Month: March 2020

March 31, 2020
At the end of February I was running a deficit in my reading schedule, and not feeling too great about it.
I decided on two action-steps: (a) start reading one psalm a day, and (b) read extra chapters to finish I Samuel by the end of the month.
So the month-end numbers are in: Deuteronomy finished, Joshua (1-24), Judges (1-21), Ruth (1-4), I Samuel (1-31). 100 chapters. Adding the first thirty-one psalms brings it up to 131 chapters.
That makes a January – March total of 329 chapters.
There are 1189 chapters in the bible, and 329 of them is 27.7% of the total. Reading 27.7% of the bible in 25% of the year is about where I want to be.

Notes: quotes are from  the NASB and the NLT versions. I started reading the psalms on March 1 and today I was reading Psalm 31. There’s a nice phrase in verse 15. The writer says: my times are in (the Lord’s) hand. Another version says: my future is in your hands. I’d read the verse sometime before since it was underlined in red. That’s probably because the mhj-version of my-times-are-in-your-hand tends to go something like this: my times are in my own hands, and when they aren’t I don’t like it. So the verse was a soft reminder to me as I tracked my personal progress today.

Week 14 I Samuel

Whatever life Hannah lived before marriage, it didn’t improve much after. Her biggest hope was to have kids, and when that didn’t work out the other wife badgered and mocked and goaded her. Hannah gradually discovered that one of the cruel places in the world can be right there at home.
Years passed and she might have tried different ways to cope with her dispiriting life. Eventually she turned to the Lord. If prayer wasn’t the only thing she tried, it’s only the prayer that’s reported.
Hannah’s prayer was a vow-prayer. Please, please, please Lord let me have a child and if you answer my prayer, then I’ll give the child back to you (the if and the then are right there in verse eleven). It was a hazardous prayer, with a potential risk down the road. The Lord did the if and gave her a son. And Hannah, just as she promised did the then.
Hannah is a really impressive person. It might have been tempting for her to forget about the then. But she took on the regret that came with the reward.
I guess that early on the biggest love and deepest devotion Hannah could have imagined was for her boy.
But as you read her second prayer in chapter two you get the impression that at some point she discovered someone deeper than her deepest.

Note: the Hannah story is in I Samuel 1.

Week 13 I Samuel

I’m not so surprised when I start I Samuel and see this I-can’t-have-any-kids story.
I’ve seen it before.
Back in the middle of January I was reading about Abraham’s wife. Sarah couldn’t have any kids when she was young, but then the Lord’s guarantee came through years later when she was way too old.
Jacob’s wife Rachel couldn’t have kids. But eventually: God remembered Rachel.
Samson’s mom couldn’t have kids either. Then an angel visited her and said: you shall conceive and give birth to a son.
Ruth didn’t have kids with her first husband. The bible doesn’t actually say that she couldn’t have any, but kind of implies that because when she married Boaz: the Lord enabled her to conceive.
And now the Hannah story. Elkanah with his two wives: Peninnah who did have kids, and Hannah who didn’t. In fact she couldn’t – the bible says that definitively: the Lord had closed her womb. It’s only later that: the Lord remembered her. And Samuel was born. Hannah named him Samuel: because I have asked him of the Lord.
From time to time the bible returns to this interest the Lord has in people’s reproductive capacities, in conception, and in kids being born.

Notes: Sarah was asked: is anything too difficult for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14). Rachel: Genesis 30:22. Samson’s mom: Judges 13:3. Ruth: Ruth 4:13. Hannah: I Samuel 1:5-6, and 19-20. (Quotes from NASB version).

Week 13 I Samuel

Let’s pretend a guy took an Old Testament and tore it up into 39 bundles of pages.
But he did it carefully, splitting the binding with a razor so that each bundle of pages ended up being exactly one OT book.
The guy took 39 manila envelopes and put one bundle in each of them. Then he licked and sealed them.
Let’s pretend the guy hired a pilot.
Then he told 39 of us to go stand in the playing fields up by the Leisure Centre.
Before very long the small plane buzzed over us and the guy dumped the 39 brown envelopes, dark rectangles tumbling out of a blue sky.
Each of us ran to grab one.
So the question is… when I open my envelope and see that I have I Samuel will I be:
     Really Happy;
     Pretty Disappointed; or
     Somewhere in between?
Answer: I can tell you that if I got the I Samuel envelope I’d be pretty pleased – maybe even Top Ten-pleased – especially if the manila envelope pretend-guy had told me that’s all I could read for the next month.
I Samuel has a bunch of really good content. For me it’s a good-fortune-read to close out the first-quarter of 2020.

Note: Whoever got the Psalms envelope would be gloating, I guess. Jeremiah, Genesis, and Deuteronomy would also be top-enders for me. I don’t figure I’d be high-five-ing anyone if I got Song of Solomon, or Obadiah, or Judges.

Week 13 Psalm 25

Yesterday I read a psalm that just came right out and said: good and upright is the Lord.
Since I had just read the last three chapters of Judges I sat thinking about those two different things I’d read back-to-back.
I thought back to an old memory I had from when I visited Victoria in British Columbia. It was an early evening in late summer and the heat was going out of the day and I was walking along Government Street and saw a crowd on the sidewalk leaning on the iron railing, looking down. Across the inner harbour the sun was setting but that’s not what they were watching. I stopped and looked over the edge with them. At the bottom of the stone-block wall and out toward the quay a man was standing semi-circled by people. He was a juggler. We all stood watching him juggle balls, and bowling pins, and burning torches. It was entertaining, even kind of mesmerizing to see him keeping things in the air. At the end he started up two chain saws and juggled those too. It was pretty amazing to watch and you wondered how he could do it.
Yesterday I sat with my good memory of the juggler on the Victoria quayside and thought about how hard it was to keep different things in the air.

Note: Psalm 25:8 (NASB version). See Judges 19-21 for the violent-Levite story.

Week 13 Ruth

Ruth is one of the great stories in the bible.
Plus, it’s a really nice story – a kind of consolation story after reading the mostly dark, violent, and (for me) kind of depressing book of Judges.
Couple of things I noticed.
First, Ruth is not an Israelite woman. But she migrates and in the end marries into the tribe of Judah – a bit like Rahab. Israel is exclusive. But some outsiders are let in.
A second thing is the family connections that show up at the end.
Boaz – a wealthy Israelite and a good-guy – marries Ruth – a poor Moabite widow and a quality-gal – and they have a son named Obed. Obed will have a son Jesse, and a grandson David (so a famous name appears).
But chapter four also gives us the genealogy going backwards from Boaz: Salmon, Nahshon, Amminadab, Ram, Hezron, and Perez.
This is interesting because in the second-week of January, back in Genesis 38, I was wondering about Perez. Or more accurately about his mom Tamar, who tricked her father-in-law – the lackluster Judah – into having paid-for sexual intercourse. As a result of that a son was born: Perez. And now generations later the Perez family has gone forward through Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon right down to Boaz – and through Boaz-Ruth the line is heading toward Obed, Jesse, and David.

Note: family list from Ruth 4:18-22 (NASB version)

Week 13 Judges

I finished reading Judges but went back and re-read Samson.
The story is hard to figure.
Samson seems like such a dim-witted, self-destructive guy but the bible says the Lord intervened directly with Samson seven times:
     the Lord blessed Samson when he was a boy
     in his early life the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him 
     Samson’s choice of a non-Hebrew wife was of the Lord
     the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily (the lion)
     the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily (thirty Philistines)
     the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily (a thousand Philistines)
     Samson was dying of thirst and the Lord miraculously provided water.
There are seven other times when the bible doesn’t specifically say that the Lord helped Samson, but divine help seems likely. Samson:
     caught 300 foxes
     broke the ropes at Lehi
     carried Gaza’s city gates 
     broke Delilah’s seven fresh ropes
     broke Delilah’s new ropes
     broke Delilah’s loom in
     pulled down the arena.
I guess no parent in the history of the world ever advised his son: be like Samson.
And yet this enormously defective, terrible-role-model of a guy was frequently utilized by the Lord. Which is hard to figure.

Notes: First seven references: 13:24, 13:25, 14:4, 14:6, 14:19, 15:14, 15:19. Second seven references: 15:4, 15:13, 16:3, 16:9, 16:12, 16:14, 16:30.

Week 13 Judges

Yesterday I saw a verse in Psalm 18: as for God, His way is blameless.
It was a nice find since Judges – even though it’s in the bible – can grind on you with its pretty gruesome content.
As for God, His way is perfect helps me take stock. Knowing the Lord’s way is pristine doesn’t clear everything up. It’s more a reminder that wherever I go with the judges’ material my mental landing spot needs to include the idea that the Lord is perfect.
Sure, it’s a simpler thing to say the judges were a bunch of primitive and violent people. Simpler to say the Lord’s way with the judges isn’t perfect.
But if the Lord’s way is perfect I can’t choose the simpler thing. I’m reading these troubling stories, wondering what’s going on, seeing that the Lord is engaged in some way with what’s happening, trying to fit pieces together, and also knowing in advance that the puzzle doesn’t supply a piece that says as for God his way is imperfect.
One of my fundaments is that over time the bible is self-clarifying.
I can read something and be unsure or troubled or offended. Fair enough – as far as I know there’s no law against being unsure or offended.
And so I keep reading along with my hope – and my sometimes loosely-held expectation – that I’ll eventually find some clarity for my troubled-nesses.

Note: Psalm 18:30 is quoted from the NASB and the NLT versions.

Week 12 Judges

I’ve noticed a couple of things about the Spirit of the Lord in my reading.
For one thing, he hasn’t been mentioned very often so far. Maybe only a dozen times in 350 pages.
But now in Judges there’s a bit of a blip – half a dozen references to the Spirit (about once every six pages).
I noticed something else. The Spirit of the Lord does surprising things. It’s no big surprise if the Spirit prompted, say a law-abiding guy to present a good sacrifice, or be an honest neighbour – you know, be a good religious guy. But I’m remembering that weird example of Balaam: the Spirit put words into the seer’s mouth that he didn’t want to say. Kind of ventriloquized him.
And now here in Judges the Spirit is ‘coming upon’ several people – Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson – overwhelming them with power.
The Spirit is going to get something done, and so uses a person to do it. He chooses Othniel (who seems to be a pretty good guy), he chooses Gideon, and Jephthah (who don’t seem to be pretty good guys), and bafflingly chooses Samson (who strenuously devoted his life to awful decision-making). Good guy? Bad guy? That doesn’t seem to be the issue.
What qualifies someone is that the Spirit just makes a decision – no character-reference needed.

Notes: 1. number estimates are mhj-counts, so are ball-park-accurate only. 2. See Numbers 24-27 on Balaam. 3. See the four judges in Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, and multiple times for Samson in 13:25, 14:6, 14:19 & 15:14.

Week 12 Judges

Now that I know what to look for I wonder how I ever missed it – the repeated pattern in Judges.
The pattern looks like this (I can fill-in-the-blanks with different names and numbers, but the basic pattern stays the same):
The people of Israel turned against the Lord, and so the Lord let them be conquered by king _____, and king _____ oppressed Israel for ___ years. Then Israel prayed to the Lord for help, and the Lord sent _____ to help them out, and _____ defeated king _____. And so Israel had peace and rest for ___ years.
The formula is not too concerned with ground-level-type explanations. For example, the author doesn’t say: the people of Israel had a flawed battle strategy against the Hivites and so they were defeated and subjugated. That might be true, but the writer is more interested in a different type of explanation, a reason that is a different kind of reason, a reason that plays out on a different plane. He’s saying: Israel did evil, and so this happened.

Note: the pattern is spelled out pretty clearly in 2:11-23, and then it’s repeated in chapters 3, 4, 6, 10, 13. It doesn’t describe every judge. All we know about Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon is that they lived, they judged, and they died – a couple of verses each. But the pattern does apply to all the marquee judges.