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All That I Never Had

Psalm 69
Am I expected to return
things I didn’t steal?
Ecclesiastes 11: 9-12:14
12 So remember your creator while you are young,
before the evil days come,……..
4b when a person is startled by the chirp of a bird,
yet their singing is hard to hear;
5 when they will be afraid to go up a hill,
and terrors will stalk the way,…….
before the silver cord is snapped
the bowl of gold is cracked,
the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
the pulley is broken at the cistern,
7 the dust returns to earth, as it was,
and the spirit returns to God, who gave it!
Galatians 5:25-6:10
2 Bear one another’s burdens — in this way you will be fulfilling the Torah’s true meaning, which the Messiah upholds. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something when he is really nothing, he is fooling himself. 4 So let each of you scrutinize his own actions.
Matthew 16: 21-28
24 Then Yeshua told his talmidim, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake, and keep following me. 25 For whoever wants …
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Recent posts

No Rush

Psalm 71
In you, Adonai, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.

Ecclesiastes 11: 1-8
(NRSV)
5 Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother's womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.

(CJB)
5 Just as you don’t know the way of the wind
or how bones grow in a pregnant woman’s womb,
so you don’t know the work of God,
the maker of everything.

(Paraphrase from Hebrew Interlinear)
5 Since you are not knowing what is the way of the wind-as-bones in the belly of the full (pregnant),
so it is you are not knowing the act of the Elohim who is making the All.

Galatians 5: 16-24
16 What I am saying is this: run your lives by the Spirit. Then you will not do what your old nature wants. 17 For the old nature wants what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is contrary to the old nature. These oppose each other, so that you find yourselves unable to carry out your good intentions. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, t…
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As It Is

Ecclesiastes 9: 11-18
16 So, although I say that wisdom is better than strength, nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised; nobody pays attention to what he says.
17 A wise man speaking quietly is more worth heeding
than the shouts of a ruler commanding fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but a person who makes a mistake can destroy much good.
Galatians 5: 1-15
4 You who are trying to be declared righteous by God through legalism have severed yourselves from the Messiah! You have fallen away from God’s grace! 5 For it is by the power of the Spirit, who works in us because we trust and are faithful, that we confidently expect our hope of attaining righteousness to be fulfilled. 6 When we are united with the Messiah Yeshua, neither being circumcised nor being uncircumcised matters; what matters is trusting faithfulness expressing itself through love.
Matthew 16: 1-12
4 A wicked and adulterous generation is asking for a sign? It will certainly not be given a sign — except the …
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Taken In Hand

Matthew 13:31-35
Speaking in Parables
‘Parabolē’: a comparison; a simile; a pattern; an emblem; a precept.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a man takes (‘lambanō’—takes in the hand) and sows in his field.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took (also ‘lambanō’) and mixed with a bushel of flour, then waited until the whole batch of dough rose.”


Two things struck me in the Gospel reading for today. The first was the word “parable.” We don’t really use that word nowadays to mean “a simile,” but we do use it in a mathematical sense to describe a curve with certain properties, and we also use it as an adverb (parabolic, parabolically) to mean speaking in a roundabout way, or to describe a story with more than one meaning.
Then there is the verb that’s hidden in the familiar parables about the mustard seed and the yeast in the bushel of flour— “lambanō, “to take in the hand.” I couldn’t help being reminded of the phrase, “to take in hand,” meaning to mentor a pe…
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Vivid Ash

Canyon de Chelly was my mother’s favorite place. I don’t know why I’m thinking of her this morning, except that an enormous change has reached its culmination in my life recently. My mother’s name was Doris Ann and she was born in 1926 and died in 2003— 15 years ago. She was the most remarkable person I’ve ever known, and the wisest. I was looking for inspiration for my blog post because the Lectionary readings turned out to be pretty inert for me today. The only thing that struck me in the readings were these verses from Proverbs about Wisdom. I realized that they reminded me of my mother.


30 “I was with him as someone he could trust. For me, every day was pure delight,
as I played in his presence all the time, 31 playing everywhere on his earth,
and delighting to be with humankind.”


Anyway, I went looking for other sources of inspiration, and ended up reflecting on endings. My sister and I were with Mom when she died, and even at the time I felt it as a great grace and blessing. Now, al…
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This Whole Mess

1 John 5:1-12
5 Everyone who believes that Yeshua is the Messiah has God as his father, and everyone who loves a father loves his offspring too. 2 Here is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God, we also do what he commands. 3 For loving God means obeying his commands. Moreover, his commands are not burdensome,4 because everything which has God as its Father overcomes the world. And this is what victoriously overcomes the world: our trust. 5 Who does overcome the world if not the person who believes that Yeshua is the Son of God?


World — κόσμος (kosmos)
Strong: G2889 GK: G3180
“(1) pr. order, regular disposition; ornament, decoration, embellishment, 1 Pet. 3:3; (2) the world, the material universe, Mt. 13:35; the world, the aggregate of sensitive existence, 1 Cor. 4:9; the lower world, the earth, Mk. 16:15; the world, the aggregate of mankind, Mt. 5:14; the world, the public, Jn. 7:4; in NT the present order of things, the secular world, Jn. 18:36; the human race externa…
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Shaken By The Wind

Proverbs 4:1-27
7 The beginning of wisdom is: get wisdom!
And along with all your getting, get insight! (CJB)
At first, I thought it was a typo, and then I realized it was pretty darn Zen: “…along with all your ‘getting’, get insight!” It made me think of phrases like, “What do I get out of it?” and “Don’t you get it?” and “What you give is what you get.”
The beginning of wisdom is the intention to get wisdom. Alrighty then!


1 John 4:7-21
18 There is no fear in love. On the contrary, love that has achieved its goal gets rid of fear, because fear has to do with punishment; the person who keeps fearing has not been brought to maturity in regard to love. (CJB)
The person who keeps on fearing……. Hoo, boy, do I know somebody like that! The thing is, when you go to practice loving-kindness toward such a person, it’s as if they are oblivious. There’s no space for anything but fear. In cases like that, the love circles aimlessly, like a bee around a silk flower. Nothing to be done.


Matthew 11:7-15
7…
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