Jehoshaphat has no choice but to go to the temple, fall on his knees, and pray that God will listen. The army that will destroy Judah is on its way. So he reminds God of his love for his people, his friendship with Abraham, their ancestor, and his honor. He proclaims, “God, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2Chr. 20.12). But that’s not the end of the story.

My parents had this old farming manual at home, cloth bound, musty, yellowed pages, black and white photos. In flipping through it, one thing stood out and has stayed with me. The key for farming is diversity. When you have diversity, raising different crops, relying on different sources of income, if one crop fails, you still have other crops to receive income from. If one product of your farm has a bad year, you still have other products to sell. Diversity helps insulate you from forces outside your control.

It’s been a frustrating morning. I spent hours pouring over government websites with a specific issue in mind regarding students getting visas, trying to find a solution that will work. I would find a solution, have some hope, dig deeper, and find out the solution doesn’t apply. It’s ridiculous, because it’s a perfectly reasonable situation, and there’s no way the government would have an issue with what’s happening, but nevertheless—with all the bureaucratic red tape, nary a solution is to be found. 

The Sermon on the Mount is the ethics of the kingdom of God expressed in the present world. We don’t live its teachings out because we think doing so will end well in the present. We do it because we’re looking toward the future, and living that future in the present. This is one reason it isn’t helpful to think of eternal life as a future reality we will escape to in death. We’re called to live that future right now.

Shakespeare famously claimed that a name is essentially empty. A name is something external to the object, so “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We could also say, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

There’s something strange about billionaires flying into space to try out space tourism. Fly up, just beyond the atmosphere, return back down. The only goal? Do something that has only recently become possible. 

Acts 9.31 has this interesting complexity to it: “Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit…” On the one hand, fear. On the other, comfort. Too much of one and you have harsh legalism and a mean God. Too much of the other and you have anything-goes-ism and a meaningless God. So, Ananias and Sapphira—one small mistake and they’re dead. So, also, Saul of Tarsus—many big mistakes, but still God calls him.

“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Yes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” Jesus, taking on flesh, coming to us. But the call of this Jesus is, “Come, follow me.” Discipleship is a path, not a bench. It involves us moving, not sitting still. 

My favorite math teacher of all time was Mr. Tomlinson. Tomlinson was an old man, good natured, keen to pick on everyone. “Yes, Mr. Hot Chocolate, Green Tea, I mean, Coffey! That’s your name! Up to the board…” “Ms. Sioux, Arapaho, no, Cheyenne!” For whatever reason, this old man making fun of the names of teenagers while teaching them Trig/pre-Cal was one of the most fun things about my junior year.

Best as I recall, I was introduced to the Jesus Seminar by Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ. He describes this group of liberal scholars who gather to adjudicate which of the sayings of Jesus are real and which are fabricated. Voting is done by using red, pink, gray, and black beads—red being historical sayings of Jesus, black being fabrications, pink and gray being somewhere in-between. Strobel is, as you might imagine, very critical of their work.

Churches of Christ have many strengths. One of them is our recognition that, when a bunch of sinful people get together and start putting down regulations, the result is a set of sinful regulations that inhibit our service to God. This is why we’ve always avoided denominational structures, even as we still function as a sort of denomination.

The following is an imagined interview of Paul by Luke. As a background to letters by Paul to his envoys, Titus on Crete and Timothy in Ephesus, it introduces our discussion of these letters in which Paul warns of wide-spreading diseases among churches and urges healthy countermeasures.

“We tried to con God.” So could read two headstones in a secluded spot outside Jerusalem. They are linked conceptually, if not in style or location, to two graves in the middle of the Sinai desert labeled “We did it our way,” and one near a threshing floor outside Jerusalem, “I thought I was helping.”

Reflecting back on our lives, especially right around when we moved here from Memphis, we have to squint to see through the manna falling from heaven. It rained thick and fast. The kitchen chairs, mower, couch, tools, money, lumber, time, dolly, straps, paracord, ladder, moving supplies, desk, bedroom, food, the list goes on—all a gift from God through his people. We would be destitute, were it not for the church. And that’s not even mentioning all the things we’ve borrowed!

One day we go walking into the temple to pray, just like we normally do, always have, and always plan to. We pass through the Beautiful Gate, when we pause. Something is off, but we can’t quite put our finger on what…

Jesus was minding his own business at a wedding, when his mother comes up and simply says, “They have no wine.”

I was talking to a man this week, who said he grew up in the Catholic Church, and was thankful for his upbringing, but isn’t part of the church anymore. He was lucky, sheltered from much of the corruption that is so publicized today, and even went into the mission field for a while. He loved the mission work (which I think was primarily caring for the poor), because the church there “was skin and bone.” They knew the work they had to do, and they went about doing it without any fuss. The church there was busy, vibrant, strong. 

It is difficult for me to think through the implications of the resurrection. For one, it means that God is real, so real that he can (and has) reached into history to undo death. Now that I am in Christ, he is doing it in me as well. This means that God can take a bad situation and bring about good through it. This is not to glorify suffering or to spit in the face of the suffering, but it is to recognize that we will suffer for doing right from time to time, and when we do, we can trust that God will work things out. Therefore we turn the other cheek. We are kind to those who wrong us. We are compassionate, not bitter. We avoid becoming callous and jaded. 

I was in a Zoom meeting with 24 ministers, elders, and church leaders from around the world this week. Several ministers requested prayers for their congregations moving forward, because the pandemic has loosened their ties of fellowship. The pandemic is easing, but people, especially the young members, aren’t chomping at the bit to return. To be fair, I think this mentality pre-dates the pandemic, even if a year of Zoom church has exacerbated it. Perhaps it’s instructive to note that the ministers making the observation are in affluent countries, Switzerland and Australia.

The tenor of Philippians is very different from the letters to other churches, especially books like Galatians and Corinthians. In Galatians and Corinthians, Paul is correcting and rebuking, sometimes harshly. He’s kind of shaking them by the scruff of the neck—“You foolish Galatians!” (Gal. 4.1) “What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!” (1Cor. 11.22).