Lately I’ve been reading lots of Old Testament history. If you don’t get bogged down in the genealogies, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell a fascinating story of how God worked through events and people to make things happen. I’m still a little foggy about some stuff. I have questions like:  Exactly who did what and where? Which prophets and which kings are contemporaries? Was it Isaiah or Jeremiah or Haggai–or maybe all the above–who prophesied that Cyrus would jump-start the temple reconstruction? But the historical record answers two questions very clearly:
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Sometimes we don’t recognize God’s goodness because He doesn’t work the way we think He should. Check out this offering of praise (posted with the author’s permission):
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I’ve spent the last few evenings in my front yard. Not enjoying the finally-spring weather, not relaxing after a day at work, not sipping a mint julep (what do those taste like anyway?). No, I’ve been weeding, digging, moving stones, clearing last fall’s leaves, adding topsoil, setting out flowers (that most probably will *not* thrive, as usual), and mulching. And why? because the yard was a neighborhood eyesore for the whole month of April and the first two weeks of May. It’s still a long way from Yard-of-the-Month, but at least now it is a half-step up from Hell’s half acre.

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Last night I attended a Bible Study by video with about 100  women. The video was a little dated (circa mid-90s) and the speaker was a “personality” with a style of her own. One of the women in my seating group–let’s call her Tasha–was emphatic in her disapproval.

We didn’t discusss the content of the Bible study (which was substantial); we talked about the speaker. Tasha said, “That woman turned me off completely. I really couldn’t listen to anything she had to say.” There was agreement and disagreement about the speaker’s presentational style. There were critiques of Continue Reading »

Item: in a recent e-mail newsletter, Christianity Today, noted that “there is no end” of the making of movies about Jesus. Film critics presented a review of the top ten Jesus movies produced since the early 1900s. The reviewed films ran the gamut from 1905’s Life and Passion of Jesus Christ to Mel Gibson’s highly publicized Passion of the Christ in 2004, CT compares and contrasts ten films that “focus mainly on Jesus’ life story as told in the Gospels.” Their conclusion: while no interpretation can ever “capture the fullness of his divinity, or the fullness of his humanity, the better films can help us to see a small part of the bigger picture.”

Comment: Film critics do what they do (and some of them are pretty good), but only God can review the life of Christ as told through me. He paid the production costs and directs the action. My contribution is to allow Him to live through me in a way that helps others see a small part of the Divine Love that energizes my life. What Would Jesus Do? is not a slogan; it’s the framework for a Bible-based, reality drama played out everyday in my life and in the life of everyman (or woman) who volunteers to participate.