365 Reflections

Elihu continues to answer Job in chapter 34.  Job 34:7-9 (ESV) What man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, 8 who travels in company with evildoers and walks with wicked men? 9 For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God.’ He first sounds a lot like the three friends with a twinge of condescension for these are familiar attacks on Job. But his words are taken to a far different conclusion. Where Job's three friends assumed his guilt brought just condemnation, Elihu turns a corner and defends the awesome "otherness" of God.  Job 34:12–15 (ESV) Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. 13 Who gave him charge over the earth, and who laid on him the whole world? 14 If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, 15 all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust. Elihu makes the case for the sovereign wisdom of God. No one put God in charge. H...

The Christian faith does not give you an excuse to check your intellect and common sense at the door. These were given to you by God who made you in His image and likeness. Use them, don't disregard them. Paul rarely was miraculously delivered from trouble. Very rarely. Here in Acts 25, after 2 years of sitting in a Caesarean prison, he faces his accusers once again before a newly placed Governor name Festus. Paul again states his defense but knows there's a chance he could be set free only to be ambushed by the Jews seeking his life. Here's Paul's defense: Acts 25:8–11 (ESV) Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.” 9 But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?” 10 But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have do...

We would have spent our vacation in a cramped hotel room. Three days and four nights in Vermont, just the two of us. And we would have enjoyed our accommodations fairly well as they were a gift from someone else. Never look a gift horse in the mouth! But thanks to a broken air-conditioner I had to talk to the front desk. While mentioning that the first attempt at fixing it didn't work, I brought up the fact that we were expecting a bit more than a simple hotel room when the reservation said, "Suite". The attendant informed me that our key opened the room next door to ours as well! So we got another two-room Suite with a working air conditioner and spent our vacation according to a reality we almost missed. Too many Christians live like we were about to that weekend in September. Cramped in a confining space of limits. This is the reason Paul writes Ephesians. For the first three chapters he proclaims the wonderful realities of a new life in Christ to this wond...