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Marks of Identity and Destiny

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 28  Read: Jonah 2 Listen: (1:20) Read: Psalm 77 Listen: (2:12)

Scripture Focus: Psalm 77.7-12

7 “Will the Lord reject forever? 

Will he never show his favor again? 

8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever? 

Has his promise failed for all time? 

9 Has God forgotten to be merciful? 

Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” 

10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: 

the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. 

11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord; 

yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. 

12 I will consider all your works 

and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”


Photo Note: Today’s image is of a Baptist church in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia struck by a Russian KAB-1500L laser-guided precision bomb during a prayer meeting this month, killing at least one person, a minister, and injuring at least eight others. (The Christian Post)

Reflection: Marks of Identity and Destiny

By John Tillman

Federico Villanueva’s commentary on Psalm 77 begins with a story.

“In the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda…newspapers printed a photo of a woman standing in front of the ruins of a chapel after the typhoon devastated the city of Tacloban. Alone and soaked in the rain, the woman’s face is turned towards the place where the altar had stood. This image captures the persistent faith of Psalm 77.” (Asia Bible Commentary Series)

Something horrible happened to the psalmist. In context with the surrounding psalms, the event the psalmist mourned seems to be the destruction of the temple. Why else would the poet fear that God’s promise failed? Why else would the poet wonder if God’s unfailing love vanished?

Have you experienced something that inspired similar doubts? Have you stood, like the Filipino believer and the psalmist, witnessing a wrecked place of worship? Maybe one wrecked by something other than a physical storm? Have you lamented wreckages, damages, abuses, or failures that challenged your picture of God?

Defining moments leave marks of identity. Holocaust survivors have physical tattoos from Nazi camps, but also carry tattoos on their souls and psyches. Other traumatic events such as mass shootings, sexual abuse, unjust incarceration, violent crimes, or acts of war or terrorism can leave similar marks. These marks don’t ruin you unless you let them, but they also can’t be ignored or swept away.

Without experiencing such things, you might struggle understanding those who have. You might cringe at the honesty of someone saying, “It is all the same…He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.” (Job 9.22) You might want to plead, “You shouldn’t say that!” But God welcomes brutal honesty.

The psalmist was irrevocably marked by the temple’s fall, however, a greater event left a greater mark. The psalmist reflected on God’s saving work in the Exodus. This defined God’s and Israel’s identities. This reflection didn’t erase suffering or doubt but provided reassurance of God’s holiness and love which sustained the souls marked by tragedy.

For Christians, the cross and resurrection are our Exodus story. In moments of loss, confusion, doubt, and pain, reflecting on the cross sustains us. The cross is the event upon which Jesus stakes his identity and in which we find ours.

No matter what has marked you, it doesn’t have the final word on your identity or destiny. The cross settles both our identity and destiny as united to Christ.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice and Israel be glad. — Psalm 14.7b

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Who Tells Your Story?

We can afford to be unsympathetically honest about our sins because Jesus is the anti-Jonah

Who Tells Your Story?
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Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 27  Read: Jonah 1 Listen: (2:29) Read: Psalms 75-76 Listen: (2:33)

Scripture Focus: Psalm 74.1, 7-9

1 O God, why have you rejected us forever? 

Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? 

7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground; 

they defiled the dwelling place of your Name. 

8 They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!” 

They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land. 

9 We are given no signs from God; 

no prophets are left, 

and none of us knows how long this will be. 

Psalm 75

1 We praise you, God, 

we praise you, for your Name is near; 

people tell of your wonderful deeds. 

2 You say, “I choose the appointed time; 

it is I who judge with equity. 

3 When the earth and all its people quake, 

it is I who hold its pillars firm. 

4 To the arrogant I say, ‘Boast no more,’ 

and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns.  

5 Do not lift your horns against heaven; 

do not speak so defiantly.’ ” 

6 No one from the east or the west 

or from the desert can exalt themselves. 

7 It is God who judges: 

He brings one down, he exalts another. 

8 In the hand of the Lord is a cup 

full of foaming wine mixed with spices; 

he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth 

drink it down to its very dregs. 

9 As for me, I will declare this forever; 

I will sing praise to the God of Jacob, 

10 who says, “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked, 

but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up.”

Reflection: Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

By John Tillman

David wrote a trilogy of psalms using the tune “Do Not Destroy.” Psalm 75, written long after David, uses the same tune. Perhaps that is because this psalm responded to something precious being destroyed and something more precious surviving destruction.

Psalm 74 and 75 seem to be a pair. Psalm 74 laments. Psalm 75 comforts. Psalm 74 mourns the destruction of the temple, the place of God’s name. Psalm 75 discovers that God’s name is still near.

Why was the place of God’s name destroyed? One reason was misrepresenting the name of God.

The name of God, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3.14), is connected to the attributes of God: compassion, grace, being slow to anger, abounding in love and truth (Exodus 34.6). People, places, and communities can misuse God’s name (Exodus 20.7) by acting in ways that clash with God’s attributes.

When we slander compassion, withhold grace, rush to anger, refuse love, and reject truth, while claiming to represent God, we abuse God’s name and misrepresent God’s character. We are arrogantly exalting our horn (Psalm 75.4-5), our power, our judgment, our deeds. We are defying God’s kingdom from coming on earth as in Heaven. We are asserting our will and calling it by God’s name. (Matthew 6.10)

Because God is slow to anger, this may succeed for a time. It might look like blessing, but in truth God is allowing the arrogant to drink to the dregs a cup of judgment. (Psalm 75.8)

Will we be people to whom God’s name will remain near, even in times of judgment, destruction, and strife?

We may experience precious things that represented God’s name and presence to us being destroyed when God finds corruption in them. Our fruitless fig trees are cursed (Matthew 21.19-20). Our temple’s corrupt tables are flipped (Matthew 21.12). Our shepherds are exposed as ravening wolves (Eze 22.27; Matt 7.15; Acts 20.29).

Do not confuse the loss of places or people who represented God’s name with the loss of God’s presence. The place of God’s name, the temple, was destroyed. Yet, God’s name remained near those of the people who praised God and told of his deeds.

Nothing can, by its destruction, remove God’s name, his presence, from his faithful ones. Empires, cities, churches, and leaders can fall or be lost but Jesus will not lose one of those who trust in him. Represent God’s name as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, loving, and truthful. He will be with us to the end of the age.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus said to us: “…Everything now covered up will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.” — Matthew 10.26-27

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Do Not Destroy?

Leaders go morally bankrupt in the same way Hemingway described financial bankruptcy—gradually, then suddenly.

Do Not Destroy?
Read more: Responding in Kind

There’s an old saying that we don’t have to attend every fight we are invited to. God doesn’t need our defense but he does desire our devotion.

Responding in Kind
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Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 24  Read: Amos 8 Listen: (2:16) Read: Matthew 28 Listen: (2:39)

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Apr 25  Read: Amos 9 Listen: (3:08) Read: Psalm 73 Listen: (2:56)
Apr 26  Read: Obadiah 1 Listen: (3:28) Read: Psalm 74 Listen: (2:34)

Scripture Focus: Amos 8.11-14

11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, 

“when I will send a famine through the land— 

not a famine of food or a thirst for water, 

but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. 

12 People will stagger from sea to sea 

and wander from north to east, 

searching for the word of the Lord, 

but they will not find it. 

13 “In that day 

“the lovely young women and strong young men 

will faint because of thirst. 

14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria— 

who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’ 

or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’— 

they will fall, never to rise again.”

Reflection: Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

By John Tillman

Weather, war, economics, and ecological disasters cause famines. The worst famines have multiple causes.

The Irish Potato Famine began with a fungal blight on potatoes in 1845. It was worsened by tariffs and economic policies of the British government that caused every other kind of food produced in Ireland to be exported to England while millions of Irish people starved to death.

In 1932, the Holodomor, which means “death by hunger,” in Ukraine began with mismanagement. Russia intentionally weaponized and worsened the shortages to crush Ukrainian identity and break resistance to Soviet control. Millions died.

In 1941 Axis powers began an 872 day blockade of Leningrad to cause starvation, desperation, and surrender. An estimated 1.5 million people died—nearly half the city’s population.

Famine victims eat strange or disgusting things. Non-food animals, like dogs, cats, rats, mice, and insects are first. Famine victims also boil and eat leather from shoes, handbags, or saddles to get scraps of protein and items of cotton or linen to fill stomachs. They stretch flour by mixing it with dirt, sawdust, clay, or ground bones. They eat animal-based glues, such as bookbinding or hide glue and scrape the paste off of old wallpaper because it contains potato starches. Cannibalism also occurs, both in some modern examples and biblical ones.

God promised a strange famine to Israel. He took his word from them precisely because they wouldn’t listen to it. He removed food they were already refusing to eat.

Imagine a city with free, delicious bread on every corner. Yet, people scrounge for flour, mix it with dirt and sawdust and eat horrific loaves of famine-bread instead. That’s a picture of Amos’s Samaria and our world today.

We have greater access to God’s word, the Bible, today than ever before. It is like the bread of life is on every corner, yet we ignore it. We need God’s word so badly that ignoring it long enough leads to gorging on disgusting substitutes. We fill our sickened bellies with anything to hide pangs of hunger for God.

Leaders read fake Bible verses (or misapply real ones) on national media. We mix a little Bible with a little politics, a little self-help psychology, and a popular film, and make famine-bread wisdom to eat. And we wonder why our stomachs ache.

Stop eating famine-bread. Devote yourself to the bread of life in God’s uncut and unadulterated word, the Bible.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Search for the Lord and his strength; continually seek his face. — Psalm 105.4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: God of the Weak and Doubtful

Thank God, that he is the God of the weak and the doubtful.
In doubt hold out your hands.
In weakness cling to him.

God of the Weak and Doubtful
Read more: Better Things to be Doing

In moments of worship, whether private or corporate, may we remember there is nothing more profitable that we could be doing than worshiping God.

Better Things to be Doing
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The Flavors of Betrayal

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 23  Read: Amos 7 Listen: (2:45) Read: Matthew 27 Listen: (8:45)

Scripture Focus: Matthew 27.3, 5

3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders… 5 Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Reflection: The Flavors of Betrayal

By John Tillman

The final week of Jesus’ life included many kinds of betrayal.

Judas most directly betrayed Jesus, but Peter was the one who most strenuously promised Jesus to go to death with him. It is Peter’s outsized boasts of loyalty that make his betrayal of these oaths sting so badly. The other disciples cosigned Peter’s oaths, assuring that they too would die with Jesus. But in the garden, all their promises turn to dust and tears.

Each of the disciples made the same wrong assumption as Peter and Judas. They assumed there would be a fight. Judas seems to have assumed Jesus would put up a legal fight and perhaps assumed he would perform the miracles needed to win over the religious leaders. Peter and the other disciples assumed that Jesus would put up a physical fight, first with the Temple Guards and then with the oppressive Roman Empire.

All the disciples came to the same conclusion. Fight and die? Acceptable. Submit to arrest and torture? Unacceptable. They were willing to kill for Jesus, gaining glory through either victory or noble defeat, but were unwilling to give their lives voluntarily in sacrificial humility. 

Most ran away. Scared. Hiding. They were not to be heard from again until the resurrection. Notably, the only disciples who don’t flee and are found at the cross are the female disciples and John. Judas commits suicide after the legal case is lost, and Peter flees into the night after his humiliation in the courtyard of the high priest.

Where do we find ourselves in the garden? What form does our betrayal and abandonment of Jesus take?

Are we willing to “win” with Christ but unwilling to “lose” with him?

Are we willing to die for Christ in glorious sacrifice but unwilling to live as Christ in humiliating suffering?

Do we fantasize about “defending the faith” in extreme circumstances (like facing down an active shooter or facing martyrdom) but ignore opportunities to serve the needs of others in the humble circumstances around us?

May we not seek glory or victory. That is the path of the betrayer. May we instead seek humility and suffering in the service of others. That is the path of the Cross.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him. — Psalm 62.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Tortured Prophets Department

Why do we torture the poets, prophets, preachers, and protestors? We don’t have to be Taylor fans, but can we please avoid becoming Amaziah?

Tortured Prophets Department — Readers’ Choice
Read more: The Tomb of the Unknown Savior

Jesus in the grave is the unknown savior. What happens next will change the world forever.

The Tomb of the Unknown Savior—Readers’ Choice
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Let Them Eat Cake

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 22  Read: Amos 6 Listen: (2:13) Read: Matthew 26 Listen: (10:01)

Scripture Focus: Amos 6:1, 4

1 Woe to you who are complacent in Zion,
    and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
you notable men of the foremost nation,
    to whom the people of Israel come!

4 You lie on beds adorned with ivory
    and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs
    and fattened calves.

Reflection: Let Them Eat Cake

By Erin Newton

“Better a low motive than no motive,” my mother used to say. The statement was always somewhat of a joke, noting how action was at least better than inaction. As far as a Christian ethic is concerned, I don’t think it’s really the mindset we are supposed to adopt. But what about inaction? If action is better than inaction, is inaction better than… wrong action? Or are they both just as bad?

Amos declares to Israel’s elite that they are complacent. Complacency is defined as: “marked by satisfaction with the status quo especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.” Satisfied with the status quo alongside obliviousness toward danger. Synonyms are “self-satisfied” or “unconcerned” or “apathetic.” Amos could have just said, Woe to you who are satisfied with how things are and are oblivious to the dangers in Israel.

Do they approve of the dangers in Israel? It doesn’t necessarily say that they are participating in the danger or that they are financing or supporting the evil around them. They simply do not care enough to react.

The “notable men of the foremost nation” implies that these were the elite, the powerful, the important leaders of the community. What are they doing? They are lounging. They are lying around in their fancy furnishings. They are eating their expensive foods. They are comfortable. They lack nothing. But most importantly to God, they lack empathy.

Sometimes we view overt sinful actions as the worst thing we can do. That mindset leads us to avoid evil (which is a good thing) but can lead us to avoid doing anything. Amos reminds us that there is something just as bad as doing evil, it is to care so little that we do nothing.

Why don’t the notable people of Israel do or say something? I assume they fear losing the luxuries they have. Like Marie Antoinette, when faced with the starving multitudes who beg for a crumb of bread, the elite shrug and reply, “Let them eat cake.”

Maybe the fear is not just losing one’s own comforts but not knowing where provisions will come from. In contrast to this apathetic mindset, Jesus faced a multitude of hungry people and told his disciples, “Feed them.”

Complacency is abhorred by God just as much as sinful actions. Let us open our eyes and loosen our grips to see the dangers in our community and then do something.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus said to the disciples: “In truth I tell you, when everything is made new again and the Son of man is seated on his throne of glory, you yourselves will sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times as much, and also inherit eternal life. Many who are first will be last, and the last, first.” — Matthew 19.28-30

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Of Pride and The Sword

Jesus pointedly referenced the theme of the sword in scripture…a warning to Peter and…a condemnation of religious leaders and the empire with which they were partnering.

Of Pride and The Sword
Read more: Victims and Victimizers

Let us be humble and repentant. Otherwise, God may become terrifying to us and bring comfort, peace, and justice to our victims.

Victims and Victimizers