Lamentations 3:33, “He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of man.” /// Lamentations is not only one of the most concentrated expressions of agony in the entire Bible, it is also a intricately and densely woven piece of poetry. Jeremiah pours his grief over the destruction of Jerusalem into a strict […]
Isaiah 40:28, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” In Isaiah 40, YHWH speaks comfort to His despairing people who, buried in the grave of exile, feel as though
Revelation 21:1, ‘…and the SEA was no more.’ Revelation 22:1, ‘Then the angel showed me the RIVER of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.’ (There’s also a video version of this description) The Sea is chaotic, rebellious, and without form (cf. Gen.1:2). In this
Revelation 21:1, 22:1 Read More »
2 Corinthians 12:10, “For the sake of Christ, therefore, I am well pleased in weaknesses, mistreatments, calamities, persecutions and distress, for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul’s definition here of ‘weakness’ is broad, essentially embracing the total experience of mortality in the fallen world. ‘Weakness’ is the curse of Genesis 3, in
2 Corinthians 12:10 Read More »
John 20:16, “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’” Mary stands weeping outside Jesus’ empty tomb…She weeps over the loss of her beloved Lord, but more than this, in weeping over Christ’s death—in which all the pain, grief, sin, death, and damnation of the redeemed creation are borne—she weeps for all the sufferings of the world. In
Psalm 139:10, ‘…even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.’ Verses 7-10 of Psalm 139 form something of a meditation on the inescapable presence of YHWH. David poetically maps out the heights (‘If I ascend to heaven’), the depths (‘If I make my bed in Sheol’), and the width
Psalm 23:5, ‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…’ A prepared table implies things like peace, security, fellowship, and joyful celebration…none of which would be expected ‘in the presence of my enemies.’ This tension is designed to slow our reading and cause us to question: ‘How is it that YHWH
Romans 11:35-36, “…who has given a gift to [to the Lord], that he might be repaid (Job 41:11)? For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” The verses just cited form the conclusion to Romans 9-11, in which we read one of the most towering
Psalm 31:7, ‘I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul…’ /// This Psalm is written from the depths of affliction. Though v.8 presents YHWH’s salvation in the past tense, it is a past tense of David’s faith, not yet
Isaiah 51:3, ‘…YHWH comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her deserts like the garden of YHWH; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.’ On the cross, our Lord and God enters into, bears, and—indeed—becomes the ‘waste places’ of His Bride’s
Isaiah 49:3-4, ‘And He said to me, “You are my Servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” But I said, “I have labored in vain and have spent my strength for nothing and vanity…”’ Here we see a glimpse into the human soul of Jesus as He hangs on the cross….This is the moment
Job 19:25-26, ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the dust. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.’ With these words, it is as though the the skeletal hand of Job’s faith, livened by the breath of the
John 11:21, ‘If you had been here…’ ‘If you had…’ — With these words, Martha’s imagination conjures a state of affairs that she believes would have been better than what has, in fact, happened…If Jesus had been here, Lazarus would not have died, she and her sister would have been spared the pain of loss,
Hebrews 2:8-9, ‘we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.’ Notice the
1 Peter 1:5, ‘…who, *by God’s power*, are being guarded *through faith* for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.’ Note that in this verse, Peter tells us that it is *God’s power* that guards the believer, but the means by which His power guards them is *their own faith.* The power
Job 23:8-10, ‘Behold, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive Him; on the left hand when He is working, I do not behold Him; He turns to the right hand, but I do not see Him. But He knows the way that I take…’ In verses 8-9,
Job 9:23-24, ‘When disaster brings sudden death, He mocks at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covers the face of its judges—if it is not He, WHO then is it?’ In this post, I’m not commenting on Job’s evaluation of the situation, only on the
2 Corinthians 1:5, ‘For just as the sufferings of Christ abound for [or ‘unto’, ‘εἰς’] us, so through Christ also abounds our comfort.’ Because the one and indivisible Jesus Christ is irreducibly the Crucified and Risen One, in Him, suffering and comfort are “hypostatically” (i.e., rooted in personhood) united. Just as there is no Crucified
Matthew 13:44, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…’ In this picture, I wanted to focus on the ‘hiddenness’ of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God—the reign of the risen King—is a treasure, to be sure; it is a treasure worth all that we are and have. And yet, it is
Philippians 3:10-11, ‘That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’ Jesus Christ is essentially and irreducibly the crucified and risen one, and so, to truly and intimately
Philippians 3:10-11 Read More »
