Zechariah 4:1-14
6—‘Not by force, and not by power, but by my Spirit,’ says Adonai-Tzva’ot.
Ephesians 4:17-32
17—do not live any longer as the pagans live, with their sterile ways of thinking.
22—you must strip off your old nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires23 and you must let your spirits and minds keep being renewed, —
30 Don’t cause grief to God’s Ruach HaKodesh, for he has stamped you as his property until the day of final redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, violent assertiveness and slander, along with all spitefulness.
Matthew 9:1-8
2—When Yeshua saw their trust, he said to the paralyzed man, “Courage, son! Your sins are forgiven.”




—“by my Spirit”
—Names of God
—sterile ways of thinking
—deceptive desires
—let your spirits and minds keep being renewed
—saw their trust


There is a sort of numinous pattern that connects one understanding to another in my reflections, but I’m having a hard time articulating it today. The linear progres…

1 Samuel 16:1-13
“How much longer are you going to go on grieving for Sha’ul, now that I have rejected him as king over Isra’el?”
I took some time to look up something from another piece I wrote about the story of Samuel and Saul: “the really bad thing that Saul did was to profit from the destruction of the Amalekites, by sparing the life of their king (not out of mercy, but out of expediency), and taking all their valuable goods. In doing so, Saul was revealing that he valued the lives of people less than the profit he could make, or the political advantage he might gain.” (The blog post is called “Until the Day of His Death” posted on 7-12-2017.) 
This story relates itself to my situation. Like Israel, we were faced with an absolute— something needed to be dissolved utterly— dismantled; ended. The circumstances called for dispassionate fairness and the administration of a quick and merciful death. That did not happen. Like King Agag of the Amalekites, I found myself facing a King Saul …

Numbers 11:16-17,24-29 (incl. 18-23)
All right, Adonai is going to give you meat, and you will eat it. 19 You won’t eat it just one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, 20 but a whole month! — until it comes out of your nose and you hate it!
You know, I always seem to find the best parts in the redacted verses. Here’s God manifesting through Moses’ exasperation. Moses reminds me of Paul. Or should it be, “Paul reminds me of Moses”?
Ephesians 2:11-22
14 For he himself is our shalom — he has made us both one and has broken down the m’chitzah* which divided us 15 by destroying in his own body the enmity occasioned by the Torah, with its commands set forth in the form of ordinances.
(*a curtain or screen dividing the congregation in a synagogue; usually between men and women)
Alert! Alert! Radical Idea! —
Here’s a paraphrase to help us unhook from habitual and complacent ways of reading Scripture: ‘abolishing in his own body the antagonism caused by the Torah’s rigid regulations.’…

Just last night I heard a song by a band called The Fray:
Be Still
The Fray
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still and know that I am here
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still, be still, and know
When darkness comes upon you
And colors you with fear and shame
Be still and know that I'm with you
And I will say your name
If terror falls upon your bed
And sleep no longer comes
Remember all the words I said
Be still, be still, and know
And when you go through the valley
And the shadow comes down from the hill
If morning never comes to be
Be still, be still, be still
If you forget the way to go
And lose where you came from
If no one is standing beside you
Be still and know I am
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still and know I am
(Songwriters: ISAAC SLADE, JOSEPH KING, DAVID WELSH, BEN WYSOCKI)


I have to confess, I’m tired. Pitilessly tired.
My words have lost all their grace and liveliness, and now sit neglected in wheelchairs in the corners of my mind; wheels lo…

Psalm 56
Set to “The Silent Dove in the Distance”.
9 (8) You have kept count of my wanderings;
store my tears in your water-skin —
aren’t they already recorded in your book?
Distracted by the superscription— musing over what a tune called “The Silent Dove in the Distance” might sound like.


Leviticus 16:1-19
8 Then Aharon is to cast lots for the two goats, one lot for Adonai and the other for ‘Az’azel. 9 Aharon is to present the goat whose lot fell to Adonai and offer it as a sin offering. 10 But the goat whose lot fell to ‘Az’azel is to be presented alive to Adonai to be used for making atonement over it by sending it away into the desert for ‘Az’azel.
Why two goats— one that lets us kill our sins, and one that lets us send our sins away into the wilderness? I don’t think there are two kinds of sins, though. I think that there are two methods of sinning or two means by which we sin: one in which our most apt response to sin would be that of sacrifice; of surrender; of severing, and one in w…

Psalm 50
14 Offer thanksgiving as your sacrifice to God,
pay your vows to the Most High,
15 and call on me when you are in trouble;
I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”


Exodus 34: 1- 17
15 Do not make a covenant with the people living in the land. It will cause you to go astray after their gods and sacrifice to their gods. Then they will invite you to join them in eating their sacrifices,


1 Thessalonians 2: 13- 20
13……. when you heard the Word of God from us, you received it not merely as a human word, but as it truly is, God’s Word, which is at work in you believers.


Matthew 5:21- 26
23 So if you are offering your gift at the Temple altar and you remember there that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift where it is by the altar, and go, make peace with your brother. Then come back and offer your gift. 25 If someone sues you, come to terms with him quickly, while you and he are on the way to court; or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer …