Medicine Hat Joe

Week 1 Psalm 3

I read the third psalm today.
Over on the right-hand side of the page – separated from the text – is the word “Selah”. It’s written after verses 2 & 4 & 8.
The marginal note in my bible says “Selah” might mean: Pause, Crescendo, or Musical interlude. I look at a different bible and it has the word “Interlude” written in place of “Selah”.
Psalm 3 doesn’t say anything about music in the subtitle but I glance down and see that the next six psalms do. David wrote all six and addressed them to the choir director (except psalm seven) – he even specified instrumentation.
If some of the psalms are musical psalms – if they’re lyrics set to music – then me sitting here reading them in silence is different from a Hebrew guy listening to them performed musically. How different? I looked up the lyrics of a song I heard last week (I couldn’t figure out the words the guy was singing). I read the lyrics. How different was reading lyrics from hearing them performed to music? Very.
And what if there’s even more to it than that? What if the “Selah” is tipping me off about something structural…maybe something like verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus? Or what if it’s got a Hebrew rhyme scheme…maybe some equivalent to ABAB? Or what if there’s two-thousand year-old figures of speech?
I came away a nagging feeling that – whatever all I might be getting from my reading – with the musical psalms I’m still missing something.

Week 1  Reading the Psalms

This year I’m aiming at reading one psalm per day.
My general rule in reading-through is to start at page one and keep turning pages. But the psalms face me with two problems.
The first is qualitative. The psalms are tight & focused & concentrated writing. It’s like they ask: why use a hundred words when ten will do? The Psalms are Qualitatively Different from narrative or history. I can’t read them the same way.
I think the reading-comprehension mechanism works like this: I have a (basically predetermined) Personal Absorptive Capacity – meaning that at some point I can’t take in any more. But an added feature is that my Absorptive Capacity is not uniform across different literatures. For example I could read ten chapters in Genesis and (more or less) keep my brain on track. If I try reading ten psalms I’m derailed after the first couple. Psalms are qualitatively different.
My second (and related) concern is quantitative. In my bible the Old Testament is 1334 pages long. Out of those 1334 pages the psalms run from page-763 to page-896. Which means they take up 133 pages – about 9.97001% of my OT. If I’m doing an unmodified consecutive reading plan I might need to read ten psalms in a day. I guess I could read the words but I’d start tailing-off before I’m done. The quantity would kill me.
I can manage the quality & quantity better by reading one psalm per day. [I’m hoping to read everything else in order.]

Week 1 Genesis 2

A long time ago a guy told me Genesis was screwy because it told two different creation stories. So it left me asking which one was the “real” story? Creation Story #1 or Creation Story #2?
I figure the answer is: both. I think it works something like this…
I saw an educational video where a guy was discussing a painting. It’s a picture of four people in a 1940s American diner. The inside is brightly-lit but outside the street is pretty dark & totally empty.
The guy doing the video suddenly focused on a very small detail of a couple sitting together – the left hand of the woman and the right hand of the man. The thing the guy talked about was the distance between the hands and what that meant.
None of the viewers complained that the guy was jerking them around and showing two different pictures. There was the one big picture…and then a smaller explicit detail.
And it looks to me like Creation Story #2 in Genesis 2 is a detail of Creation Story #1 in Genesis 1.
The Genesis writer concludes Creation Story #1 by saying: this is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.
It would have helped if he’d then said something like: now I’m going to focus your attention on a smaller detail of this big story. But he didn’t. He left me to dope that one out for myself.

Note: quote from Genesis 2:4 (NLT). The painting is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.

Week 1 Genesis 1

The bible maps out the big ideas for a me: my personal life & value…my world…my actions…my destiny and like that.
And right here in verse one it explains where everything and everyone came from: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Revelation is the last book in the bible so that puts it as far away from Genesis as it could be. However…when I’m reading-through consecutively I finish Revelation 22 on December 31 and the next day – presto! – I’m reading Genesis. They’re about as close as you can get.
So I was reading Revelation a few days ago where John saw 24 elders worshipping the Lord and he heard them say: you are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.
If I shift the Revelation-pieces around John says that…
a) the Lord created everything
b) because of that his glory-honor-power should be recognized – and
c) therefore he should be worshipped.
Genesis only tells me about point a). But John takes it along to b) & c).
Which is a good reminder…Genesis 1:1 is a fully accurate statement but it’s not a fully developed one.
Which also reminds me that what I read today might not be the one-and-only thing said about a topic.

Note: quotes from Genesis 1:1 & Revelation 4:11 (NLT)

Week 52 Day 365

Tomorrow I’ll start reading through the bible.
My goal will be to read about 100 chapters per month (there’s 1189 chapters in the bible so…1189 divided by 12 = ~99.08 chapters/month).
The plan I used this year goes like this:
January: Genesis 1 – Leviticus 10
February: Leviticus 11 – Joshua 24
March: Judges – I Kings
April: II Kings – Ezra
May: Nehemiah – Psalm 35
June: Psalm 36 – 150
July: Proverbs – Isaiah
August: Jeremiah – Ezekiel
September: Daniel – Malachi
October: Gospels – Acts 10
November: Acts 11 – Philemon
December: Hebrews – Revelation
Even though that’s my basic plan I’ve already decided to deviate from it. I’m going to read one psalm per day (give-or-take) plus my scheduled readings – that worked  pretty well for me last year.
I remember that I made one unplanned-deviation last year – instead of reading all the histories back-to-back I took a break after 2 Kings and read Isaiah. (On April 19/21 I explained the adjustment this way: for some reason the thought of starting in on Chronicles today seemed too weighty so I’ve decided not to keep reading in bible order. (Whatever that meant.))
As far as plans and resolutions go December 31 is maybe the easiest day of the year. I get to sketch-out my hypothetical future.
Things start to get more complicated on January 1 when I try to impose my plan on 2022…and when 2022 starts imposing its plans on me.

Week 52 Revelation

Right at the very end of Revelation John slides in a final Bible-Reader’s Advisory: if anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book. And if anyone removes any of the words of this prophetic book, God will remove that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city.
The tone is pretty serious & threatening but I can get past its psychic weight without much trouble. I figure John’s giving me a stripped-down statement of potential outcomes. He’s trying to help me out.
I have two Not-To-Dos:
…don’t add anything to Revelation.
…don’t subtract anything from Revelation.
And John already gave me one To-Do: blessed are those who obey the prophecy written in the scroll.
So now I have three things. Don’t add to Revelation. Don’t subtract from it. Obey it.
In two days I’ll start reading Genesis. My Big Goal is reading-through in 2022. But after reading John’s advisory I’m penciling-in a couple of sub-goals:
A) Read-through
B1) Don’t add outside ideas
B2) Don’t take anything away
B3) Obey what I read.
When I sit here looking at the list I see that I’ve just made reading-through more complicated (in the case of B1 & B2 a bit more demanding; with B3 it’s quite a bit more). And even though I know John was specifically talking about Revelation I figure I’ll generalize it to all…stay on the safe-side.

Note: quotes from Revelation 22:18-19 & 22:7 (NLT).

Week 52 Revelation

The word beast is used roughly 117 times in the bible. Out of the 117 John uses the word 36 times in Revelation (~31%).
The majority of times in the bible beast refers to generic run-of-the-mill animals…dogs cows lions and like that. But not in Revelation. John’s references are to non-regular animals.
I do a quick survey to see what I can find out about the beast in Revelation.
First thing is that there isn’t just one beast – there’s two. One comes from the sea…Beast #1. The other comes from the earth…Beast #2.
Beast #1 has 7 heads & 10 horns and is authorized by the dragon.
Beast #2 has 2 horns and he’s a mouthpiece for the dragon.
The two Beasts are in cahoots – Beast #1 validates Beast #2 and Beast #2 performs miracles & makes people worship Beast #1 & brings an inanimate image of Beast #1 to life & and pressures people to get marked with the number 666.
(It looks like Beast #2 is also called the False Prophet – the descriptions of the two are similar.)
Beast #1 seems to be the ringleader but both are linked to the dragon in a trinity of badness.
Which means that in the end the Devil (dragon) & Beast #1 & the False Prophet (Beast #2) end up in the lake-of-fire.
When I review what I’ve found I feel that I know more about the two beasts than before. But I also notice there’s quite-a-bit I still don’t know.

Notes: ideas taken from Revelation 13:1 & 11, 12-18, 16:13-14. False Prophet/Beast #2 16:13, 19:20, 20:10. [Added note: beast in Daniel also refers to non-animals.]

Week 52 Revelation

I’m not a zoologist but I’m pretty sure dragons don’t exist…at least not materially in the 21st century and not in Alberta. Whether they existed at some point in the past I can’t say for sure.
But in Revelation 12 John saw a creature that he called a dragon and he described it this way..
It was huge and red
It had seven heads and ten horns
Its tail dragged a trail of stars
It wanted to kill the child of the woman clothed with the sun
It waged war with the archangel Michael.
Whatever I might think the monster is John takes the guess-work out of the problem when he says: this great dragon – the ancient serpent called the Devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world – was thrown down to the earth.
So the ancient serpent of Genesis = the red dragon of Revelation = Satan.
I spot two troubling things to think about…
First is that Satan was thrown out of heaven. But where he landed was on earth. So that isn’t very good news for the world.
Second is that Satan failed to assassinate the child of the woman with the tiara. The result – John says – is that: the dragon became angry at the woman, and he declared war against the rest of her children – all who keep God’s commandments and confess that they belong to Jesus. So that isn’t very good news for me.

Note: quotes from Revelation 12:9 & 17 (NLT)

Week 52 Revelation

I started reading chapter eleven and right away got what I think of as my Revelation Feeling. It happens in other books too. But most often here.
It goes like this:
…I read a section that I don’t get
…I think about it but maybe still don’t get it
…if I look for outside help I might see how Person A explains it
…but I might find a different explanation from Person B
…so all that really gives me is the thing I didn’t originally get plus two explanations
…I could hope that maybe a Person C can break the tie but maybe the tie-breaker is another opinion
…meaning I have my original thing plus three explanations
…even though what I really want is to have my don’t-get-it to contract into certainty instead it’s expanding on me.
That’s the rough break-down of a (specifically) Revelation Feeling.
The bigger point is that reading any book of the bible can be a problematic exercise (I think that if someone developed a Bible Reading Perplexity Scale I’d likely do the questionnaire for no other reason than to put a number to my problem).
Anyway…going forward into 2022 I think what I’m looking at is this:
First: I’m assuming that even if my Perplexity Quotient is high not reading the bible won’t help lower it.
Second: I can expect to be reading in a state of episodic perplexity.
Third: I’m betting that if I keep reading my number will gradually decrease.

Week 52 Revelation

I was looking at the progress reports John gave to the seven churches. Noticed that each one ended with a promise. But not a promise to the whole church. Only for people in each congregation who were (what he called) victorious.
John says if you’re victorious you will:
…eat from the tree of life (Ephesus)
…not be hurt by the second death (Smyrna)
…eat the manna in heaven (Pergamum)
…get authority over nations (Thyatira)
…be named in the Book of Life (Sardis)
…be a pillar in the temple of God (Philadelphia)
…sit with the Lord on his throne (Laodicea).
A kind of theoretical question came to mind about whether these rewards were for-real things that would literally happen or whether they’re stand-ins for something else. For example it’s plausible that people will literally eat from the tree of life…but not too likely they’ll become actual pillars in the temple.
Anyway that’s a secondary thing. My primary concern is the idea that not every member in the church is going to be victorious.
When I think of my church I think of us all being part of the project…all moving forward toward the finish line. But if some people will be victorious then that means that others won’t be victorious. We’re not all on par. Not all equal. There’s going to be winners and non-winners.
I’m in the church and that’s good. But it’s not a guarantee that I’m home free.

Note: quotes from Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 3:5, 12, 21 (NLT)