And it Came to Pass

 

I love words and phrases that plainly--or covertly--express meanings we usually overlook. I mean, the word "discover" means "take the cover off of," right? I like noticing that the word "because" contains the word "cause"; compactly conveying the meaning "the cause is that..." When the Bible says "it came to pass," do we see what's really being said there? The idiom means "it happened." But what the words are really saying is that it came...and then it went. The event arrived in our present, only to pass into history. 

Nothing in our world is permanent, another saying goes, except God's word and people. Even the heavens and earth that are now will pass away, and a new heaven and earth will replace them (Revelation 21). (This is how we know the earth isn't going to die because of pollution or climate change; this planet isn't going anywhere by any means other than these words of Scripture "coming to pass.") The phrase, then, speaks more truth than we realize. Everything about this world system and the material things we value has or will "come to pass." It comes. It goes. Almost as if it comes for the purpose of passing. 

"And it came to pass" is saying to us that the only permanence rests in God's kingdom. The new heaven and earth, the life, the rewards, each other, and God Himself in Three Persons. All of that, when we are in Jesus Christ, comes to stay. 

Questions About Questions (Questions #4)

 

Did you ever have so many questions that your questions had questions? That may be a bit of an exaggeration for me; long ago, as a high-achieving child, I thought the smart people weren't the ones with the questions but the ones with the answers. (In a similar vein, I had a like-minded friend who wouldn't use pencils that had erasers, because erasers were only for people who might make mistakes. O Lord, have mercy. Seriously.) But compared to spouting answers, isn't knowing what questions to ask perhaps the greater skill? 

I've found that sometimes questions are just lovely in themselves. It occurs to me that some are to be pondered, some enjoyed, some even perhaps forgotten, and others pursued to answers. But not necessarily rushed to answers. How wonderful, even luxurious, is time given to think, research, pray, and "wisdom" them through, those that call to us. For example:

• Lord, what questions do You want me to ask You today?

That's kind of what I mean about questions having questions. We often hear of the importance of asking the right questions. This concept of "right questions" may be puzzling at first. What's wrong with any question we may have? Often, nothing. The encouragement that "no question is a stupid question" is valid, especially when learning something new. Yet in many circumstances, asking the right questions during a discussion or exploration can lead us to the point, instead of beside the point. It can make the difference between solving and not solving a problem. It can even reveal motive and character. Our spontaneous or formulated questions can tell on us, and reflect either well or poorly.

The Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus a lot of questions that were meant to trap Him. "Should we pay taxes to Caesar?" "Which commandment is the greatest?" "If a woman's husbands keep dying so that she ends up marrying an entire family of brothers, how is that going to work if there's a resurrection of the dead?" When the Scripture says in Matthew 22:43 that no one dared ask Him any more questions, it means they stopped asking Him questions designed to trip Him up, because the answers Jesus gave only exposed their scheming and made them look ignorant. 

We can still ask our real questions.

Even so, some questions might be frivolous, or ones He's already answered (He might be silent on those), or might lead us away from what God would really like to say. So let's go back to the question above:

Lord, what questions do You want me to ask You today?

I've been asking it. I haven't heard a lot yet. But the realization that it could add a wonderful dimension to prayer time has quickened my spirit.

Lord, what questions do You want me to ask You today? 

Without a Vision

 

"Without a vision, the people perish" is one of those partial Scripture verses people quote from time to time. I don't remember when I first heard it, but it was long ago, and my first understanding of it was very modern-day American: If you don't have an inspiring plan for your future, your life will turn out numb and meaningless. 

Well, plans are good. Stepping out to pursue something you believe God is leading you toward is even better. But what's wrong with my initial interpretation is that it's so me-centered, which is to say, individualistic. Let's look at several translations of the verse in Proverbs 29:18, because the wording varies in interesting ways.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he" (KJV).

"Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law" (NKJV).

"When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful" (NLT).

"Where there is no vision [no revelation of God and His word], the people are unrestrained; but happy and blessed is he who keeps the law [of God]" (AMP 2015).

Notice the difference between "perish" and "cast off restraint" or "are not restrained"--these would seem not to be that close in meaning. My study suggests that "perish" is the less accurate of the two renderings; this verse is not, for example, meant as a call to evangelism. Taking several translations side by side reveals that "vision" isn't referring here to an individual's specific dream for their own life, but a revelation to an entire people of what God requires. The focus is society, or community. Think about this in terms of American society today. Have we cast off restraint? We absolutely have. There is nothing new under the sun, because the ominous ending of the Book of Judges describes us well: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes." We are no longer united under God as king, nor are we united politically (both parties declare "Not my president!" when someone from the other party is in office), nor do we allow anyone to tell us what to do. Our lifestyles, short of stealing and killing, are our own business. 

We turn individualistic and throw off restraint when we see no vision for us as a people. And then perhaps we begin to see where the perishing comes in. Freedom is only freedom with some restraints in place. A toddler who can run with glee all over a fenced-in yard will soon not be so gleeful if the fence is removed and they can run full-tilt into a parking lot, pond, or street. 

Without divine guidance, we run wild. And as a society, have gotten much, much unhappier. "But whoever obeys the law is joyful," says the NLT, and suddenly we are back in the singular. No matter what else is going on, no matter who is doing what, when we stick with God and His ways, even in the midst of community chaos, we can, as individuals and as the body of Christ, experience joy in Him. 

Prayer for the Lukewarm

 

Dear Lord, You say You will spit them out of your mouth. 

I think it surprises us. We would expect being cold to You would be worse. But not.

Father, I think it's that "cold" is not deceptive, because it's definite. Like "hot," it's extreme. Unmistakable. Those who hate You, want nothing to do with You, don't believe in You, even blaspheme You, can turn. So can the hot who are hot in the wrong way; and maybe such people can be hot and cold at the same time. Saul, after all, hot for the Pharisees yet cold for Christ, became Paul.

But the lukewarm have that little bit of warmth. They are neither/nor, and that is deceptive. Also comfortable, something You've never promised following You will be.

Perhaps they've checked a box. "I believe in Jesus; I'm going to heaven," but no desire to please You is evident in them. No picking up their cross, no saying no to the things You say no to, continuing to live with their own plans and opinions as their guide. Or perhaps they're philanthropic, giving to the poor, honest in their dealings, affirming every lifestyle, labeled a "good Christian example" by the world, when what they're really doing is approving of sin (Romans 1) and preaching a different Jesus. Or perhaps they attend church regularly as part of their weekly schedule, and believe that makes the difference, thinking membership in an institution determines who reaches heaven. Or perhaps they say they try to obey Jesus' teachings, which they interpret as being a good person and judging no one, when they have no real idea of the hard things Jesus taught, when judgment applies, or that the main point isn't the teachings but the death and resurrection they need for themselves. 

Lukewarmness is the temperature mostly likely to lull people to think they're "in" when maybe they're not; lukewarmness is noncommittal, unbothered, trying to be two things and achieving neither. Hot and cold are far less easy to mistake, including for the hot or cold person in question. In a very real sense, hot and cold are both closer to You than lukewarm is, because lukewarm is the place of stuck. The place of oblivious. The place of "I didn't know anything needed to change" and "But I'm fine--aren't I?"

Father, help us all--hot, cold, or lukewarm--because none of us will ever reach a place where we can say, "I got this, God." But I pray especially here for the lukewarm, the ones who don't realize or don't care to face that merely being Jesus-adjacent in some way might still cost them their soul. Oh Lord, there are too many of them on the wide road to destruction. You said the way is narrow and few find it. Oh, I believe the new heavens and new earth will be full of people who are Yours--yet a fraction of all who ever lived. Jesus said no one can come to Him unless You draw them. Draw them, Father. In these last days of grace, draw them.

I've prayed a lot about them. May I never be so proud that I think it's "all those others" who don't have You. But Father, given the choice of hot, cold, and lukewarm, I choose hot. Help me, every step of the way, to make that choice true. 

The Road Back

 

Delayed obedience: disobedience

so they say

for love of a soundbite.

Jesus taught, of two sons,

the one who said no

but later took heed

and worked the vineyard anyway

was the son who obeyed his father

and the chief priests knew it too.

The first assignment: tend the garden

fulfilled till it wasn't

should have been their life.

Loss of the garden was loss of

everything

yet beautiful things grow still

among thorns and thistles

and when we tend them

we say yes to our Father.

Delayed obedience: disobedience

perhaps.

But Jesus, full of grace;

Father, full of patience;

Spirit, full of wisdom

are not mocked

and justly discern

when delayed obedience:

repentance.

Prayer for a New School Year

 

Dear Father, it's school time--for most people ages 5-22, of course, but also for me. My first prayer isn't going to be that everyone will learn their lessons well, get good grades, or graduate. Or find their passions, make friends, learn to cooperate with classmates and teachers, or decide to finally get extra help in those areas where they're struggling.  

No, my first prayer is going to be that what we learn is truth. Because it's possible to learn untruth.

Learning isn't the first thing. Truth is. 

When I was a young adult, fresh out of four years of college during which I may have thought about You twice, if that, I prayed a prayer and asked You for the truth. Not "the truth about_____" fill in the blank, but general, free-floating truth. Fundamental, global truth, I guess. And over the following two or three years, You gave me Jesus. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Truth in Whom all things hold together. 

We can almost stop right there. I imagine that in eternity we'll stop right there for a long, long "time." Just gazing at Him. Because we need nothing that is not found in Him.

But there's also the written word that is true, that explains to people 2000 years later Who He is, what He did, and why. The word that is an extension of Him--the Truth. The Scripture.

And people, lots of people, understand great swaths of it. They compare translations (if they're willing to read more than one); look at study notes, commentaries, and concordances; maybe even look at or read the original languages; ponder it; debate it; argue it; quarrel over it; split over it. Call each other unsaved or heretics over it. We know truth (and, hopefully, Truth) and don't know it--both. We're all of us wrong about some aspect of it.

These very Scriptures are what I'll be studying this school year. And again, I'm asking You for the truth. I don't want to see something that isn't there. I don't want to miss what is there. I don't want to misunderstand something because I'm reading it through the lens of what I've always been told. Help me separate truth from tradition, opinion, and downright falsehood. In cases where simply no one can be sure about something, bless me with the best insight and the most truth I can handle or that is appointed to me. And that will be more than enough, because when we have You--Jesus Christ--we have the Truth. Never leaving or forsaking us. As close as the mention of Your name. 

And we can, in the truest sense, stop right there. 

So we pray in Your name. Take us further into truth by first and foremost taking us further into Yourself. In Your name we pray. Amen. 

Jesus as Israel

 

Scholars and most believers agree that the book of Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. Matthew's main goal was to prove to Israel that Jesus was their Messiah. Primarily, he does this by showing the extraordinary degree to which Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about their coming Savior, though Matthew cannot do this exhaustively in one document. To digress a moment, I don't know for sure how many Messianic prophesies the OT contains, but one source says 332. Some count many more. In the 1950s, Professor Peter W. Stoner, chairman of the departments of mathematics and astronomy at Pasadena City College and chairman of the science division at Westmont College, calculated the chance of merely EIGHT of the main messianic prophesies being fulfilled by one individual: 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That is one in 100,000,000,000,000. The chance that one person would fulfill, say, forty-eight of the prophesies, said Stoner, would be 1 in 10 to the 157th power. That Stoner's math was both sound and convincing was attested to by the Executive Council of the American Scientific Affiliation, in a forward to Stoner's book Science Speaks. And Jesus fulfilled far more than a mere eight or even forty-eight prophesies. A conservative number from most sources is 300+.

We accept most of the "facts" we believe on far, far less evidence than this. Put another way, your chances of winning Mega Millions (as of August 28, 2026) are 1 in about 290,500,000. This is approximately 345,000 times BETTER than the odds of Jesus not being the Christ, yet who believes they're going to win the lottery? 

Okay, that was more than a moment's digression. My point is that Matthew set out to demonstrate to the Jews that Jesus was their Messiah. What I mostly failed to see up until now is that Matthew went a step better than that: he presented Jesus as Israel--the way Israel would have been had they obeyed God. 

Jesus was brought out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15), as was Israel. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness (analogous to Israel's 40 years), as did Israel. When tempted by sin, Jesus didn't give in but quoted Scripture, as most of us know, but did we stop to realize He quoted exclusively from Deuteronomy? I didn't. It wasn't only that He found those verses fitting to the occasion. Deuteronomy is Moses' final presentation to the Israelites, summarizing the covenant and the law, urging them forward to faithfulness, obedience, and the promised land. The book is legally, historically, and theologically central to the life of Israel. Quoting Deuteronomy is saying, "I demonstrate, model, promote, and stand behind everything that Israel is called to be." Jesus as Israel doesn't mean He is superseding Israel in any way, but that He is completing it, redeeming it, restoring it. This idea of completion is also shown, for example, in His Sermon on the Mount, where He extends the law to matters of inward motivation rather than mere outward compliance. 

Matthew also draws parallels between Israel's deliverer (Moses) and Israel's Messiah (Jesus). At birth, both narrowly escaped government orders that all infant boys be killed. Moses applied the blood of the old covenant (Exodus 24:8); Jesus applied the blood of the new. Moses fasted 40 days on the mountain; Jesus fasted 40 days in the desert. It's also quite interesting that the Pentateuch/Torah is attributed to Moses as author, and Matthew presents a series of five discourses that outline Jesus' major teachings.

For one last example, we can jump to Hosea 11:1, which Matthew partially quotes in 2:15. The NIV says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." Here, the line between Jesus and Israel is unquestionably blurred. Jesus died as a human being to save human beings, but He also died as Israel to save Israel. No matter our ethnicity or lot in life, Jesus is never "other" than we. He is both fully God and fully man in ways we have yet to grasp.  

The Flowers Declare

 

"The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor Him, for He is your Lord." (Psalm 45:11)

"God saw all that He had made, and it was very good." (Genesis 1:31)

"He has made everything beautiful in its time." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

"Not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of these." (Matthew 6:29)

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." (Psalm 90:17)

Prayer for September

 

Dear Father, we thank You for the new beginning that the month of September always seems to hold out to us. I've always felt there are three beginnings in a year: January, Spring, and September. We thank You that there are actually many more than that, because Your word says Your mercies are new every morning. Being born again, indwelled by the Spirit, transformed by the renewing of our minds--all are new beginnings that needn't wait for a time of year but can and do happen any and every day. When we fall, when we sin, when we mess up, when we get off track, if we will return to You we are forgiven seventy times seven, washed clean. Even years eaten by locusts, You will restore.

Lord, we don't know what a day, week, month, or year will bring. Calamities can shatter lives in a split second, and if not shatter then change irrevocably. At times You head off storms, and at other times You shelter us through them. It's all temporal, down here, and we press into the knowledge and belief that Jesus really, really is all we need. The one thing we need is the one thing we can't lose unless we walk away. We thank You that our lives are hidden with Christ in God. And we pray for those who will be cleaning up the aftermath, in more ways than one, of major weather events that will fade out of the news long before their impacts do. We pray for those in the paths of storms yet to happen this year, perhaps this month, who can't at this moment know what's in store. We pray for their protection, and for the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the helpfulness of Your people to flood--in a wonderful way--areas of devastation and leave a much greater and more permanent mark on the people than any natural disaster ever could. 

Lord, we are dependent on You and can do nothing without You. For many, may September be a month of learning to lean on You more, surrender to You more, "fall" into You more, and come up out of the wilderness leaning on our Beloved, as Song of Songs says. Paul counted his losses rubbish, that he might gain Christ. Like these, some of Your words are hard words. But we thank You for breath, for life, for buying us back from destruction at the cost of Your Son's blood, we thank You for the beauty of this world despite its fallenness, and we decide and declare that we belong to You. Yours in Jesus, amen.