Tag: Bible

The Holy Spirit Is for Ordinary Time

At my church we’ve spent the Easter season looking for and finding signs of Christ’s resurrection power all around us.

We see the power of the risen Jesus through mundane interactions in our worlds, just as the risen Jesus appeared on the shore to the disciples and ate breakfast with them.

We find rhythms of resurrection—death and rebirth—in creation.

We see signs of it in our daily lives: our work, family life, and friendships.

We find the power of the resurrection at work within us when we Christians show love to each other—both in word and action.

And we experience the power of the resurrection of Jesus when we affirm with his disciple John, “Perfect love drives out fear.”

I’ve grown these last couple months in my appreciation of how Christ’s resurrection is still shaping everything today.

So I sort of don’t want the Easter season to end. It feels like a little bit of a letdown. I’ll still be on the lookout for signs of the resurrection—I’ll still try to “practice resurrection,” as Wendell Berry wisely tells us to do. But we’re moving now into that long period in the church calendar creatively called, “Ordinary Time.”

I was doing some long-range preaching planning the other day with a week-by-week calendar in front of me. This coming Sunday is the First Sunday after Pentecost. And then, not surprisingly, it will be the Second Sunday after Pentecost. And then the Third, and Fourth, and Fifth, and 13th, and 19th, and 23rd Sunday after Pentecost… all the way up to the 27th Sunday after Pentecost on November 20. Then it’s Advent.

Those “after Pentecost” Sundays for us are “Ordinary Time.”

But moving from what has been a meaningful Easter season for me into this 27-week long “Ordinary Time,” I feel a little like the disciples must’ve felt on Pentecost Sunday: “What now?” “Where do we go from here?”

We need the Holy Spirit for the “ordinary” days ahead. Jesus unleashes the power and energy and life and breath that is the Holy Spirit, so that the disciples can have the Holy Spirit now that Easter has come and gone.

 

* * * * * *

 

If I could live through any period of history, it would be those post-resurrection days with the disciples and Jesus. They had lost him to death once, and now he’s gone from them again through his ascension to heaven.

But he doesn’t leave them stranded. He gives to the Church and to every believer the Holy Spirit for all our days to come. The Holy Spirit is for ordinary time.

A number of years ago, when Newsweek was still a print magazine, the editors asked Garrison Keillor what five books were most important to him. #1 on his list was “The Acts of the Apostles.” His one-sentence summary of it was: “The flames lit on their little heads and bravely and dangerously went they onward.” (HT)

And that’s how we go: onward, into differently structured summer days and adjusted schedules. We go onward, even into Ordinary Time, into seasons of waiting and tedium and unmet expectations—we go forward anyway because the promised Holy Spirit has come.

When we love with the love of Jesus, we go “dangerously” but willingly into places of darkness and loneliness and despair, ready to share God’s Spirit far beyond our gathered Sunday morning assemblies. Through the Holy Spirit’s power we can declare with the prophet Joel and the apostle Peter that God’s Holy Spirit is for all people, and that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The Holy Spirit, having come in power at Pentecost, has filled each of us—all of us—to speak words of praise and comfort and love. And we can move with those first disciples from praying, “Come, Holy Spirit,” to now praying, “Thank you, Jesus, for giving us your Holy Spirit. Come afresh to me.”

And we can know that the Holy Spirit is a promise, a guarantee of Jesus Christ himself, given to us now. The Holy Spirit is for Ordinary Time!

 

The above is adapted from my Pentecost Sunday sermon to my congregation yesterday.

The (Leather) Gospel, According to John

I’ve had hit-or-miss success in 2016 with Bible memorization. It’s entirely possible I’m being too hard on myself, but I also know I struggle to consistently work at the parts of the Bible I’m trying to memorize this year.

A tool won’t necessarily make me a better memorizer, but thinking it could help, I sprang for the Saddleback Leather Gospel of John Bible portion. You readers of this blog know I like good leather. You know I like pocket notebooks. And of course I like pocket notebooks with leather covers. So why not have a portable Scripture portion covered in leather?

This has actually been a desideratum of mine for some time, so I was really excited to see that Saddleback Leather has just released a set of three books of the Bible (John, Proverbs, and Revelation), each stitched into a leather cover. These are not inserts that can be exchanged–they are permanently stitched to their covers.

Lemme show you.

 

0_Two Balms
Lip Balm, Life Balm

 

The book is passport size (think 3.5″ x 5″ Baron Fig Apprentice rather than 3.5″ x 5.5″ Field Notes or Word. Notebooks). This means it’s a great front pocket fit.

 

1_Pocket View

 

Here it is, front and back:

 

Words of the Word on the Rock
Words of the Word on a Rock

 

3_Back on Rock
Rock on, You Rock on the Rock

 

Here’s a look at how the uber-tough paper is stitched into the leather:

 

4_Inside Stitching

 

5_Outside Stitching

 

That paper, by the way, is “YUPO synthetic paper: 100% recyclable, waterproof, tree-free, durable, and easily wipes clean.”

 

7_Inside Stitching Up Close

 

Bible production is notoriously challenging, and I’m quite sure this piece was no exception. A bummer is that there is virtually no margin to the pages. The font is small, but the lack of white space is the larger issue:

 

8_Full Page Text

 

This especially becomes a problem as some pages don’t lay 100% flat:

 

Crammed margins
Crammed margins

 

The leather is full grain and wonderful, as with all of Saddleback’s stuff. It smells good, of course. It will last forever. The paper looks just as tough, too. I don’t quite feel like trying to rip it to see if it’s truly tear-free, but it’s the kind of paper you could take on a camping trip and not have to worry.

Surprisingly, given the excellent workmanship on Saddleback products, the leather stitching was a little crooked, even though it’s machine-stitched:

 

6_Outside Stitching Up Close

 

6a_Stitching Not Straight

 

The insides are the NET Bible, which I appreciate as a translation for its rich footnotes. Those are not included here, which is inevitable, since the font is already small to get John to fit in.

There are 30 pages (15 sheets), including–oddly–five blank pages at the end, which means that one less sheet could have been used. (Maybe these are for notes?)

Back to why I got this thing–to memorize. The NET Bible does not lend itself well to memorization. Consider John 1:1-5 in the 1984 NIV:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Here it is in the NET Bible:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it.

I dislike the translation of the generic Greek ανθρωπος as “man” in the 1984 NIV. “Humanity” or “humankind” is better in 2016–even the NET footnote cedes this option, but the text alone just gives you “mankind.” And though the footnote in fuller NET editions explains “the Word was fully God” well, NET has other such turns of phrase that make the version less than ideal for memorization.

There are also no paragraphs in this text. This means the 71-verse John 6 is a single paragraph in the Saddleback Leather Gospel of John. There is a single blank line between chapters, but especially with those five blank pages at the end, could not paragraph separations for greater readability have been employed?

One more minor production quibble: the cover text (“The Book of John”) is ever so slightly left of center, and the branding on the back is a little off-center. These are not really noticeable (like the stitching is), and maybe it’s just that I’ve come to expect near perfection from Saddleback!

I still, however, think it is absolutely awesome that Saddleback is making these things, so even though the NET Bible here isn’t quite the pocket-sized, leather-covered panacea I was seeking for Bible memorization (I know: I have issues), I would still buy this again, even if only to support the effort and have it to keep with me.

I imagine the production of these little books will only improve in time–if you’re going to get one, maybe give it a couple months and see if the next few production runs iron out the quality and layout issues.

(Personally, I’d love to see an easier-to-memorize version available in the future, too, like the NIV or NRSV.)

Saddleback’s site is here, with many wonderful leather things. You can also check out my review of their pen/sunglasses case as well as their leather Bible Cover.

Here is the Gospel of John via Saddleback, as well as a larger set of three books of the Bible, similarly bound.

 

 

This was not a review sample–I paid for it, but was fortunate to have received a handsome discount code (as a newsletter subscriber) for the item.

A Greek Word for the Twitter Age: σπερμολογος (spermologos)

Here’s a fun Greek word: σπερμολογος (spermologos). It appears only one time in the Greek New Testament, and nowhere in the Septuagint. Here it is in its context, Acts 17:18:

τινες δε και των Επικουρειων και Στοικων φιλοσοφων συνεβαλλον αυτω, και τινες ελεγον· τι αν θελοι ο σπερμολογος ουτος λεγειν; οι δε· ξενων δαιμονιων δοκει καταγγελευς ειναι, οτι τον Ιησουν και την αναστασιν ευηγγελιζετο.

A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with [Paul]. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

The NIV 2011 (above), NRSV, and KJV all translate σπερμολογος (spermologos) as “babbler.” HCSB has “pseduo-intellectual.” NASB has “idle babbler.” NET has “foolish babbler.” Not to be outdone, the Message offers, “What an airhead!”

Context determines meaning, which makes a word like this tricky, since it has no other uses in the Bible. The LSJ lexicon notes its use in, among other classic works, the play Birds by Aristophanes, where it refers to birds picking up seeds. In the 1st century B.C. history of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, σπερμολογος  describes a “frivolous” person. For the noun form LSJ offers, “one who picks up and retails scraps of knowledge, an idle babbler, gossip.”

BDAG has this: “in pejorative imagery of persons whose communication lacks sophistication and seems to pick up scraps of information here and there.” I also like its gloss of “scrapmonger”! In the part of the entry that covers the Acts verse, it says, “Engl. synonyms include ‘gossip’, ‘babbler’, ‘chatterer’; but these terms miss the imagery of unsystematic gathering.”

Also helpful is Louw-Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains:

one who acquires bits and pieces of relatively extraneous information and proceeds to pass them on with pretense and show.

And then this gem, from the same source:

The term σπερμολογος is semantically complex in that it combines two quite distinct phases of activity: (1) the acquiring of information and (2) the passing on of such information. Because of the complex semantic structure of σπερμολογος, it may be best in some languages to render it as ‘one who learns lots of trivial things and wants to tell everyone about his knowledge,’ but in most languages there is a perfectly appropriate idiom for ‘a pseudo-intellectual who insists on spouting off.’

The implications for an easy-to-access information age are obvious–how much of the Internet is gathering information like seed and passing it on, without stopping to research and truly evaluate it?

We could pontificate, but back to Acts–this is what some Athenian philosophers called Paul: a σπερμολογος. The parenthetical statement in Acts 17:21, however, makes this the height of irony:

Αθηναιοι δε παντες και οι επιδημουντες ξενοι εις ουδεν ετερον ηυκαιρουν η λεγειν τι η ακουειν τι καινοτερον.

(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

Did you catch it? Louw-Nida says a σπερμολογος engages in “two quite distinct phases of activity: (1) the acquiring of information and (2) the passing on of such information.” Acts 17:21 says the Athenians themselves (who leveled the σπερμολογος charge against Paul) spent all their time in two phases of activity: talking (#2 above) and listening (#1) to “the latest ideas.”

Moral of the story: check yourself before you call someone a σπερμολογος.

“Can there be any day but this?” George Herbert’s “Easter”

As we are still in the Easter season, here is George Herbert’s “Easter,” quoted in N.T. Wright’s Resurrection and the Son of God.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

The Challenge of Preaching: John Stott, Abridged

The Challenge of Preaching is an abridged and updated version of John Stott’s Between Two Worlds. The book is clear in its aim:

This book sets out to encourage preachers by reminding them of the importance of their calling; to exhort them to spend time in careful and prayerful sermon preparation; and to remind them of the personal qualities that must characterize every faithful preacher of God’s word. (x)

It easily succeeds in this goal. I found myself bolstered in my sense of calling as a preacher. And the abridgment is compelling in its description of how the preacher should prepare (a) sermons and (b) himself or herself.

The book gets better as it progresses. I bristled at the first chapter where I thought there was both an overemphasis on the word in Christian communities, as well as only vague criticisms of the culture at large.

 

Words: The Church’s One Foundation?

 

Challenge of PreachingOf course I agree with Stott that “God chose to use words to reveal himself to humanity” (1), but I’m not sure we can rightly conclude that this is “the truth” which “Christianity is based on” (1). One might alternatively suggest a truth like, “God is love,” or the truth of John 3:16 as a more robust foundation than that of the written and spoken word as “the foundation on which all Christian preaching rests” (14). What I thought was an undue overemphasis on the word shows up elsewhere. The church, for example, is “the creation of God by his word” (21). That’s true as it goes, but leaves a lot out.

Even how the word/Word is interpreted is narrowly construed: “Everything in the rest of the text must relate in some way to the main issue” (55). And again, “Every text has an overriding thrust” (58). It’s difficult to think of biblical passages that support the notion that a biblical passage must have one overriding thrust. Why think this? I was left unconvinced by an assumed claim that I hear often repeated in some evangelical preaching traditions.

I agree with Stott on the primacy of the biblical text in preaching preparation: “We have to be ready to pray and think ourselves deep into the text, until we become its humble and obedient servant” (59). But herein, I think, lies the rub: while I desire to willingly submit to Scripture, isn’t it better to say that we are first humble and obedient servants of the Lord who stands behind Scripture, who breathed it into being, and who breathes life into us even now so we can understand and follow his words? This may seem a subtle nuance—and Stott is clear in emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit in the process—but I think one has to be careful not to give too much weight to the written and spoken word. We don’t want to unwittingly fossilize it.

 

Challenges to Preaching

 

The first chapter is “Challenges to Preaching.” Here Stott mentions “Hostility to Authority” (2), “The Electronic Age” (5), and “The Church’s Loss of Confidence in the Gospel” (9). The criticisms are unfortunately broad and sweeping: “People have also become emotionally insensitive” (6). Which people? What constitutes “insensitive”? What is the basis for the assessment? Each of the challenges suffers from vagueness like this (“We must trust God, not our computers…” (8)). A better model for cultural criticisms is the depth and winsomeness so readily on display in David J. Lose’s Preaching at the Crossroads. I think this may just be a fault, however, of the book’s being abridged. The longer version includes more studies and citations to support the criticisms Stott makes.

Similarly, the second chapter (“Theological Foundations for Preaching”) includes assessments of the pastorate that wasn’t convinced were warranted. Bemoaning “today’s pastors” (which ones? in which denominations? according to which studies?) who don’t take the New Testament seriously (measured how?), Stott writes, “Instead, sadly, many pastors are more involved in administration” (25). Don’t get me wrong: I’ve read Acts 6, and I would love to spend 20 hours a week in sermon preparation, but I really do believe God has entrusted administrative aspects of church leadership to me (with others), whether it’s helping the leadership work toward a mission-driven budget, helping to organize Sunday school classes, etc. I appreciate Stott’s views, but I found them at times to be unmerited hermeneutical leaps.

(It’s worth pausing here to say: disagreements and frustrations with the first part of this book aside, if I could one day be half of half the pastor John Stott was, I would rejoice greatly.)

 

Metaphors for Preachers, and a Non-Neutral Pulpit

 

From the beginning of chapter 3 (“Preaching as Bridge-building”) and throughout the rest of the book, I found myself nodding in agreement and with conviction. Stott’s six metaphors the Bible uses to describe preachers is a compelling and really helpful way to frame the role of the preacher: heralds, farmers, stewards, shepherds, ambassadors, and workers. “In all of these New Testament images,” he says, “the preacher is a servant under someone else’s authority, the communicator of someone else’s word” (31). May God forgive me those moments when I take this truth for granted—it is at the heart of my preaching philosophy, and why I continue to get up into the pulpit Sunday after Sunday, seeking to communicate God’s love with God’s people. Seeing these specific ways to understand my role encourages me to continue to seek to be faithful in my calling.

Along these lines I found myself convicted by Stott’s line, “The pulpit cannot be neutral” (39) when it comes to social issues. Amen! He offers a set of examples that could make folks on all sides of the political spectrum (including centrists) squirm a little: “We also need to address issues of injustice, poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease; the pollution of the environment; failure to conserve natural resources; abortion, mercy-killing or euthanasia and capital punishment; inhumane technocracy, bureaucracy and unemployment…” (38-39). A good word, indeed.

He adds a wise caution only a seasoned leader can: “We need wisdom not to go beyond what is written in Scripture and to speak carefully where Scripture is not clear” (39). May God give us preachers wisdom to know the difference!

 

Study and Character

 

Chapter 4 suggests some (realistic) habits of study in sermon preparation. The 5th chapter goes more in depth, including this great question for preachers to ask: “What response does the Holy Spirit want to this text?” (55) He calls for both study and prayer in equal measure (57). His suggestions (even in this abridged version) are specific, practical, and ones that a preacher could implement this week. I was especially intrigued by his suggestions that the preacher write the body of the sermon out, then the conclusion, and (only) then the introduction! (65) He reasons, “Only after doing this, will we be sufficiently clear about what we are introducing” (66). I’m in the habit of writing the introduction first, once I have my outline. I plan to try Stott’s proposed order first chance I get.

The final two chapters focus on the character of the preacher (chapter 6, “Sincerity and Earnestness” and chapter 7, “Courage and Humility”). The first appendix is an abbreviated (though still fairly robust) overview of the history of preaching. I thought it was wise to make this an appendix, though it serves as the first chapter in the longer Between Two Worlds.

 

Conclusion and Where to Get It

 

In the end, even if I didn’t agree with all of Stott’s approach, I found this book refreshing and inspiring. He quotes Spurgeon, who said to his students, “Our preaching must not be articulate snoring” (82). Stott’s passion for Scripture and wisdom in preaching are clear. Reading even this abridged version of his classic book serves as yet another reminder of a life well lived, and a ministry faithfully carried out. We preachers are fortunate to be able to access Stott’s hard-earned wisdom.

You can find the book at Amazon here. The publisher’s page is here.

 

 

Thanks to Eerdmans for thinking to send me a copy of the book.

The Preacher’s Formidable Task, and One Way to Tackle It

Reading for PreachingI almost always read non-fiction when I sit down with a book. What drives this is, in part, my insatiable (and sometimes over-active) desire to learn something new about the world. But of course it is untrue that only non-fiction can teach. The best poets and storytellers can offer as true insight into human nature as the best psychology text.

It is this former group of writers that Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. wants preachers to read, in his Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists (Eerdmans, 2013). After all, preachers have a formidable task each weekend, which Plantinga articulates with not one ounce of exaggeration:

Where else in life does a person have to stand weekly before a mixed audience and speak to them engagingly on the mightiest topics known to humankind–God, life, death, sin, grace, love, hatred, hope, despair, and the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Who is even close to being adequate for this challenge? (xi)

Plantinga immediately engaged me in this way. He both reassured me as a preacher and convinced me from the beginning of Reading for Preaching that I ought to have my nose in fiction more often–and to add biographies to my non-fiction reading. The Holy Spirit “sows truth promiscuously” (ix, via Calvin), so we who presume to be preachers do well to read widely and “get wisdom” on all of life. From here we can employ our insights to more effectively shape our language–just like poets do, saying “a lot in a few words” (xii)–since language is the preacher’s “first tool” (x).

Based on lectures and workshops around the same themes, Reading for Preaching divides into six short and highly readable chapters:

  1. Introduction to the Conversation
  2. Attentive Illustrations
  3. Tuning the Preacher’s Ear
  4. Whatever You Get, Get Wisdom
  5. Wisdom on the Variousness of Life
  6. Wisdom on Sin and Grace

 

What Preaching Is, What Reading Is

 

Preaching for Plantinga is “the presentation of God’s Word at a particular time to particular people by someone the church authorizes to do it” (1). The preacher’s job is to “not just repeat a text, but also to outfit it for the hearing of a congregation.” (Sometimes more challenging than it sounds.) In order to do this, Plantinga suggests that preachers “get into the interrogative mood and stay there a while” (vii-ix). He calls on them to ask about biblical texts “everything you can think of, including about the tone of voice of the speakers in the text” (102).

And he gives copious examples of how to both ask questions of biblical texts and use wisdom found from non-biblical texts to do it. One of the book’s great strengths is its use of stories, characters, and motifs from works like Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables, Tolstoy short stories, a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, and much more. In every case Plantinga shows the reader (a) how wisdom may be found in the text and hand and (b) how to apply it from the pulpit.

This doesn’t mean Plantinga wants preachers to read fiction just for the sake of finding good illustrations. That would cheat both literature and preacher. But the preacher can find wisdom everywhere, if she or he is looking for it. Plantinga shows how even a conversation with a long-winded neighbor helped one attentive preacher understand humanity more fully. To that end the book concludes with a few words on having a good system for storing and retrieving illustrations. Many future sermon illustrations will come up in unexpected moments and need to be filed and saved for later.

It is out of his own wealth of illustrations that Plantinga has drawn–he says as much. Especially in later chapters I had the feeling of reading illustration upon illustration, but this is offset by the masterful way in which Plantinga links complicated fictional characters, for example, to abiding truths about life in Christ. He shows more than he tells. He is a gifted illustrator and writer, which makes the book a joy to read.

The book would have been greatly enhanced by a Scripture and especially Subject Index, since there are so many illustrations I will want to return to.

Plantinga offers some good cautions, too. The goal of a sermon should be doxological, helping train the congregation’s eyes on Jesus. Overly poetic sermons with the goal of being “pretty” won’t do.

 

Needing to See the Risen Lord

 

Sunday morning comes without fail, each week–“right about the same time, too,” as one of my minister friends says. Again, here is Plantinga on the preacher’s challenge and call (and invitation!):

A preacher needs to be a sage to speak responsibly from the pulpit week by week. She has to have something worth listening to on some of the mightiest subjects in the world, including how the universe looks to a Christian, who human beings are, the human predicament, God’s gracious address to the predicament in Jesus Christ, the resulting prognosis for our world, and, along the way, much else. Fortunately she has our community’s book to draw from, which is wonderful except that she now has to bridge from Scripture, which is a multiplex ancient literature, to her own particular context and engage an audience there that is certain to be mixed in some formidable ways. (107)

Phew!

The preacher has to be a little crazy to tackle all this. Or else, like the Apostle Paul, she needs to have seen the risen Lord. In either case, once embarked, the preacher will need to get wisdom with all deliberate speed. (107)

Plantinga cautions: “Naïve preaching is a kind of malpractice” (102). Reading widely–and paying attention to life!–is a good antidote for this. So is prayer and that encounter with “the risen Lord.” Sometimes sermons really do write themselves. And–reading aside–it’s for one primary reason, at least that I can figure: if the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus breathed onto the disciples and gives to us… does not that same Holy Spirit breath through us, and even speak through us preachers?

All I can say is Thanks be to God!, because I could never be (and would never dare to even try) a preacher if that were not true. Plantinga, I think, would agree.

 

Where to Get It

 

Here is the book trailer:

 

 

Read more about the book at the publisher’s product page. You can get it in print (publisher // Amazon) or electronic editions (Kindle // Logos).

 

 

Thanks to Eerdmans for the review copy. You can find the book’s product page here. It is on Amazon here.

Saddleback’s Leather Bible Cover: The One You’ve Been Waiting For (If It Fits)

Finding classy and well-made Bible covers is surprisingly difficult, even on Amazon. Christian Book Distributors fares a little better. But you still have to wade through some, uh, options.

 

But what if she wants the eagle cover?
But what if she wants the eagle cover?

 

NFL Bible Cover
One way to solve the long sermon vs. game-starting-at-1 rivalry

 

 

Like a roaring... leopard?
Like a roaring… leopard?

 

Plain canvas would be just fine. Full grain leather? Even better.

 

Front

 

That’s the Leather Bible Cover from Saddleback Leather Company. No, not that Saddleback. This one.

Saddleback’s cover comes in four color options: Tobacco, Dark Coffee Brown, Black, and Chestnut (pictured above).

Here are a few more images, to introduce you:

 

Back

 

Open Empty

 

The Bible slides right in:

 

Inside Left

 

Bible Open

 

That’s the UBS5 Greek New Testament, which, as you can see, is a little short for the cover, but otherwise is a great fit.

A closer look reveals consummate stitching:

 

Stitching Close-up

 

Back Right Close-up

 

The closure mechanism is easy to get used to, and even allows you to slide a pencil or pen inside:

 

Closure Close-up

 

The Chestnut color is deep and rich. The leather is sturdy! So much so when it first arrived that I didn’t believe it would soften over time, but it has. It lays flat with no issue, as a result. You just have to make sure you handle the Bible cover (and enclosed Bible) rather than build a shrine to it on your shelf-of-leather. (Uh, no, I don’t have one of those.)

It looks, feels, and smells delicious. No complaints at all on the appearance, construction, design, and feel of the thing. Top-notch.

Let’s talk about fit.

A dictum of reviewing is that you review a book (or piece of gear) on its own merits, in accordance with its aim. It would be unfair, for example, to lambast a print book for not being as keyword searchable as its electronic counterpart. Print never claims to give you search results with a single click. (Not YET.)

So, to be fair, the cover’s product page says:

Buy this cover AND THEN go buy a Bible to fit

And it gives you the dimensions of the (opened) cover: 12 ½” W x 9 ½” H.

However, I think it’s fair to ask: how many people buy a leather Bible cover before buying a Bible? Usually you realize that a certain Bible has become your mainstay: through 52-week sermon series on Romans (chapters 1 and 2), through holidays and family reunions, through major life events, through years of semi-failed reading plans… and then you go get a cover worthy of the Bible.

Saddleback currently offers just this size, so you’re limited in your options. This cover is nowhere near big enough to work for the kind of Bible many folks would want to put into a leather cover: a Study Bible.

However, user reviews indicate this beautiful cover is good for slimline Bibles (ESV, NIV, NKJV). And the product page is clear along these lines, so you just have to be sure you know what you’re getting.

The Greek New Testament above is the best fit I found among my Bibles. I was disappointed that my not-that-big Greek-English New Testament didn’t fit:

 

Bible too big
Bible too big

 

Before I laid eyes on the cover, I had dreams of my Septuagint fitting in, but…

 

No Fit_LXX
Nope

 

Even the portable paperback edition of N.T. Wright’s Kingdom translation didn’t go in:

 

No Fit_NTW

 

I got really excited that my since-discontinued TNIV Bible (which I’m pretty sure is “slimline”) would be the last Bible I’d put in the cover:

 

No Fit_TNIV1

 

But it was not to be:

 

No Fit_TNIV2

 

In fact, this was a real downside to the cover–this Bible and a small hardbound notebook both got bent in my efforts to wedge them in. I didn’t push too hard, but you really have to be sure your Bible is small enough for this thing to work. Again–the product page is clear here, but one might wish not to have so many misses in matching beloved Bible to beautiful cover.

This Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers is a nice fit:

 

Fit_Fathers

 

And don’t forget about books! That’s actually another good option, if maybe a little superfluous:

 

Fit_Devotions on HB

 

I wish I had more to contribute to what needs to be a running list somewhere on the Saddleback Website of “Bibles that fit this cover.” My Greek New Testament has a happy home now–and smells really good. I hope Saddleback will consider expanding its sizing options.

In the meantime, if the fit is right, it’s hard to imagine a nicer cover. Saddleback uses the best leather, and their workmanship is excellent. People who buy from them tend to buy more than one item over the course of a lifetime.

Saddleback’s site is here, with a ton of products that will make you want to “go leather or go home” (I hope I’m not giving anyone any Bible cover phrasing ideas). You can also check out my review of their pen/sunglasses case. The Leather Bible Cover (reasonable retail price of $49) is here.

 

 

Many thanks to the awesome people at Saddleback Leather for sending the Bible cover review! I’m really grateful they sent it, and I would have been embarrassed had anybody seen me rip into the UPS package the way I did when it arrived… though that did not influence the objectivity of the review.

“He Is Risen!” Delirious Tale or New Reality?

There was a family with twin boys. They looked exactly alike, but everything else about them was different. One liked rap; the other listened to country music. One always thought it was too warm in the house; the other thought it was too cold. And so on. One brother was a hope-filled optimist, while the other was a convinced pessimist.

Their dad wanted to try an experiment with them. So one Christmas Eve, while the kids were asleep, he filled the room of his pessimist son with every single item on his wish list: toys, games, books, gadgets.

The room of his optimist son, on the other hand, he filled with horse manure.

Christmas morning came, and the Dad went to the pessimist’s room. That son was surrounded with his new presents, weeping.

“Why are you crying?” said the dad.

The son replied, “My friends will get jealous of me; I’ll have to share; there’s all these instructions to read before I can play with the toys; the batteries are going to run out…”, etc.

Down the hall the father saw his other son–the optimist–singing and dancing around in the pile of manure.

“Why are you so happy?” the dad asked.

The optimistic son said, “Because… there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

 

Setting the Stage: The Tomb

 

The disciples on Easter morning lived in a pessimists’ world, and for good reason, as we’ll see. They had no hope of finding a pony among the manure. Their hope, they thought, lay dead in the ground, sealed behind a heavy stone.

Luke tells us some female disciples went to the tomb, “taking the spices that they had prepared.” They were going to embalm the body. Not in the hopes of resuscitating it—nobody thought that was possible. But because they wanted to show honor to the dead.

But they get there, and—no body. Luke 24:4 says “they were perplexed about this.”

And wouldn’t you be, too?

This is not necessarily a sign of hope to them, that the body is gone. It’s cause for despair.

Their beloved teacher, their companion and friend, the one who was going to redeem them from their constrained existence under Roman rule—this one was dead. What’s worse, they can’t mourn him properly now. They’re losing access to their chance at closure. This is not shaping up to be a good death.

Fact is, it’s not shaping up to be a death at all.

The angels ask, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (“The living,” they must’ve responded?)

“He is not here, but has risen!”

Spinning as their heads were, verse 8 represents at least a minor miracle: “They remembered his words.” It all clicks. Jesus is alive! They believe it.

And they run and tell the disciples and a bunch of others.

 

Unbelieving Disciples: Idle Tale

 

And don’t you just love how true-to-life the Gospels are?

The eleven apostles and the others—a formidable group of men and women from whom the Church would spring–they didn’t believe their own friends! Verse 11 says, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

“An idle tale.” Silliness. The ravings of madmen, or, in this case, madwomen. The narrator Luke was a doctor, his word for “idle tale” is rooted in medical language–it has to do with delirium. The women were assumed to be delirious.

 

Bad start for the Church

This is a bad start for the church–resurrection is THE core belief of Christianity. The apostle Paul would soon write, “If Christ has not been raised [from the dead], our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor 15:14)

Useless. The faith of these disciples the women are preaching to is useless. If the story had stopped here, you and I would not even be gathered for worship this morning! If you don’t have the resurrection of Jesus, you don’t stand a fighting chance against the world!

This is a real struggle of people of faith: they thought they were hearing idle tales.

They might have appreciated the narrative arc of the women’s story. They might have said, “This will make for some great literature to be studied in future English courses.” (Or, uh, Aramaic and Greek classes.) They maybe even saw the book sales potential–finally we’ve got something that can bump Homer off the best-sellers’ list!

But still, this is just a story we’re hearing, they thought. Fiction–not factual truth.

 

Justified, though?

One reason they didn’t believe the women is because of some bad cultural mores that discounted a woman’s witness. They weren’t seen as credible sources.

But if we can’t forgive the disciples their outdated sexism, let’s cut them some slack, for some other reasons. Before Jesus would undo death, his death had undone everything for the disciples. Every word Jesus had spoken to them? Felt like an empty promise. This coming Kingdom of God? Gone, nailed to the cross with him.

Besides that, one of these women, Mary Magdalene, had been demon-possessed. And not just sort of demon-possessed. She was severely demon-possessed. Luke told his readers earlier that she had “seven demons cast out.”

The disciples thought she was delirious, and must’ve wondered–did she now have a relapse, with Jesus dead? Is she a conduit for demons again?

Make no mistake–the disciples believed in resurrection, even before they saw Jesus. But the story of Lazarus notwithstanding, they seem to have reverted back to their default religious belief. Resurrection would happen in their mind… but at the last day. In the end times. And THIS was not yet the last day.

 

How we are like them

The story of the resurrection did not ring true in the disciples’ ears. To their mind there was no power to it.

There is a danger that you and I would hear the resurrection story as they did, as an idle tale. We are susceptible to the same disbelief the disciples had, when it comes to Jesus’ rising from the dead. Many today take this account as fiction.

Or worse, we might accept the truthfulness of Luke 24, but then unwittingly dismiss the resurrection story as an irrelevant tale. We may celebrate the resurrection historically, as a past event, without the realization that it still means everything for us today. We would be without true hope if we acknowledged that it happened, but then failed to live like ones who have ourselves received the gift of resurrection power, of new life.

 

Peter: Sprint to the Tomb

 

Peter fares a little better than the others. He actually takes the women’s story seriously, and so runs to the tomb, in Luke 24:12: “But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.”

He gets there and sees the tomb:

 

Tomb Vacancy

 

But Peter goes home. He doesn’t, oh, say, go back to the disciples and confirm the account of the women. That’s because, even though he’s amazed, he’s still not sure what everything means. His amazement does not seem to translate into full acceptance of faith. It’s more like being perplexed, bewildered. He is astounded, yes, but this going home feels like a shrug of the shoulders.

We can identify with Peter. How many times have we sprinted towards the cross, only to get there and turn around and go back home, to our old ways? How often have we run towards the empty tomb, eager to meet our risen Lord… only to walk away as if nothing ever happened?

It’s like the one in James who looks in a mirror and then goes away and forget what he looks like. Peter’s response calls to mind the seed that was sewn, and grew up fast… but then could not grow once it encountered the thorns and weeds of this life.

Living in the light of the resurrection is more marathon than sprint. Eagerness is good, yes, but so is stick-to-itiveness.

 

The Women

 

We come to Jesus much as the women came to the tomb that morning. We come to him with no hope in the world, apart from what we trust he can give us. Maybe you’re coming this morning and wondering if the resurrection really is all that relevant to what you’re going to have for lunch in a little while, or what your working day tomorrow looks like. Maybe you are having trouble connecting the glory of this morning to the mundane week that awaits you. Perhaps you are looking for somewhere trustworthy to place your belief… someone Good you can hold onto.

Mary Magdalene and the others, desperate and forlorn, manage somehow to offer a model response to the resurrection.

The male disciples–even Peter, the so-called “rock”–are Luke’s version of the TV show “What Not to Wear.” Dismissing the resurrection as an idle tale? Not the response I’m looking for, says Luke. Sprinting toward the empty tomb, only to go away shrugging your shoulders in bewilderment? Nope.

Instead, Luke traces an inspiring movement of faith by Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James.

 

They looked for the living, albeit among the dead

The angel asks, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The women didn’t realize they were looking for the living, but they were looking for Jesus all the same! They thought they were going to find a dead Jesus, but at least they were seeking all the Jesus they had left!

Especially in those moments when Jesus seems distant, disconnected–or, worse, dead to us–approaching what we have of him may be all we can do. Still do it, Luke suggests.

 

They bowed in worship

In response to the angel, the women “bowed their faces to the ground” in worship. This humble posture of Doxology shows their openness to letting God reveal himself however he will reveal himself. At this point they’ve let go of the fabrication that we know better than God.

 

They remembered his words

From their posture of worship, Mary and the women could remember what Jesus said. Verse 8 says, “Then they remembered his words.”

Remembering is not just something you happen to do or don’t. Sure, if we don’t go grocery shopping with a good list, the pack of coffee filters will slip our mind. But this remembering the women do–it’s more than a fleeting thought that happened to come to them. They’re training their focus back to inhabit the world they had known with Jesus. They’re calling his words to mind… dwelling on them, and believing them. They remember their first love. You do that, too, Luke seems to tell us.

 

What the Resurrection Means

 

This week has brought us a steady stream of reminders that life sometimes seems like nonsense. An airport attack in Brussels. Another one in Iraq. Yet another videotaped example of institutionalized racial profiling.

It would be easy to rush to the tombs of these innocent men and women and see only bewilderment and death.

Closer to home we have our own enigmatic interactions and happenings that push the limits of our capacity to hope in God.

But because of the resurrection, where our lives once looked like this…

 

Egg Down

 

…they now look like this:

 

Many Eggs

 

Jesus’ defeat of death is real. The resurrection is far-reaching in its implications. Jesus’ rising from the dead calls us to a new way of living. Those women’s lives really started that day.

Because of Jesus’ resurrection, failure can become opportunity. Because of Jesus’ defeat of death, every ending has in it the seeds of a new beginning. Because of the presence in our lives of the resurrected Christ, where we have forgotten, we can again choose to remember. Because the stone was rolled away, our stony hearts can give way to compassion. Because Jesus did not remain among the realm of the dead, mourners can know that–if not now–then SOME DAY they will rejoice. Because of Christ’s victory over the grave, when others intend to keep us down, God can bring us back up again, rising with him.

That optimistic twin brother was right–where there’s manure, there’s got to be a pony somewhere. But not because we are optimistic people by nature. There are plenty of things to be pessimistic about, and with good reason. But the power of Christ’s resurrection opens us up to a new reality. It’s more than a new perspective on life. It’s new life altogether!

We can overcome evil with good. We can stare down death and know that it’s not the end. Even when we’re confronted with evil, we can be assured that the power of the rolled away stone is stronger than the power of the tomb. We can follow these wonderful women, and be first responders at scenes of tragedy, sharing the good news of God’s love in Christ.

If the resurrection of Jesus is real–if it transformed the world then–it is still transforming the world now. If Mary Magdalene and her friends could go from wailing tears to evangelistic zeal, there is hope for you in your despairing moments. If Jesus rose from the dead–and, friends, he did–he rises again out of the rubble of the world. Jesus even rises in our hearts, and empowers us to choose life with Him.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Holy Saturday? More like “Awful Saturday”

(Adapted from the archives)

Many Western Christians have an idea of what to do on Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday we call to mind our sins, the last words of Jesus on the cross, the shock and despair his followers experienced… and we try to imagine his suffering, entering into that as best as we are able.

And then Easter is the party of all parties, when we declare the defeat of death: “Jesus Christ is no longer dead!”

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

But what about Saturday? The disciples didn’t have an “Easter” to look forward to. Jesus was done for, as far as they knew. He was really dead. When he did appear to the apostles, they were terrified and thought they were looking at a ghost. They weren’t even hopeful for resurrection–it hadn’t crossed their mind as an option.

So what some Orthodox call “Bright Saturday” was anything but bright for Jesus’ first followers. It was horrible. Awful Saturday, they thought they would have to call it for years to come. They felt as empty as the tomb was about to be. It was a Sabbath day, too, so they didn’t have any work to distract them. They were quiet. Or maybe they wailed loudly.

Maybe the second day–Saturday, and he was still gone!–was even more difficult for the disciples than Friday.

There’s a liminal quality to Saturday in Holy Week: it’s an often unnoticed, unmarked day that is situated between death (Good Friday) and life (Resurrection Sunday). How should I feel? Sad? Penitential? Happy? Pre-happy? Expectant? However I want? All or none of the above?

Many Episcopal churches have a full Easter Vigil service on Saturday night, but just this simple offering for a Holy Saturday liturgy. We “await with him” and “rise with him” in that service’s Collect. This calls to mind Psalm 30:5, which says, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Our Holy/Bright/Liminal Saturday is a short day, since we know of Resurrection Sunday’s shouts of acclamation and loud Alleluias.

But Saturday for the disciples was not liminal. It was not thought of as perched between death and life. That day and those men and women felt firmly ensconced in the grips of death. There was no “other side” to look forward to, as far as they knew–at least not until the end of time. The closing anthem in the short Book of Common Prayer liturgy above begins, “In the midst of life we are in death….”

 

Jesus and Mary

 

“We are in death.” Death Saturday. Awful Saturday.

Jesus’ followers had no clue what–or Who–was just around the corner….

Practicing Solitude Anywhere, in a Matter of Seconds

The practice of solitude suffers from some misconceptions.

An old misconception of the habit, which tempts our belief from time to time, is that solitude is primarily the domain of those who live in the desert or among cloisters and in monks’ cells.

We do have some impressive models from such traditions. There was St. Anthony of Egypt, who withdrew to the desert and lived as a hermit until he died at 105 years old. Hardly a week passed where he didn’t have some visitor coming to seek his wisdom.

Or maybe the word “solitude” conjures up a more recent spiritual practitioner, someone closer to home, like Thomas Merton, who wrote from a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.

We might also conceive of solitude as a luxury available only to folks with few external commitments.

But, as with all spiritual disciplines, practicing solitude is for everybody.

I’ve been having my inner world re-arranged again this Lent by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. He knows plenty about how often misunderstood the spiritual disciplines are. So on the very first page of his book, he says, “God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings: people who have jobs, who care for children, who wash dishes and mow lawns.”

Solitude is for everybody.

It’s not to be confused with loneliness.

In loneliness there is a constant wish that things would be other than they are. There is a deep, unsatisfied craving–even a sad yearning, a missing of what is not there. Loneliness includes anxiety. It feels like being forgotten or passed by. Loneliness seems more often beyond our control, whereas solitude is a choice.

Solitude and loneliness are not the same.

Neither is solitude merely time alone… any more than holy Sabbath-keeping is just lack of working.

There are plenty of ways to not work and still disregard a holy Sabbath that we consecrate to God. And there are many ways to be alone but not really alone with God. We can be alone and not even really alone with ourselves. Our first impulse when solo might be to distract ourselves with some noise or input.

 

Sanctified Time

 

Solitude is not just time alone; it’s sanctified time alone. It’s dedicated and God-focused aloneness.

The Psalmist prays to God, “My times are in your hands” (31:15). Solitude is sanctified time, willingly placed in God’s hands. It is our attention, given over to God for the purposes of God, not the purposes of the self.

Many Christians through the years have suggested one reason God doesn’t “speak” to us today is that we’re too absorbed in other noise to be attuned to God’s voice in the first place.

Solitude, then, is being by yourself, but in such a way that you are clutter-free enough to hear yourself, and to be open to the voice of God.

I share here about solitude, using the same units we use to measure time: seconds, minutes, hours, days.

 

Seconds

 

It is possible, yes, to put even the seconds of our lives into God’s hands. We can give the tick of the seconds hand to God in such a way that even something like a quarter of a minute can be sanctified for God’s work in us.

All of the spiritual disciplines have both internal and external components to them. When we think about the seconds of our days, a soul-searching question to ask is: What do I default to doing when I have a short break? What do I reach for when I’m waiting half a minute for someone to arrive at a meeting? Even when I get to the coffee shop and there are only two folks in front of me, where does my mind go? When my kid finally stops running around because he or she has to go potty, what am I doing with the short break–interrupted as it soon will be by a request for help?

All of those instances are enough time to pray, for example, the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I don’t mean we have to be deliberate about every single second of the day. That would be exhausting. And it’s good to just zone out sometimes. But especially if you’re struggling with where to find opportunities for solitude, those otherwise lost moments–those scattered seconds–are the place to begin. We all have these already-existing spaces–however small they are–that we don’t have to create. We just have to see them and be ready to use them as mini-retreats.

Thinking in terms of seconds an unexpected place to start on solitude. But this spiritual practice in particular, I think, is one where quality of time is at least as important as quantity of time.

If we don’t know how to sanctify the seconds of our lives for our communion with God–however brief it may be–if we can’t do that, we’re likely struggle when we carve out longer periods of time to reflect and pray by ourselves.

I was a professional house painter for a year. I wanted to paint fast (and well) like my boss. He cut in the best lines (with no painter’s tape!), and quickly.

But, of course, in my first weeks painting, I was only fast. As a result, I had to learn how to use a razor blade to take excess oil-based paint off window panes.

My boss referred me to Walter, the best painter in the city who occasionally worked with us. Walter trained me. He said: start with quality first. Get it right before you get it fast. Speed will follow good technique.

I slowed down. I got better at painting clean lines. My boss noticed my decrease in speed—how long it took me to do a window or baseboard—but he was patient. By the end the of year, I was painting windows and baseboards with no painter’s tape, almost as fast as my boss.

Solitude is like this, too: start with quality of time spent alone, then build quantity from there. Work on your solitude mindset technique, so to speak, in the seconds of the day.

And if you already regularly practice solitude with much greater quantity than seconds, pay attention to the seconds hand. God is just as present there as he is in your hour-long devotional time.

 

Minutes

 

Then there the minutes of our lives. They add up quickly, those minutes we need to get ready for the day, to do our hair, to take a shower, to wind down before we go to sleep. We spend minutes at a time in line at the grocery store. Minutes in the car (sometimes many minutes) stuck in traffic.

Like seconds, these minutes are already-existing moments we don’t have to create–they’re either built-in or beyond our control. And they’re a great place to practice solitude–opening ourselves up, in moments of aloneness, to God.

The other day I had to make what would be a 90-minute commute for a school meeting I was hoping would have just been an email.

Before leaving, I probably spent as much time complaining to my wife about the meeting as I would later spend stuck in traffic on the highway.

And I spent way too much psychological energy trying to figure out how I could redeem the 3 hours I knew I would be in the car. Audiobooks? Phone calls? Bass-heavy, hip hop music playlists?

To my surprise, when I got into the car to head out, I felt a fairly strong sense that I should just spend that time praying. Some of that praying ended up being confession for the non-prayer-like thoughts I had about the drivers around me. But as frustrated I was at all that time in the car, through God’s mercy, I was able to receive that solitude–such as it was–as a gift.

 

Hours

 

Our lives are made up of seconds and minutes… and also of hours. This moves us into territory where we need to carve out time and space for solitude. These hours exist–we all have the same amount of them each day. But a little more effort is required.

We’ve got to anticipate our first morning commitment and set the alarm for 15 or 30 or 45 minutes before that. Or look at what time our last commitment of the day will be and schedule time with ourselves and God at night, before we go to bed.

As we learn to practice solitude in the seconds and minutes of our days, time alone with God that is measured by the half hour and hour will become especially precious.

We heard the Gospels of Jesus–a man with relational demands on his time if ever there was one!–“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Often–on a regular basis. Even while the sick and needy were trying to track him down and keep him from solitude. He withdrew–a proactive move to seek substantial alone time with God.

 

Days

 

Then, as the quality of our sanctified time in God’s hands increases, we’ll probably not be content with just seconds and minutes and even hours–we’ll start to consider whether we can spend periods of solitude that span half-days and full days.

Something like an overnight retreat or day trip to a local retreat center requires extra coordination, but it’s just as doable as planning a vacation.

 

As a Way of Life and Orientation of the Heart

 

As we weave in and out of seconds, minutes, hours, and days, the question we want to answer is: How we can live in an integrated way so that our heart’s orientation can be one of inward solitude and focus on God? Even with crowds and sounds and external demands around us each day, how can we devote our attention in a given moment to singular communion with God?

Solitude is a way of life and, overall, an orientation of the heart, whether we are alone or with others.

There is much that keeps us from practicing solitude. They are internal and external: external noise, internal noise, fear, an impulse of self-preservation, feelings of incompetence in the spiritual life, and guilt.

Especially the barrier of guilt can keep us from solitude. We may have a sense of shame or having fallen woefully short when it comes to practices like God-focused solitude. Both our past and present lack of success induce enough guilt to keep us from entering into God’s presence during important moments of our day.

But, friends, every day we have 86,400 new seconds to call God’s goodness to mind and pray. Each day affords us 1,440 more minutes to say to God, “My time is in your hands.” This time—this very second—is in your hands.

We don’t get to choose the use of all of these seconds and minutes and 24 hours. The sheer amount of inputs competing for our attention will always tempt us to pass off God-focused solitude as the purview of advanced spiritual masters. But if you miss the three-minute opportunity you just had to re-center on God, don’t beat yourself up. Just offer God the next little pocket of time you have–when you’re waiting for someone or in between commitments.

God’s promise to us through Isaiah is: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”

Let us trust in God—let us trust God with our seconds, minutes, days, hours… and with focused hearts. May we fix our minds on Jesus through moments of solitude—moments both short and long. May God meet us there, and keep us in perfect peace.