Does the Bible accurately represent what God has said and done, and how God thinks and feels, who God is? It is a foundational question, since everything we know about God apart from God as powerful creator, comes from the Bible.
Minor Prophets: Jonah is Disappointed
Without being mindful, it is easy to think about spiritual things through the lens of our culture’s mindset and worldview. In Jonah’s day, it was culturally and societally supported to hate certain people groups, such as the Assyrians, and to assume God hated them too.
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Gospel of John: Where is Your Father?
If these adherents to every “jot and tittle” of God’s word had also truly known God, which is to say, not just known the scriptures and Law, but had truly known God, then they would have sensed God’s presence there before them.
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Gospel of John: Light of the Cosmos
Did the light come on for John, in that moment? For they were all lambent with the reflected glow of the temple’s luminescence, and perhaps especially Jesus, through John’s eyes of love, was shining with luminescence.
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Feast With YHWH
“My soul is crushed with longing for You, make me understand You, enlarge my heart for You, revive me!”
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Minor Prophets: Jonah, נָחַם nâcham
When the Hebrew language speaks of God “repenting,” the word most often is “nacham,” referring to inner suffering that needs to be consoled.
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Gospel of John: Adulterous Woman Reprise
The scribes and Pharisees condoned and rationalized their own sin while at the same time were eager to see sin punished in other people’s lives, even to the death, rather than to see them forgiven and restored. Who might you and I want to see punished, instead of repent? How willing are we to let that go and pray for Jesus to restore them instead?
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Gospel of John: Woman Caught in Adultery
She was disheveled, rumpled clothes half thrown on, her long hair caught up in the hot wind that constantly blew in the Mediterranean. Two men, angry and sweaty, gripped her as they dragged her up the massive steps of the temple, and into the middle of the outer courtyard. Other men shouted and shoved through the gathering crowd.
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Gospel of John: Protectors Pressured
It was more than the Pharisees could bear, for the temple guard to be taken in by Jesus. Picture the angry exclamations, the accusations, pointed fingers, hands with fingers spread wide shooting into the air for emphasis. Imagine voices all trying to out-roar each other as the Pharisees jabbed the chests of the towering Benjamite warriors, in their fury,
Grace and Peace, Joanne 