Category: Devotionals

Tie them to your hands and wear them on your foreheads as reminders.
-Deuteronomy 6:8

I have a loud mouth and I’m no good at filtering my words or hiding my feelings. I’m also a little obsessed with first principles and underlying motivations.

It’s a wild combination. I’m willing to say crazy shit as I experiment with possibilities.

Today I speculated that understanding Scripture might be a nearly impossible task. To speak too confidently about it is a mistake.

One example is where the Greek word “chlōros” is translated as “green” in other parts of Revelation, yet is translated as “ashen” or omitted entirely from Rev 6:8.

I don’t know what to make of that.

I also learned tonight that Daniel is written in two different languages. Hebrew for the first chapter and some of the second, then Aramaic for the rest. If the book has one author, presumably Daniel, why the sudden change? I haven’t dug into this at all, but these preculiarities are fodder for my overthinking brain.

None of this actually shakes my faith. I’m cool with God being a mystery. The concepts approaching God, such as omniscience, eternity, and perfection, seem impossible to comprehend. Why would I expect to grasp the confluence of every impossible idea?

We can’t fully understand ourselves or other humans, yet we have relationships with ourselves and others. We transcend the distance of comprehension with compassion and love. I experience my relationship with God through opening myself to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don’t need to define each experience, but I do think of them in different ways. When I pray, I lean on the image of Jesus and communicate in a human way. When I look wide-eyed into the world to look for signposts, I think of the Father plotting out the road before me. The Holy Spirit is a force inside me, my conscience, instincts, and inspirations.

In today’s parlance, “It’s complicated.” Love simplifies everything, but I enjoy the maddening kaleidoscope that is the world of ideas. And I’m not going to be shy about it.

Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.
-Deuteronomy 6:7 NLT

Sometimes I share these devotionals with my sons. Sometimes one of us is unkind and gets a lecture about Jesus. Sometimes someone asks if little babies go to Heaven when they die.

We don’t have a consistent practice of discussing God, but it often comes up. I try to return to Scripture and how the Holy Spirit has worked in my life when I am discussing anything significant. Or maybe it’ll be as simple as a “God willing,” when I’m asked if I’ll be at a game or event.

This verse is a reminder that I can share my faith with my loved ones more often.

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You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.
-Deuteronomy 6:6 NLT

And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land which the LORD swore to give to your fathers.
-Deuteronomy 6:18 RSV

And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as at this day.
-Deuteronomy 6:24 RSV

This chapter of Deuteronomy seems to be all about God’s commandments as they are meant to keep his believers alive.

I struggle with this in relationship to Jesus’s fulfillment of the Law and His declaration that loving one’s neighbor as oneself and as God are the most important commandments.

Does this mean that once our physical bodies are not under constant threat, then the long list of commands in Deuteronomy become stumbling blocks in the way of love? Does it mean that even under starvation and physical peril we must love above all?

Didn’t Jesus say the Law was only meant to show us that we are incapable of following the rules? That we must love as much as we can?

I didn’t attend Sunday service today. I played soccer. Can I love God and myself and my teammates and my opponents outside of worship? Is worship to live in love and be open to my teammates, friends, family, and neighbors about my faith in Jesus Christ? Is that enough? More than enough?

I ask these questions and assume I could be doing things wrong. I pray for the openness and wisdom to receive the answers and take them to heart.

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
-Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV

When you pour your love into the Highest, you are transformed. When embracing my love for God, I embrace those around me and find deeper ways to act as a messenger of God’s love.

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Hear O Isreal: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
-Deuteronomy 6:4 NIV

And I will doubly recompense their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.” O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nought but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are no gods!” “Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the LORD.”
-Jeremiah 16:18-21 RSV

I hear this in Samuel Jackson’s voice:

“…they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations…and they shall know that my name is the LORD.”

It’s the night before Christ rose from the dead. On this night, Mary and his loved ones thought they would never listen to his voice again. I imagine they went to sleep heavy with exhaustion from watching him die on the cross and burying him the day before. Not a contented sleep, but the weighted kind that feels like its own death. The next day their bodies and spirits will feel reborn along with the risen Christ, but they don’t know that tonight. Tonight is only darkness.

Tomorrow the Lord will be heard.

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“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
-Revelation 21:4-5 RSV

Holding onto a vision of the joyous end, we can lighten our pain and create a more heavenly world.

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Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.
-1 John 2:15 RSV

Everything in this world decays and disappears. God’s realm is eternal. When your love is focused on the eternal, you can care for the things of the world without attachment to death and decay.

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Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you.
Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.
Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.
Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.
-1 Peter 5:6-10 RSV

I am praying to cast all my anxieties on the Lord. His grace is a gift of peace.

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Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.
-1 Peter 4:9

Each week we host homeschooling families at our home. The “meals” look more like snacks, but we use this time to share our concerns, anxieties, successes, questions, and advice.

My late wife taught me everything I know about hospitality. She was a queen at hosting friends and family. I have a different style, but I think about how happy she would be to see us inviting people into our home.

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