Whispers of Truth

Last year in a Growing Strong course, I was challenged to read through the Bible completely again, and today I finished. I read the whole differently than I have before, reading in much larger chunks to get a better sense of the connectedness of the Word before slowing down to digest it. In the OT, I plowed straight through from beginning to end, but in the NT, I meandered, and I finished not in Revelation as might be expected, but in the book that I am currently teaching, Luke.  I love that God’s Word is faithful and true just as He is. It all connects and intertwines, and the addition of the Holy Spirit working and His timing (not mine!) in the reading is critical to pull it all together. Today’s ending in Luke connects with tonight’s teaching of Luke which connects with where I began (and where I’ll start again tomorrow). God’s creation in Genesis was good, and in the beginning clothing was not necessary as there was no shame to be found in the dwelling together of man and ...

The strangeness of a year spent mostly away from people brings much reflection.  After many busy years of raising children and teaching high schoolers and rushing through life and rarely being alone or truly still for very long, I “retired” this year from teaching to be a better helpmate to my husband (although his verdict’s still out on that . . .). He gifted me with solitude, and as a result, I have had the precious gift of multiplied time in the word daily instead of rushed minutes before hurrying out the door for a day that wouldn’t wait. Then COVID-19 hit and revealed that what I had begun to think of as solitude was only the tip of the iceberg. Intentional time spent away from people and with God is good, but enforced isolation from the body wears, even for this introvert, and easily causes a disconnect.  I confess I have rarely left my house for months even before COVID-19 (having yet to use three tanks of gas in almost four months, and one of those was spent on a t...

As I review Luke 7 in preparation for Thursday night's Bible study group, I am trying to see the big picture. There are two deputations in this chapter--one from a Roman centurion and another from John the Baptist--and they are a study in contrasts, a Gentile with great faith and a Jew doubting what he knows to be true. There is a woman who's lost her only son and a woman who has lost her former way of living; in Jesus' compassion, the woman's son is restored to her alive and the woman who is a sinner is forgiven. There is also a contrast between the woman of ill repute who has saving faith and the Pharisee who has none.  All of the stories in this chapter that Luke relates also deal with position/posture:  Jesus' position, loaded with compassion and mercy, full of authority, brimming with life-giving power, able even to forgive sin; The centurion's position as a Gentile with authority who humbly asks Jesus to heal his lowly slave; The widow...