryffindor tower to try to stop Professor Snape (Quirrell, really, but they don’t know that yet) from obtaining the Sorcerer’s Stone. They wait in the common room until everyone has gone to bed, and then they move toward the door. But Neville Longbottom (a pitiable character, at least in this first book) gets in their way. He tells them he doesn’t think they should be going out and breaking any more school rules. He stands up to his friends because he thinks he is in the right. And he shows quite a bit of courage doing it.

But Harry, Ron, and Hermione think they are in the right, as well. They need to break a few rules in order to stop Voldemort from returning. What we have here is a classic problem in the field of “ethics.” Sometimes our decisions involve choices between right and wrong. Presumably, these are fairly easy choices to make: you make the right one because the wrong one is, well, wrong. It would be like saying 2 + 2 = 5. (The black and white nature of right/wrong choices doesn’t stop people from choosing the wrong option, of course, but that’s another matter.)

More often than not, however, our choices are not between right and wrong but between right and right. In our example from Harry Potter, both Neville and our heroic trio are in the right: Neville wants them to obey the rules, and they want to stop Voldemort. So which would you choose? I imagine we would all say, “Stop Voldemort.”

But that doesn’t make Neville’s alternative any less valid. (In books 5 and 7, by the way, Neville is the poster child for breaking rules in order to fight Voldemort.) His example in the first book reminds us that our decisions often have more than one right answer. These choices are so much harder to make than the ones with a right and a wrong answer. So my questions for you are these: when is the last time you can remember deciding something that had more than one right answer? What guided your decision-making?

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are the source of all truth in my life. Help me, whenever I am confronted with a decision, to choose the option that most aligns with your desires for me. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad to know that, even though I am a muggle, you still weave your magic through my life.

The Mirror of Erised (January 7, 2013)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a)

…Listening In…

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

…Filling Up…

We begin the year 2013 of devotiONEighty with the first of seven Harry Potter weeks. I don’t know when the other six will be, but we’ll have one from time to time. This week, we will focus on the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (more properly known as the Philosopher’s Stone in its native Britain). We’ll look at quotations and themes and see how this excellent work of modern fiction can help us as we seek to follow Jesus Christ.

I assume my readership has read the Harry Potter books because most people have. If you haven’t, consider this week of devos a call to pick up the series. You won’t be sorry.

About two-thirds of the way through the first book, Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised. As “Erised” is a reflection of the word “Desire,” you won’t be surprised to know the mirror shows the viewer his or her deepest yearning. In it Harry sees his parents, who were killed when we was a baby. Harry goes back again and again and just stares into the mirror, longing to be with those whom he had lost.

Professor Dumbledore finds him and tells him the mirror will be moved to a new home. And then the headmaster speaks the line above: “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Dreams are wonderful things, of course. Dreams propel us to think of our lives in the big, wonderful way that God sees them, unbounded by what we think is possible. But Dumbledore has seen the other side of dreams. He has known people who have “wasted away before [the mirror], entranced by what they have seen.” These dreamers sunk into their dreams and forgot to live, as Dumbledore says.

How often do we forget to live? What keeps us from living the kind of lives that God desires us to live? What gets in the way? These are questions that the Mirror of Erised brings up. Another is this: what do you think you would see in the mirror? Is it the kind of dream that you think God yearns for you as much as you yearn for it?

…Praying For…

Dear God, your desires for me make up the deepest layer of my call as a human being. Help me to tune myself to your desires so I may always remember to dream your dreams and never forget to live. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad to know that, even though I am a muggle, you still weave your magic through my life.

Treasure (December 21, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

God’s glory, now, is kindled gentler than low candlelight
Under the rafters of a barn:
Eternal Peace is sleeping in the hay,
And Wisdom’s born in secret in a straw-roofed stable. (Thomas Merton)

…Listening In…

When they saw this, they reported what they had been told about this child. Everyone who heard it was amazed at what the shepherds told them. Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully. The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. Everything happened just as they had been told. (Luke 2:17-20; context)

…Filling Up…

The first question, which these final verses of our story brings, is this: to whom did the shepherds report? I’m really curious. Did they run through Bethlehem Paul Revere style (“The messiah is coming! The messiah is coming!”)? Did they go to the local census bureau (after all, that’s why Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem in the first place) and tell them to add another Israelite to the rolls? Did they go to the religious leaders and tell them that their hopes had been fulfilled?

Without answering this question, I’ll pose another: what kind of reaction did the shepherds receive? Luke tells us that everyone who heard their report was “amazed at what the shepherds told them.” But “amazed” is neither a positive nor a negative word. I can be amazed at an acrobatic catch in a football game or at how horrible the food is at a restaurant. I suspect that the shepherds received quite a few responses that went along the lines of: “That’s amazing; ridiculous, but amazing.” Others probably said, “Get off my stoop, you mangy shepherd.”

In the end, we are privy only to one response, and that is Mary’s. She commits the shepherds’ news to memory and considers it carefully. Another translation renders this as “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Think about it. Mary has just given birth to the Son of God. For nine months, since the angel appeared to her on that fateful day, she has carried the Incarnate Word within her, the physical embodiment of God’s good news to the world. Then she delivers him. But is her body now void of this Word? Thanks to the shepherds, no. They bring the first message of the Gospel back to Mary and she fills herself with the good news again.

Each of us bears the Gospel inside of us. The good news of Jesus Christ is treasure hidden in our hearts waiting to be shared. So go out and proclaim with the shepherds. Glorify and praise God because Christ is born.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have given me the gift of pondering in my heart the call you have placed within me. Help me to discover that call and move it from its interior resting place to its active phase in my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, as living vessel for holding the light of your son, as was the manger on that holy night.