Month: July 2025

Week 31

I’ve never met a bible reader who says “I sit down to read every day and I always feel the same.” Same level of interest. Same motivation. Same focus.
I’ve not met one. Because every day isn’t the same. Some days are better than others.
Occasionally I can account for why a day isn’t so good:
I’ve got a headache
I travelled through six times zones yesterday
I just said good-bye to a friend
I’ve got an unhappy conversation coming up in an hour.
But other times there’s no telling what to make of how today feels.
In general terms I tend to categorize my reading-days under three rough divisions:
Good Days
Average Days
Bad Days.
Every day it’s going to be one of those. Good. Average. Bad. Fairly randomly. And unpredictably enough that my bible-reading exercise varies.
Sure…I’m trying to beef-up my total number of Good Days (and trying to reduce the Bad ones). That’s a part of my (ragged) longer-term Personal Life Management plan.
But meanwhile I just try to keep reading – come-what-may. Pretty good reads on good days. Grind-it-out reads on grind-it-out days.

Note #1 grind-it-out reading is a technique that I can usually do pretty successfully. It’s not too rewarding. And it’s maybe not the way for everyone since we’re all finding-our-way & finessing-our-way through our reading program. Part of the reading is discovering how to manage.
Note #2 End-of-month reading report. I’ve been speeding ahead the last several weeks and have read 78% in 58% of the year.

Week 28  Jonah 1

Once I get past the thirteen-word introduction the next thing I read is the Lord giving Jonah a very specific instruction: go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it.
The first thought that comes to me is that it’s rare for the Short Prophets to begin with an explicit actionable directive. I decide to test that so I quit reading Jonah and go back and scan through the opening verses of the other little prophets. I see that Hosea got a very definite actionable directive: go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her. But that’s it. Other than that and Jonah’s go to the great city of Nineveh I don’t find any other up-front orders. The books just jump right into the message:
hear this you elders…
the Lord roars from Zion…
we have heard a message from the Lord…
So it was just Hosea and Jonah. Each of them told to do a definite (and unpalatable) thing. And each taking action. But the difference was that Hosea did what he was told. Jonah didn’t.
I can’t think of any other prophet like Jonah. He just walked away. A real renegade.
In the end the coercive arm-twisting of the big fish forced Jonah to comply. But it never really changed his mind. A maverick to the end. Even when he did what he had to do he couldn’t be forced to like doing it.

Note: quotes from Jonah 1:2 Hosea 1:2 Joel 1:2 Amos 1:2 Obadiah 1:1 (NIV)

Week 28  Proverbs 8

The second half of the chapter gets around to asking the question: how old is Wisdom? The short answer: Wisdom has always been around.
Wisdom was:
• at the beginning of (the Lord’s) creation
• before (the Lord’s) works of long ago
• before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began
• when there were no watery depths.
There could be a debate about whether wisdom has existed forever or if it was created by the Lord way back when. But that’s a technical point. My bigger concern here is that wisdom – as far as it matters to me in practical terms – has been around forever. It’s a permanent fixture. People didn’t think-it-up. It didn’t evolve over eons. Wasn’t doped-out over time. It pre-existed everyone-everything. Greeks. Babylonians. Hebrews. The bible. Adam & Eve. Wisdom isn’t a human invention. It’s a square one perennial. Always there. Never absent in the history of everything.
I was a skilled craftsman beside him (the Lord). I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him. I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam.
So it looks like Solomon isn’t sitting around thinking up proverbially wise sayings. It’s more like he’s tapped into this deep and universally accessible well of Wisdom and then he siphoned off thimblefuls of prepackaged digestible understandable wisdom to benefit his readers. Uncomplicated sayings from the Deep Well.

Note: quotes about wisdom are from Proverbs 8:22-24 and 8:30-31 (CSB)

Week 28  Daniel 2

Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about a metal statue. It had a:
• Gold head
• Silver chest & arms
• Bronze abdomen & thighs
• Iron legs
• Iron & Clay feet
What can I make of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream?
I don’t have to guess about the first two elements. Daniel says that the upper metal sections are two consecutive state powers. Nations.
The gold head represents Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon.
The second one – silver – is Persia.
So far so good. I’ve heard about Babylon & Persia.
But after that I’m on-my-own.
I figure it’s legitimate to pencil-in Greece as bronze (even though Daniel didn’t specifically say so). But things get fuzzier then. Even though Rome was the next big imperial power I think that saying Rome is the iron legs is moving into educated-guess territory.
And the iron & clay feet? That’s uneducated-guess territory. A divided empire. Strong but brittle. United…but not organically. Who?
The thing that’s most interesting in this progress-of-empires scheme is the rock. The non-metallic kingdom.
The (Lord) will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever .
Unlike the other kingdoms the Rock Kingdom will be set up by the Lord. It will displace all the other kingdoms. And unlike them it will be indestructible & non-transferrable & permanent. Unfortunately for Daniel the Rock Kingdom – the Lord’s Kingdom – was still waiting in the wings.

Note: quote from Daniel 2:44 (CSB)

 

Week 27  Proverbs 6

My son, if you have become surety for your neighbor…(then) deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hunter’s hand
I look at several other versions. Some of them use the word surety. But others are a bit more helpful:
if you have put up security for your neighbor…
if you guarantee a loan for your neighbor…
if you have become a guarantor for your neighbor…
One of them cuts straight to-the-chase: don’t promise to pay for what your neighbor owes.
I check the word surety. A surety is a security bond.
A security bond works like this. Let’s say there’s three guys.
Guy #1 has $10,000
Guy #2 needs $10,000
Guy #2 asks Guy #1 to loan him $10,000 but Guy #1 isn’t confident that Guy #2 can pay it back.
That’s when Guy #3 appears. Guy #2 asks Guy #3 if he will be ‘surety’ for him. That means that Guy #3 (who Guy #1 does trust) will promise to repay the $10,000 debt if Guy #2 doesn’t.
Thinking about sureties today I come away with two things. First I need to be very cautious about promising to repay someone else’s loan.
Second thing is this. Solomon was a very deeply & thoughtfully religious man (at least until later in life) and some of his proverbs were deeply & thoughtfully religious. But others – like this one about not guaranteeing someone else’s loan – aren’t religious at all. (Unless telling someone not to be a financial moron is religious advice.)

Note: quotes from Proverbs 6:1 & 6 (NASB and CSB CEB LSB NIRV)

Week 27  Proverbs 3

In chapter three there’s a bunch of Ifs & Thens. It made me wonder if there’s supposed to be an exact correspondence between them (for instance if I’m kind will I then be healthy?)
I drew up a table with two columns.
In the Left Column are the Ifs. If you…
• Remember the teaching
• Keep the commandments
• Are kind
• Are truthful
• Trust in the Lord
• Aren’t arrogant
• Fear the Lord
• Turn away from evil
• Are charitable
• Accept the Lord’s discipline.
In the Right Column are Thens. Then you’ll…
• Live long
• Live in peace
• Win people’s favor
• Have a good reputation
• Have a straight path
• Be healed / healthy
• Be financially enriched
• Know the Lord loves you
Unfortunately the Ifs & Thens didn’t line up nicely  in tabular form. I couldn’t tell for sure that (let’s say) if I’m truthful then I’ll have a good reputation. The connection wasn’t that tight.
I thought about some bible characters: Job Joseph Jeremiah Peter Paul John. People who did the Ifs. But they also seemed to have been put-on-hold when it came to the sunny Thens. They just seemed to do the Ifs because the Ifs were the best way to live.
Do beneficial Thens really follow the Ifs? No doubt. But maybe not in direct or immediate or obvious ways.

Note: Proverbs 3:1-12. The items on the If list are in 3:1 3 5 7 9 11. The Then list is in 3:2 4 6 8 10.