Since I no longer live in Washington, DC, I am going to be changing the blog to http://knoxvilleguy.blogspot.com. If you are subscribing via an RSS feeder, please make the change in your subscriptions.
Happy Thanksgiving!
BCP/NRSV
November 25, 2009
November 8, 2009
The Recap Episode
Year B, Proper 27, RCL
November 8, 2009
Every so often, TV shows, mostly those with running plot-lines, like Desperate Housewives or The Big Bang Theory, will have an entire episode that doesn’t advance the plot, but really just tells you where they’ve been the past few months or weeks on the show. Have you seen one of these? They are called re-caps, and they are typically positioned as a set up to really big episode that is coming up. It serves to refresh your memory before some mid-season cliff-hanger.
I want us to have a bit of a re-cap with our Gospel lessons from the past several weeks, lets say, going back to the end of September. These lessons have been a roller coaster of teachings from Jesus, sometimes comforting and reassuring, sometimes they are difficult to hear. Since the first Sunday after Pentecost, we’ve been hearing, week-by-week, Mark’s account of the life and ministry of Jesus. Mark took a vacation in August, and we heard from John’s Gospel. Other than those few weeks, and last Sunday because it was All Saints Day, we’ve been hanging with Mark since the first Sunday of June.
So in case you don’t remember or weren’t here (and that’s OK, we weren’t taking roll), let’s recap what we’ve heard from the Gospel of Mark the past several weeks:
September 27th—We heard Jesus tell his disciples that it’s OK for other people to do ministry in his name, that no one has exclusive rights to proclaiming the Good News of Christ to the people. He immediately tells his followers (that’s us, too, by the way) to pluck out an eye ball, cut off a hand and cut off a foot because it would be better to go through life lame than to have all of our appendages and go to hell, a directive from Jesus that left his disciples thinking, “Wait. What?”
October 4th—We heard Jesus’ teaching on divorce, a difficult passage that has made many squirm in their seat, and a response that likely left the Pharisees without a rebuttal. But then we hear Jesus rebuking the disciples from blocking children who were coming to see him. “For it is such as these who are considered worthless in our society that the kingdom of God truly belongs.” Both episodes can be difficult to hear, although the part with the children tends to make us feel a little warm and fuzzy.
October 11th—The famous story of the rich man who has kept the commandments all his life (that would be the Big 10 that Moses came down the mountain with). He goes away shocked and grieving (scripture tells us) when Jesus tells him to give away all he has to the poor. And remember that the disciples, led by Peter, say, “Look, we’ve have left everything to follow you.” Jesus reminds them whoever leaves all these things behind will receive a hundred fold when they come into God’s glory. But Jesus says, the first must be last and the last must be first.
October 18th—James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask to sit on Jesus’ right and left, leaving the rest of the disciples fuming that those two fellas thought they were so special. So Jesus reminds them all that they must serve one another. The passage from that Sunday ends with Jesus foreshadowing his crucifixion by saying, “for the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” It is the second week in a row that we hear Jesus say that the first must be last and the last must be first.
Two weeks ago, on October 25th, we heard the story of the healing of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. The upside is that Jesus calls Bartimaeus close to him, Bartimaeus says, “I want to see,” and Jesus heals him. Bartimaeus follows Jesus along the way. The downside, we would discover if we kept reading, is that Bartimaeus is following Jesus into Jerusalem, where he will be crucified in a matter of days.
Had last week’s passage from Mark not been properly usurped by the All Saints Day lessons, we would have heard what might be the most encouraging and enlightening conversation with Jesus in all of Mark’s Gospel. A Scribe, someone who is not, by all accounts, a follower of Jesus, approaches Him, after seeing how well he has answered the questions of his disciples, and says, “Which commandment is the most important?” Jesus goes directly to the heart of Jewish worship and says, “Shma, Yisrael, Adoni elohenu, Adoni ehad. Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” Jesus then says that to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as our self is the cornerstone of the law. The scribe agrees with Jesus’ assessment and even says that these things are far more important than burnt offerings or sacrifices, to which Jesus replies, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
This week’s Gospel lesson makes up in tough news what last week’s lacked. So let’s go there in our mind’s eye. I want to invite you to imagine what the scene looked like (close your eyes, even, if you are comfortable). It’s Holy Week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on the back of a colt, with cloaks and palm fronds on the streets. He has run the money changers out of the Temple, and told the parable of the wicked tenants. He has given the “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” talk, and gone toe-to-toe with the Sadducees about what Resurrection means. We don’t know what day of the week this is, but we know it is before he celebrates the Passover dinner with the Disciples. So here is Jesus, sitting in the Temple, having been tested and grilled, and been in the cross-hairs of the Temple leaders, and he says these words about those same Temple leaders.
What do you think Jesus’ tone of voice is when he’s saying all of that? Was he shouting a pronouncement or was he subtly talking to his disciples? Was he sad? Angry? Snide? How are his eyes set? Where is he looking? What was the response by those around him?
The next scene with the widow putting her last penny into the treasury is often seen as a great example of stewardship and what Jesus really requires of us. But on the heels of saying that the scribes devour widow’s houses, is it still such a feel-good, inspiring moment? Or is it a continuation of his condemnation of the temple leadership?
One of my favorite images is of Jesus is the one that came, I believe, out of the 1960s, and is called the Laughing Jesus, and it is a profile-angle painting, with Jesus’ head cocked back, looking up towards the sky, with an expression that would suggest he’d just heard the funniest thing in a long time. That’s not the Jesus we’ve seen in our Gospels the past few several weeks. We’ve seen a Jesus who calls us to make tough choices. We’ve seen a Jesus who is demanding that we respect the dignity of every human being. We have a picture of a Jesus who puts us at a loss of words when it comes to his teachings. This is not the same picture of Jesus we have in, say, Matthew’s Gospel, where he says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”
While most of us would rather hang out with the Laughing Jesus or the Jesus who told the scribe that he wasn’t far from the kingdom of God, we, myself included, need to be reminded that its those words and statements that seem harsh, that seem like Jesus isn’t being loving or caring, that in those words, Jesus is calling us to our better selves, showing us a better way, that Jesus is begging us to remember that we are God’s beloved children, which means that we are meant for good, we are meant to be reconciled with God. If we didn’t need to hear that call, if we didn’t need that reminder, then the Word would not have been made flesh.
The reality is that we do need to hear those seemingly harsh words, to remember that sometimes WE are the scribes. Sometimes we are the ones who think we deserve to sit the closest to Jesus. Sometimes it is easier to think about ourselves than to love our neighbor. And none of us are able to constantly love God the way we should. We can wallow in that, we can give up on the goal, or we can choose to be renewed by the chance everyday to love God and neighbor a little bit more than we did yesterday.
Jesus is showing us something different, calling us to put the least among us first, calling us to look beyond ourselves so that he might increase and the kingdom of God might come to fruition right here on earth. As we approach the start of Advent, I hope we will continue to wrestle with these roller coaster teachings from Jesus, opening our hearts and minds to better love God and our neighbor.
AMEN
November 8, 2009
Every so often, TV shows, mostly those with running plot-lines, like Desperate Housewives or The Big Bang Theory, will have an entire episode that doesn’t advance the plot, but really just tells you where they’ve been the past few months or weeks on the show. Have you seen one of these? They are called re-caps, and they are typically positioned as a set up to really big episode that is coming up. It serves to refresh your memory before some mid-season cliff-hanger.
I want us to have a bit of a re-cap with our Gospel lessons from the past several weeks, lets say, going back to the end of September. These lessons have been a roller coaster of teachings from Jesus, sometimes comforting and reassuring, sometimes they are difficult to hear. Since the first Sunday after Pentecost, we’ve been hearing, week-by-week, Mark’s account of the life and ministry of Jesus. Mark took a vacation in August, and we heard from John’s Gospel. Other than those few weeks, and last Sunday because it was All Saints Day, we’ve been hanging with Mark since the first Sunday of June.
So in case you don’t remember or weren’t here (and that’s OK, we weren’t taking roll), let’s recap what we’ve heard from the Gospel of Mark the past several weeks:
September 27th—We heard Jesus tell his disciples that it’s OK for other people to do ministry in his name, that no one has exclusive rights to proclaiming the Good News of Christ to the people. He immediately tells his followers (that’s us, too, by the way) to pluck out an eye ball, cut off a hand and cut off a foot because it would be better to go through life lame than to have all of our appendages and go to hell, a directive from Jesus that left his disciples thinking, “Wait. What?”
October 4th—We heard Jesus’ teaching on divorce, a difficult passage that has made many squirm in their seat, and a response that likely left the Pharisees without a rebuttal. But then we hear Jesus rebuking the disciples from blocking children who were coming to see him. “For it is such as these who are considered worthless in our society that the kingdom of God truly belongs.” Both episodes can be difficult to hear, although the part with the children tends to make us feel a little warm and fuzzy.
October 11th—The famous story of the rich man who has kept the commandments all his life (that would be the Big 10 that Moses came down the mountain with). He goes away shocked and grieving (scripture tells us) when Jesus tells him to give away all he has to the poor. And remember that the disciples, led by Peter, say, “Look, we’ve have left everything to follow you.” Jesus reminds them whoever leaves all these things behind will receive a hundred fold when they come into God’s glory. But Jesus says, the first must be last and the last must be first.
October 18th—James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask to sit on Jesus’ right and left, leaving the rest of the disciples fuming that those two fellas thought they were so special. So Jesus reminds them all that they must serve one another. The passage from that Sunday ends with Jesus foreshadowing his crucifixion by saying, “for the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” It is the second week in a row that we hear Jesus say that the first must be last and the last must be first.
Two weeks ago, on October 25th, we heard the story of the healing of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. The upside is that Jesus calls Bartimaeus close to him, Bartimaeus says, “I want to see,” and Jesus heals him. Bartimaeus follows Jesus along the way. The downside, we would discover if we kept reading, is that Bartimaeus is following Jesus into Jerusalem, where he will be crucified in a matter of days.
Had last week’s passage from Mark not been properly usurped by the All Saints Day lessons, we would have heard what might be the most encouraging and enlightening conversation with Jesus in all of Mark’s Gospel. A Scribe, someone who is not, by all accounts, a follower of Jesus, approaches Him, after seeing how well he has answered the questions of his disciples, and says, “Which commandment is the most important?” Jesus goes directly to the heart of Jewish worship and says, “Shma, Yisrael, Adoni elohenu, Adoni ehad. Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” Jesus then says that to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as our self is the cornerstone of the law. The scribe agrees with Jesus’ assessment and even says that these things are far more important than burnt offerings or sacrifices, to which Jesus replies, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
This week’s Gospel lesson makes up in tough news what last week’s lacked. So let’s go there in our mind’s eye. I want to invite you to imagine what the scene looked like (close your eyes, even, if you are comfortable). It’s Holy Week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on the back of a colt, with cloaks and palm fronds on the streets. He has run the money changers out of the Temple, and told the parable of the wicked tenants. He has given the “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” talk, and gone toe-to-toe with the Sadducees about what Resurrection means. We don’t know what day of the week this is, but we know it is before he celebrates the Passover dinner with the Disciples. So here is Jesus, sitting in the Temple, having been tested and grilled, and been in the cross-hairs of the Temple leaders, and he says these words about those same Temple leaders.
What do you think Jesus’ tone of voice is when he’s saying all of that? Was he shouting a pronouncement or was he subtly talking to his disciples? Was he sad? Angry? Snide? How are his eyes set? Where is he looking? What was the response by those around him?
The next scene with the widow putting her last penny into the treasury is often seen as a great example of stewardship and what Jesus really requires of us. But on the heels of saying that the scribes devour widow’s houses, is it still such a feel-good, inspiring moment? Or is it a continuation of his condemnation of the temple leadership?
One of my favorite images is of Jesus is the one that came, I believe, out of the 1960s, and is called the Laughing Jesus, and it is a profile-angle painting, with Jesus’ head cocked back, looking up towards the sky, with an expression that would suggest he’d just heard the funniest thing in a long time. That’s not the Jesus we’ve seen in our Gospels the past few several weeks. We’ve seen a Jesus who calls us to make tough choices. We’ve seen a Jesus who is demanding that we respect the dignity of every human being. We have a picture of a Jesus who puts us at a loss of words when it comes to his teachings. This is not the same picture of Jesus we have in, say, Matthew’s Gospel, where he says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”
While most of us would rather hang out with the Laughing Jesus or the Jesus who told the scribe that he wasn’t far from the kingdom of God, we, myself included, need to be reminded that its those words and statements that seem harsh, that seem like Jesus isn’t being loving or caring, that in those words, Jesus is calling us to our better selves, showing us a better way, that Jesus is begging us to remember that we are God’s beloved children, which means that we are meant for good, we are meant to be reconciled with God. If we didn’t need to hear that call, if we didn’t need that reminder, then the Word would not have been made flesh.
The reality is that we do need to hear those seemingly harsh words, to remember that sometimes WE are the scribes. Sometimes we are the ones who think we deserve to sit the closest to Jesus. Sometimes it is easier to think about ourselves than to love our neighbor. And none of us are able to constantly love God the way we should. We can wallow in that, we can give up on the goal, or we can choose to be renewed by the chance everyday to love God and neighbor a little bit more than we did yesterday.
Jesus is showing us something different, calling us to put the least among us first, calling us to look beyond ourselves so that he might increase and the kingdom of God might come to fruition right here on earth. As we approach the start of Advent, I hope we will continue to wrestle with these roller coaster teachings from Jesus, opening our hearts and minds to better love God and our neighbor.
AMEN
October 6, 2009
Wrestling with Scripture
Year B, Proper 22, RCL
October 4, 2009
Christ Church, New Bern, NC
Audio version available here.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight, oh God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Several years ago when this particular Gospel passage came up in the lectionary, or maybe its twin passage in Matthew, there was a couple sitting behind me in church who had recently gotten married. They were both divorced, and this was the second marriage for both of them. As the people responded at the end of the Gospel, “Praise to you Lord Christ,” Beth turned to Nicholas and said, “Oh boy. This should be a doozy of a sermon.”
I’m not sure how it affected their psyche or their soul that the person preaching was the same one who had married them only a couple of months before.
This morning’s Gospel lesson, at least the part about Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce, as well as our lesson from Job, makes a lot of people squirm in their pews. I’ll admit: I’m one of them. But if we are really paying attention to what the Bible is saying and the stories it is telling, and in particular what the Gospels are saying to us, we should be squirming a lot more. The Scriptures are full of tough, tough passages, passages about the wholesale slaughter of human beings at the hands of God’s people, tales of neglect, tales of deceit, and stories of some of the worst sides of humanity. And then we get into the Gospels where Jesus is calling us not only to shape up, but to show us a better way. When our eyes are not turned towards God and towards building up the Kingdom of God, it is easy for us to display our bad side, both as individuals and as a society. The Bible is not and cannot be easy reading. I have a Bible that is thin and almost pocket sized. A seminary classmate commented that it was perfect because it was lightweight and easy to carry. Our ethics professor was standing there and said to my classmate, “If you think anything about the Bible is easy to carry, then you might just be going into the wrong field.” Of course they were talking about “easy to carry” in two different contexts, but what Dr. Wheeler said was exactly true. As is what Will Williamon, noted author and former dean of the Duke University Chapel, once said. “No one can preach the Gospel until they have been smacked around by the passage the hope to preach.” And if we are living out Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations, then each of us should have been smacked around by the Gospel at least once or twice.
I did a very unscientific poll on Friday and Saturday. On Facebook (that ubiquitous social networking website), I asked, “What passage of scripture do you struggle with the most and why?” Not surprisingly (since most of my Facebook friends are through the church), I got a lot of answers.
One person told me the whole Noah story makes her uncomfortable. What made Noah’s family more worthy than any other family on the earth, and where, she asked, is the grace of God for the rest of creation.
Several of my female friends said the whole “women be submissive to your husbands” thing bothered them. Someone else quoted the prophet Malachi that says God loved Jacob and hated Essau (Isaac & Rebehak’s twin sons from Genesis 25).
Several people commented that some of the laws of the Old Testament are more than they can understand, especially in light of how many of them require the death of the person who violates that law.
A couple of people didn’t cite specific passages, but noted that any use of scripture that used to oppress or demean others was bothersome to them.
One passage I’ve wrestled with is the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham and Sarah had waited so long for a child, and finally this is the son that God had promised them. What kind of God would then say, “Take him up on that mountain and sacrifice him to me.”?
So what do we do with these tough passages? How do we look at Leviticus 19:19 which says do not wear clothing woven from two kinds of materials? I bet most of us aren’t wearing 100% cotton from top to bottom today.
What do we do with the story of the Prodigal Son, where the son who wanders and returns is celebrated, but the son who never strayed doesn’t get a party?
What do we do with St. Paul’s directive for slaves to obey their masters when the church stood up long ago and said that one human owning another human is deplorable?
What do we do with today’s Gospel lesson about marriage and divorce when nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce? There is no evidence that suggests Christians are immune from that statistic.
Much like the face value of the words on the pages of the Bible, the answer is both simple and difficult.
We continue to wrestle. We continue to be smacked around, as Willimon says. We continue to wrestle with the text because we continue to be engaged in it. We recognize that people of deep faith have been wrestling with the Hebrew scriptures for nearly four thousand years. A friend of mine who is a Rabbi says that if you put four rabbis in a room with a passage of scripture, you’ll get at least 40 different view points on what that passage of scripture means.
It is not up to our generation to have the final resolution on what a passage of scripture means. It is up to us to continue to prayerfully discern as a faith community what the Scriptures are calling us to be and to do.
We are called to engage in a willingness to keep our hearts and minds open that God will lead us to truths we may not be ready to see or be in a place to see.
The discipline of personal scripture readings is invaluable, but the Word of God has always been intended to be read in the community of others as well. Our common search for insight into God’s will for our lives is made infinitely stronger when we engage in that search with others who are on a faith journey, too.
In a Newsweek magazine profile a few years ago, Billy Graham said that while he believes Scripture is the inspired, authoritative word of God, he does not read the Bible as though it were a collection of Associated Press bulletins. He tells a story about struggling with a piece of scripture and praying, “Lord, I don't understand all that is in this book, I can't explain it all, but I accept it by faith as your divine word.” Graham then concluded, quoting Saint Paul, that when it comes to scripture, “human beings on this side of paradise can grasp only so much. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, [but in eternity] we shall see face to face.”
Today’s scripture lessons are tough to hear. But that doesn’t mean they can be dismissed or written off. It means we are invited and called to continue wrestling with them, trusting that God will continue to inspire us if we continue to engage the Scriptures.
AMEN
October 4, 2009
Christ Church, New Bern, NC
Audio version available here.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight, oh God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Several years ago when this particular Gospel passage came up in the lectionary, or maybe its twin passage in Matthew, there was a couple sitting behind me in church who had recently gotten married. They were both divorced, and this was the second marriage for both of them. As the people responded at the end of the Gospel, “Praise to you Lord Christ,” Beth turned to Nicholas and said, “Oh boy. This should be a doozy of a sermon.”
I’m not sure how it affected their psyche or their soul that the person preaching was the same one who had married them only a couple of months before.
This morning’s Gospel lesson, at least the part about Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce, as well as our lesson from Job, makes a lot of people squirm in their pews. I’ll admit: I’m one of them. But if we are really paying attention to what the Bible is saying and the stories it is telling, and in particular what the Gospels are saying to us, we should be squirming a lot more. The Scriptures are full of tough, tough passages, passages about the wholesale slaughter of human beings at the hands of God’s people, tales of neglect, tales of deceit, and stories of some of the worst sides of humanity. And then we get into the Gospels where Jesus is calling us not only to shape up, but to show us a better way. When our eyes are not turned towards God and towards building up the Kingdom of God, it is easy for us to display our bad side, both as individuals and as a society. The Bible is not and cannot be easy reading. I have a Bible that is thin and almost pocket sized. A seminary classmate commented that it was perfect because it was lightweight and easy to carry. Our ethics professor was standing there and said to my classmate, “If you think anything about the Bible is easy to carry, then you might just be going into the wrong field.” Of course they were talking about “easy to carry” in two different contexts, but what Dr. Wheeler said was exactly true. As is what Will Williamon, noted author and former dean of the Duke University Chapel, once said. “No one can preach the Gospel until they have been smacked around by the passage the hope to preach.” And if we are living out Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations, then each of us should have been smacked around by the Gospel at least once or twice.
I did a very unscientific poll on Friday and Saturday. On Facebook (that ubiquitous social networking website), I asked, “What passage of scripture do you struggle with the most and why?” Not surprisingly (since most of my Facebook friends are through the church), I got a lot of answers.
One person told me the whole Noah story makes her uncomfortable. What made Noah’s family more worthy than any other family on the earth, and where, she asked, is the grace of God for the rest of creation.
Several of my female friends said the whole “women be submissive to your husbands” thing bothered them. Someone else quoted the prophet Malachi that says God loved Jacob and hated Essau (Isaac & Rebehak’s twin sons from Genesis 25).
Several people commented that some of the laws of the Old Testament are more than they can understand, especially in light of how many of them require the death of the person who violates that law.
A couple of people didn’t cite specific passages, but noted that any use of scripture that used to oppress or demean others was bothersome to them.
One passage I’ve wrestled with is the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham and Sarah had waited so long for a child, and finally this is the son that God had promised them. What kind of God would then say, “Take him up on that mountain and sacrifice him to me.”?
So what do we do with these tough passages? How do we look at Leviticus 19:19 which says do not wear clothing woven from two kinds of materials? I bet most of us aren’t wearing 100% cotton from top to bottom today.
What do we do with the story of the Prodigal Son, where the son who wanders and returns is celebrated, but the son who never strayed doesn’t get a party?
What do we do with St. Paul’s directive for slaves to obey their masters when the church stood up long ago and said that one human owning another human is deplorable?
What do we do with today’s Gospel lesson about marriage and divorce when nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce? There is no evidence that suggests Christians are immune from that statistic.
Much like the face value of the words on the pages of the Bible, the answer is both simple and difficult.
We continue to wrestle. We continue to be smacked around, as Willimon says. We continue to wrestle with the text because we continue to be engaged in it. We recognize that people of deep faith have been wrestling with the Hebrew scriptures for nearly four thousand years. A friend of mine who is a Rabbi says that if you put four rabbis in a room with a passage of scripture, you’ll get at least 40 different view points on what that passage of scripture means.
It is not up to our generation to have the final resolution on what a passage of scripture means. It is up to us to continue to prayerfully discern as a faith community what the Scriptures are calling us to be and to do.
We are called to engage in a willingness to keep our hearts and minds open that God will lead us to truths we may not be ready to see or be in a place to see.
The discipline of personal scripture readings is invaluable, but the Word of God has always been intended to be read in the community of others as well. Our common search for insight into God’s will for our lives is made infinitely stronger when we engage in that search with others who are on a faith journey, too.
In a Newsweek magazine profile a few years ago, Billy Graham said that while he believes Scripture is the inspired, authoritative word of God, he does not read the Bible as though it were a collection of Associated Press bulletins. He tells a story about struggling with a piece of scripture and praying, “Lord, I don't understand all that is in this book, I can't explain it all, but I accept it by faith as your divine word.” Graham then concluded, quoting Saint Paul, that when it comes to scripture, “human beings on this side of paradise can grasp only so much. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, [but in eternity] we shall see face to face.”
Today’s scripture lessons are tough to hear. But that doesn’t mean they can be dismissed or written off. It means we are invited and called to continue wrestling with them, trusting that God will continue to inspire us if we continue to engage the Scriptures.
AMEN
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