I was asked to teach life group tomorrow, sort of at the last minute. I am blessed to have a good educational background in Bible study and close reading. A Pivotal Point in the gospels, Matthew 12:1-14 I am going to start differently today, and this is not to take up time. When you start to read the New Testament, you realize there is repetition in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They tell some of the same stories, and they tell unique ones. Only Luke tells the story of Zacchaeus and the two men on the road to Emmaus who meet Jesus, for example. But all three tell about the feeding of the five thousand, as does John’s gospel. But when you read them carefully and slowly, you see that these are not just cut and paste, but they tell the accounts with different details and purposes. Last week we read Mark 2:23-3:6 as part of the lesson about the disciples, but this lesson is about the same story in Matthew. We are going to read it three times so we can see how ...
I have a few days where I do not even have to leave the house (well, the neighborhood, in a car). So I am reading: my email (which is a treasure trove), Dante's Inferno (for a podcast on Friday), books on Appalachia for a novel, NT Wright on the first century world and its connection to the church, and some fiction. From an essay in Christianity Today on tourism and pilgrimage: But whether our destination is a martyr’s grave or a crystalline pool, the pilgrimage mindset is a fallacy. Tulum isn’t holier than Toledo. Paris, Texas, is just as filled with God’s grandeur as Paris, France. Jerusalem is made out of the same stuff as New Jersey. Because the Holy Spirit indwells Christians, we don’t need to go anywhere to better experience God. I am going to Greece in November, God willing. But that may be my last such trip. I doubt I will ever get to the "Holy Land." That would be nice, but by the time Israel is safe again I may be too feeble to maneuver that terrain. I visited...