Medicine Hat Joe

Week 49 James

James says that: God blesses people who patiently endure testing.
So it looks like I won’t be blessed (whatever-all benefits that includes) if I don’t apply Endurance Management Principles when I’m confronted with a personal trial.
Even though it’s a pretty counterintuitive-sounding rule that’s not my concern right now. My question is: assuming it is true…how do I exercise patience under pressure? I look at the text for clues. James has a couple.
First he says don’t blame God for the problem.
He follows that up by saying that if I’m looking to blame I’d best look at myself. I don’t know what-all is included in this look-at-myself inventory but one example James uses is lust. He says the problem is that I can fall in love with lust. I can let lust – James uses a kind of psycho-sexual analogy – impregnate me. Once the intercourse is done lust perpetuates itself with its own life cycle of conception-birth-life-death. I think James’ point is that I’m so intimate with my lust that I’d never think to blame it for my troubles.
Finally James circles back to point one and says don’t be misled into thinking that I can  blame God. That won’t fly.
It looks like James’ three pieces of advice for managing trials merge into one pretty big caution about who I start pointing fingers at  when things are going badly.

Note: quote from James 1:12 (NLT); and see 1:13-18.

Week 49 Hebrews

Hebrews begins: long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.
There was a Before Communication.
There was an After Communication.
So…two blocks of Communication Activity (CA). CA#1 came via the OT Prophets. CA#2 came via the Lord Jesus Christ.
In verses three-four the writer lists five or six qualifications to show how vastly superior Christ was to the Prophets. I respect Abraham Moses David Jeremiah & Daniel but Hebrews says that the Lord was way better.
So that raises an interesting question for a bible-reader. If CA#2 is way better than CA#1 then do I really need to read CA#1?
It’s a good question for me to think about now since 2022 starts in three weeks. Do I need to bother reading CA#1?
The way I see it right now is this. If Hebrews 1:3 said something like: “Therefore Please Disregard All Previous Communication Activity from the OT” then I’d feel ok about skipping it. But it doesn’t.
And the other thing is a purely practical one. I read the bible to find out what I can about the Lord. Hebrews isn’t saying that what the OT says about the Lord is inaccurate. The evolution from the OT to the NT didn’t alter the Lord (for example didn’t change him from good to bad). So I figure why wouldn’t I read it?

Note: quote from Hebrews 1:1-2 (NLT)

Week 49 Hebrews

Four years ago I read that the book of Hebrews maybe wasn’t a letter…not to begin with. It was a public sermon. So – the guy said – Hebrews might be more understandable if it was read all-at-once (and even out-loud) – just like a sermon.
I tried that before. I’ve got a note in my bible that says I read through Hebrews in 45-minutes in 2017.
This year I decided to read Hebrews all-at-once again (but not out-loud) and so I got a kitchen timer and set it to 60-minutes.
One thing I noticed was that the audience must have been very familiar with the OT. I’d be guessing to say they must have been Jewish but it’s hard to imagine the OT-heavy content grabbing the attention of a non-Jewish group.
The other thing I noticed was that the audience must have been mostly people who believed in the Lord. But – and this is the thing that I kept seeing – some of them had gotten disenchanted with the Lord…disappointed…were having second thoughts.
So part of the discussion in Hebrews was: what happens when I get tired of the Lord?
It’s a pretty important question when you get right down to it. A pretty big decision.

Note: I think I saw the “Hebrews-is-a-sermon” idea in the Catholic Study Bible (I’m not absolutely sure since I’m here and the CSB is sitting on a shelf in the Medicine Hat Public Library). Note 2: my 2021 reading time for Hebrews was 1:00:09.

Week 49 Philemon

The story of Onesimus is pretty interesting because it talks about what happens when a person believes. The basic thing here in Philemon is that both nothing and something happens.
Onesimus was a slave before he heard the gospel story. And then after he heard & believed he was still a slave. So that didn’t change.
What did change was that after he believed – even though he was still a slave – he was also now more than a slave (in the sense that a whole new department or division had been added onto his life). His expanded life had a bunch of brand-new elements…but it still included his old-life. So it was an inclusionary brand-new life…brand-new by addition…not brand-new by subtraction.
Onesimus was a slave in the first-century Roman political-legal system both before and after he met the Lord. But he’d become a free man in-Christ – a special reclassification outside of the local political-legal regime.
Anyway to further complicate things Onesimus was owned by Philemon. Philemon was a believer. After Onesimus believed Philemon was still his owner. The ticklish thing was that Onesimus’ reclassification gave him an added status – he was now Philemon’s brother.
So this letter from Paul to Philemon is a kind of case-study on fitting Onesimus’ official legal status with his newly-acquired status as a member of the faith. It was perplexing and potentially conflictual. And so it had to be finessed & worked through & developed & thought-out & negotiated.

Week 49 Titus

Paul and Titus spent time starting several churches in Crete. Paul left. Titus stayed. Now in his letter to Titus Paul said: I left you on the island of Crete so you could a) complete our work there and b) appoint elders in each town.
Whatever completing-our-work meant in general terms Paul also gave Titus a specific directive about the qualities of people in leadership. It’s a pretty interesting list. An elder had to:
be well thought of
be faithful to his wife
have kids who believed & who weren’t rebellious
have a blameless life
be hospitable
love all that’s good
live wisely & be fair
live a devout & disciplined life
be a strong believer…
and… he couldn’t be arrogant quick-tempered a heavy-drinker violent or greedy.
I sit thinking about the list.
…before I could be a church leader I’d have to be assessed based on this list
…if the Selection Committee probed very deeply I wouldn’t make it
…I don’t figure the list is just for elders (for example a non-elder can’t cheat on his wife)
…and it’s not a comprehensive list (for example addictive gambling or vengeance aren’t listed).
I quit thinking about the list. Guys have told me several times that the church is full-of-hypocrites. Maybe that’s so. But seeing this list makes me think that if it is full then a) it’s pretty seriously failing Paul’s test and b) hypocrisy is likely just one of the problems.

Note: quote and list from Titus 1:5, 6-9 (NLT)

Week 48 Titus

In the salutation Paul starts talking about the gospel. The thing I notice is that Paul says the gospel was: promised long ages ago. I check another version: before the world began. And another: before the beginning of time. So a pledge – a guaranteed forecast – was made long ago and then – Paul says – the vow came true: at the proper time. Another version says: the appointed season. Another: at the right time.
I get a slip of paper and draw a horizontal line. At the far left I write Promise. Along the line left-to-right I write names: Adam-&-Eve Noah Abraham Egypt Promised-Land Kingdom Babylon…like that. Through the OT people are doing what they do and the Promise is floating around in the ether. Then BOOM! The Right Time is now. The Promise happens.
I think how I scheme out my own plans. They’re my plans and they’re independent of other things (as long as there’s not another big & undetectable domain of consequential plans that are also imperceptibly in play).
Everyone makes his plans and does what he does pretty much oblivious to other goings-on.
I remember the story about American men & women in Hawaii making their plans and doing what they were doing on December 6 1941. Pretty much oblivious to anyone else’s plan until someone else’s plan materialized.
My plans…going along as planned…thrumming along in undetectable parallel with another plan.

Note: quotes from Titus 1:2 & 3 (NASB, NLT, NIV)

Week 48 Timothy

Paul to Timothy: as you know, all the Christians who came here from the province of Asia have deserted me; even Phygelus & Hermogenes are gone.
I wonder where Here is but a couple of verses later Paul mentions Rome. And he’d already mentioned prison. So he was in prison in Rome.
I check my atlas looking for Asia. It looks like the big western chunk of modern-day Turkey. Those people travelled a far piece to support Paul in Rome. And then for some reason deserted him.
It’s hard to know exactly why they all bailed-out on Paul. I check the names Phygelus & Hermogenes in a word book. They’re only mentioned this one time in the whole bible. Deserters.
Near the end of the letter Paul told Timothy again: no one was with me. Everyone had abandoned me… But then when he said that I guess Paul caught himself; remembered; back-tracked; corrected himself: but the Lord stood with me.
I’ve only met her a couple of times a long time ago but I know an old woman from Cambodia. This year she got cancer. She had to leave the country…go to a hospital in Thailand for treatments. Away from home. No family. No friends. Pretty much – but not completely – alone. One of her notes from the cancer ward said: Jesus is here with me.
So reading Paul today I thought about her.

Note: quotes from 2 Timothy 1:15, 16, 4:10, 16-17 (NLT)

Week 48 Timothy

I like the two Timothy letters because they talk quite a bit about life in the church – its organizational set-up & management guidelines & instructions for leadership & teaching content & church demographics…like that.
Anyway one of the things I noticed was that Paul gave Timothy details about a specific cohort called deacons. He said deacons:
Must be men of dignity…
Not given to double-talk…
Not addicted to wine…
Not fond of sordid gain.
It seems pretty clear that Paul was talking about men in verses eight-nine-ten – men who were deacons – and he talked about them again in twelve-thirteen. But for some reason he started talking about women in verse eleven. That seemed weird and out-of-place until I noticed a marginal reference that said the women Paul was talking about in eleven were either deacons’ wives or deaconesses (which I guess could mean female deacons who were married to male deacons or unmarried female deacons or married female deacons who weren’t married to deacons). That made sense. Paul said that these women:
Must likewise be dignified…
Not malicious gossips…
Temperate…
Faithful in all things.
The two lists – one for men & one for women – line up pretty well. In fact they line up pretty-well enough that I wonder why Paul didn’t just make an inclusive list. But I don’t have much time to wonder. My first question about why-women-in-verse-eleven has a possible answer. So that’s good enough for now.

Note: quotes from 1 Timothy 3:8 & 11 (NASB). NLT margin also says women deacons.

Week 48 1 Thessalonians

Halfway through chapter five there’s a subtitle that says Paul’s Final Advice. I count 15 items.
It’s a kind of bible-reader’s To-Do & To-Be List.
I re-read it to see if anything jumps out at me. They all do but a couple jump higher than others:
be patient with everyone…
try to do good to each other…
be joyful…
be thankful.
Even my short list is pretty demanding. I know these are things I (only) aspire to – in other words they’re not comprehensively-&-totally achievable – but that doesn’t mean they’re disregardable.
I sit thinking about how to address the list.
Be patient with everyone… I visualize a person I know who’s difficult to be patient with. Since Paul doesn’t say that some people can be exempted from his be-patient-with-everyone list I figure my task is to take a first step (on what I fully expect will be a long-long-long road) of trying-trying-trying to be more patient with that person. I figure I’ll not likely ever be as fully patient with him as I am with some other person I’m patient with. On the other hand I’m figuring that – in the process of experimenting with a variety of Patience-Building Exercises and also praying for Enhanced Divine Assistance  over a period of years & decades – that I’ll eventually develop more patience (even if I am only moving along at the pace of evolution).

Note: quoted from 1 Thessalonians 5:14, 15, 16, 18 (NLT). Added reading update: as of December 1 I’ve read 1654 of 1730 pages.

Week 48 Colossians

Paul says: work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Work-hard-&-cheerfully-at-whatever-you-do is a pretty good general principle and it likely applies right across the board.
The weird thing though is that Paul addressed the advisory to slaves.
(I know that Paul gets slammed for not shouting “Slavery Is Terrible” but my personal guess is that Paul was no advocate of the institution. That said he took an eyes-wide-open look around and saw slavery was the actual labour system and a key economic driver of the Roman economy. I guess he could have told slaves to test the chains. But his advice was a bit more modest.)
I draw a circle on a sheet of paper and call it the 9-5 Daily Work Circle. I draw a bigger circle outside – the diagram looks like a doughnut now – and call it the 12-12 Daily Activity Circle. Inside the inner circle is my work. And everything inside the outer circle is my whole life.
Inside the outer circle I live my life before the Lord. And since the inner circle of my work is inside the outer circle the outer affects the inner. So I work for my 9-5 work master – he sets my schedule & tasks & hours & performance-expectations. He gets my 9-5. But he gets added-value too. He gets who I am for my 12-12 Big-Master.
My 12-12 determines my 9-5. 12-12 is who I am.

Note: quote from Colossians 3:23 (NLT)