Tag Archives: Jesus

Chapter-a-Day

When to Say “Enough”

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When to Say "Enough" (CaD Jer 5) – Wayfarer

They are well-fed, lusty stallions,
    each neighing for another man’s wife.
Jeremiah 5:8 (NIV)

Wendy and I have been listening to a really great podcast of late that explores the Bible from the perspective of the original Hebrew language. I know it doesn’t sound like everyone’s cup of tea, but it is actually very fascinating.

There was something that was mentioned in the very first episode of that podcast that has stuck with me ever since I heard it. After creating the universe in six days, God rests on the seventh. The commentator pointed out that God rested, not because He was tired, but because “God knows when to say ‘enough.'”

The point is that the problems of humanity, beginning with Adam and Eve’s original bite of the forbidden fruit, are really about appetite control. We don’t know when to say “enough.”

I have a natural appetite for food for survival, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” it turns into gluttony.

I have a natural appetite for sex for procreation and intimacy, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” it turns into destructive lust.

I have a natural appetite for the things I need to survive, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” it turns into greed.

I have a natural appetite for justice, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” it turns into wrath.

I have an appetite for rest, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” it turns into sloth.

I was designed to live in harmony and community with others, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” I become envious of them, their possessions, and/or their lives.

I am made in the image of God and designed to live in communion with God, but when I don’t know when to say “enough” my pride leads to me wanting to be my own god.

In today’s chapter, Jeremiah describes his idolatrous people as “lusty stallions” (btw: Am I the only one who immediately thought of Bill and Ted?) in reference to the overtly sexual nature and practices of many of the pagan gods his people didn’t want to give up. The metaphor points to humans being driven by their appetites like an animal in heat, instead of controlling them. Instead of being able to say “enough.”

In the quiet this morning, I was reminded of the “fruits of the Spirit” – the qualities that are supposed to be increasingly evident in my life as I follow the path of Jesus. The list of character qualities begins with the preeminent love and it’s anchored with the quality of self-control. In other words, as I grow in my relationship with Jesus (the Alpha through whom everything was created), I should increasingly exhibit the very quality He expressed from the beginning of creation on the seventh day: knowing when to say “enough.”

And with that thought, I believe I’ve written enough this morning.

Have a great day, my friend.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Shooting the Messenger

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Shooting the Messenger (CaD Jer 4) – Wayfarer

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
    circumcise your hearts…
Jeremiah 4:4a (NIV)

“Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office…”
Shakespeare, Henry IV (Part 2)

As Wendy and I drove down to the lake yesterday, I listened to the Cubs’ Spring Training game against the A’s. The regular season starts next week and this is the time of year when baseball prophets and prognosticators predict which teams will contend for the postseason and World Series this year. Like most fans, I like to hear “experts” giving me hope for a winning season and the potential of watching my team play in October. I equally despise hearing “experts” giving doomsday predictions of another season of being the doormat of our division rivals no matter how accurate they might be. I shut them off. I tune them out. I refuse to listen. And, if I’m honest, I don’t like them very much.

No one likes the bearer of bad news. “Shooting the messenger” is a commonly used metaphor. It is rooted in sentiments by Plutarch and Sophocles. Shakespeare used it in two of his plays.

The ancient Hebrew prophets were not particularly popular in their day. You’ll find that Jeremiah will face a fair amount of persecution as we trek through his writings and story. His prophetic prognostications are almost always bad news. Even Jesus lamented, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you…” (Luke 13:34). The Hebrews gained a reputation for “shooting the messenger” when it came to the doomsday prophets God sent their way.

Get ready. Jeremiah has a lot of doom and gloom to proclaim, starting with today’s chapter.

Among the things I find most fascinating about the ancient Hebrew prophets is the way they connect to one another, and the way they foreshadow what’s to come in the Great Story in ways they could never have known.

In our recent chapter-a-day trek through Daniel, we read one of Daniel’s visions in which the coming succession of empires was represented by different beasts. The Neo-Babylonian empire that had taken Daniel into captivity was represented metaphorically as a lion (Daniel 7:1-4). In today’s doomsday message for the people of Judah, Jerry writes:

A lion has come out of his lair;
    a destroyer of nations has set out.
He has left his place
    to lay waste your land.

The lion in Jeremiah’s prophetic poem is the same lion in Daniel’s vision. Jeremiah is recording the message in today’s chapter sometime around 620 BC. The events he’s accurately described will tragically take place 40-50 years later. Of course, no one wants to hear this.

When Jerry tells the people of Judah and Jerusalem to “circumcise your hearts,” he is foreshadowing a tectonic shift that Jesus would usher in some 600 years later. The Hebrews of Jerry’s day thought they were in good standing with God simply because they were “God’s people” as evidenced by their heritage, DNA, and traditional physical signs such as circumcising males. But this was exactly the point God is making through prophet Jerry. Just being a member of the tribe was never the point. It is from the heart that our motives give birth to action. Having a circumcised penis is simply a physical sign. God is looking for a spiritual sign, a circumcised heart. Jesus said as much:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Matthew 15:17-19 (NIV)

Just as Jeremiah was persecuted for his words, Jesus would be persecuted and executed for His.

The apostle Paul would make this same argument in his letter to Jesus’ followers in Rome:

“A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.“
Romans 2:28-29 (NIV)

Just as Jeremiah and Jesus were persecuted for their words, Paul would be persecuted and executed for his.

I promise to have mercy on those prophets who are predicting another losing season for the Cubs. They could well be right. In the same vein, I ask mercy, dear reader, for anything I write that you don’t like. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

Please don’t shoot the messenger! 😜

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Faith-less or Un-faithful?

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The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah.”
Jeremiah 3:11 (NIV)

There is a stretch of my life journey that I look back on and call “the dark years.” I was angry for a number of reasons, and underneath the anger was an internal struggle with God, with myself, and with my circumstances. In this struggle, I acted out in unhealthy ways.

A therapist friend of mine says that “everyone is having a conversation with Life,” and I have found this to be true in my own experience. During my dark years, I wasn’t ignoring God or pretending He didn’t exist. I was in constant conversation with God. Like a rebellious teenager, I screamed at God. I threw tantrums. I argued with God, I swore at God, and I defiantly did things I was forbidden to do out of spite. And, when my attitude and actions led to really painful places, I found myself walking in the shoes of the Prodigal. I was humbled. I was broken. I was ashamed of the pain I had caused my loved ones, and I returned to the arms of my Heavenly Father and learned what “amazing grace” really means.

The dark years came to mind as I read today’s chapter. It begins with God addressing the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah couldn’t make up their mind regarding their relationship with God. Of their 20 monarchs, nine of them were somewhat faithful to God, while 11 of them followed after the local pagan gods. I can’t help but think of the words of the prophet Elijah from a couple hundred years before Jeremiah: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

I have to remember that Jeremiah is addressing the people of Judah amidst the religious reforms enforced by King Josiah. The people of Judah are pining for their idols despite the fact that the king has destroyed and outlawed them. They feel no shame about this. Theirs is a life of duplicity and wavering. They want it both ways. They contend to have an open marriage with God. “I should be able to make love to my pagan idols, and God should love and bless me anyway.”

God then tells Jeremiah to consider the northern kingdom of Israel. At the time of Jeremiah’s prophetic sermon, Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians and led into captivity a hundred years before. Unlike Judah, Israel didn’t waver. They wholeheartedly went after idolatry. Not one of their 19 kings was faithful to God. Like me in my dark years, they flipped off their Heavenly Father in oppositional defiance. And, then they hit rock bottom thanks to the Assyrian Empire.

Now God speaks to Jeremiah as a frustrated yet loving Father. He sees Israel’s outright rebellion as more honest than the duplicitous wavering of her sister, Judah. God uses two different Hebrew adjectives. Israel was “faith-less” (there was no attempt to even pretend they cared) while Judah was “un-faithful” (they toyed and pretended they would be faithful, only to betray God over and over again). Father God then has Jeremiah face the leftover remnants of His people in the north and pleads for the Prodigal to return.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself mulling over my dark years. Ugh! I honestly see the shadow of both Judah and Israel in my own oppositional defiance, neither of them good. But today’s chapter has me contemplating the fact that there is something that God respects in those sinners who don’t even pretend to care about Him in contrast to those who say they love Him and then live as if they love the world and the things of the world. I see this in the way Jesus hung out with the outright “sinners” like Israel while directing His sharpest criticism and condemnation on the “religious” leaders who, like Judah, pretended they were faithful, but whom Jesus described as “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

I head into the day with this episode from Matthew 9:11-13 resonating in my spirit:

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and misfits?”

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

Featured Image: Prodigal Son by Thomas Hart Benton

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Bride

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The Bride (CaD Jer 2) – Wayfarer

“This is what the Lord says:
“‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
    how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
    through a land not sown.”
Jeremiah 2:2 (NIV)

One of the keys to unlocking the power of the ancient prophets is to understand both the context of their time and circumstances in history and the metaphors they use in addressing them.

Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry began during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (648-609 BC). The authors of Kings and Chronicles have made it clear that the Hebrew people have spent most of their nearly 300 years as divided kingdoms breaking the first two of God’s Top Ten rules for life (1. No other gods 2. No idols). By the time Josiah ascends the throne, there had been 19 successive kings in Israel who all promoted the worship of local and regional pagan idols. Of Josiah’s 15 predecessors in Judah, seven had been outright idolatrous and most of the others maintained a policy of appeasement with those who wanted to worship gods other than Yahweh. The result was that even the worship of the God of Abraham, Moses, and David had been diluted to the point that it was an empty shell of what God had prescribed for worship as Moses led the Hebrew tribes out of slavery in Egypt.

King Josiah led a massive reformation after a copy of the Law of Moses was discovered in a storage closet in Solomon’s Temple. The fact that it had been lost in a Temple junk room lends evidence to how far worship had strayed from God’s design. Even the priests of God had not read or taught God’s law in who knows how long. Solomon’s Temple itself had become a polytheistic religious center in which shrines and altars to pagan gods were placed alongside the altar God had prescribed back in Exodus. After three hundred years of polytheistic political accommodation, it’s hard to believe that young Josiah’s dictatorial reforms were universally well-received by his people.

It’s in this period of religious reformation and the resulting political tension that a young Jeremiah begins his prophetic career. Jeremiah and Josiah got along well, and Jerry’s career took off under the power and protection of Josiah as his benefactor.

Today’s chapter is the first of Jerry’s recorded prophetic messages. He addresses God’s people with one overarching metaphor: marriage. The Hebrew people were God’s young bride. God initiated through Abraham and then again in Moses, God pursued her in Egypt, God secured her, and God led her out of slavery and into a covenant relationship. God provided for her and led her to a home He prepared for her. What He asked of her was faithfulness.

By the way, Jesus used this same marital metaphor. His followers are His bride. At the Omega Point of the Great Story is a wedding and the greatest wedding feast of all time (Rev 19:7-9).

As for Jeremiah, he sits amidst Josiah’s mandated reform and hears the grumbling of the idolaters who desire to go back to their shrine prostitutes and fertility orgies. He sees those who gave lip service to Josiah’s reforms but meet secretly with their idols on the down-low. In this, he envisions God’s bride following indulgent appetites into adulterous liaisons only to justify her actions and lie to herself that her husband doesn’t care.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but escape the power of Jeremiah’s metaphor as I face my past. I know the reality of a broken marriage and divorce. I have experienced “youthful devotion” that led to a broken marital covenant. I stand guilty like Jeremiah’s audience. The unspoken question, of course, is “What am I going to do about it?” The calling of a prophet is to call God’s spiritually wayward people to repentance, to find the Prodigal knee-deep in the pig slop, and suggest he consider returning home. And from his first message, Jeremiah is on-task.

As I meditated on the chapter this morning, a line from an old hymn popped into my head and heart:

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the one I love.”

I head into today with introspection. Where, in my spiritual journey, am I prone to wander? In what ways do my own appetites beckon me to indulge and lead me away from the One I love? The following line in the hymn describes my heart’s cry:

“Here’s my heart. Oh, take and seal it.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Certain Calling in Uncertain Times

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Certain Calling in Uncertain Times (CaD Jer 1) – Wayfarer

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Jeremiah 1:9-10 (NIV)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The past seven years have been the craziest stretch in my lifetime. I’ve heard some of my elders compare it to the 1960s and early 1970s. I was but a wee-one back then. I was six when Nixon resigned. I remember watching it on television.

The political turmoil, the division, the global upheaval of the pandemic, and the heightened conflicts in virtually every layer of society have been fascinating to observe. What’s made it even more fascinating for me is to recognize that the upheaval flies in the face of a well-documented reality: The earth as a whole has never been such a great place to live in all of human history. Life spans have never been longer. Humans have never been so rich, so educated, so healthy, or so safe. If you don’t believe me, please pick up a copy of Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness or stop by his website gapminder.

What has been so fascinating for me to witness is seeing so many claiming that the world has never been a worse place to live and that things have never been worse economically, racially, and in the quality of life. When I observe this disconnect, I personally conclude that there is something happening on a spiritual level.

For those who have been trekking along with me on this chapter-a-day journey, our trail this past year has been through the story of the history of the Hebrew tribes from the time of the Judges through the monarchies of Saul, David, and Solomon, to the years of the divided kingdoms of Israel (north) and Judah (south). We ended 2 Kings in which the kingdom of Judah is taken into exile by the Babylonians, and we then followed the prophet Daniel to Babylon.

Life at the end of the Hebrew monarchy and the time of the Babylonian exile was a period of tremendous upheaval on almost every level of society for the people of Judah. There was political instability, and conflict everywhere along with violence, war, and famine. It feels to me as if it was, for the common person living through it, not unlike what we have been experiencing in our own period of history.

There was a man who lived through this period of upheaval. His name was Jeremiah. God called Jerry to be His prophet and the prophet wrote the longest book in all of the Great Story (by Hebrew word count). He not only records the words God gave him, but he was also not afraid to record his personal emotions about his life and circumstances. He was not afraid to cry out to God against his personal enemies. Jerry is a very human being who is living in strange times. And so, I think it is a good time to make another journey through his story, and through his writings.

In today’s chapter, God calls Jerry to be His mouthpiece. He’s young. He’s too young, the young man tells God. He’s probably parroting what he’s been repeatedly told by his parents, his teachers, his culture, and every adult he’s ever known. But, as Paul instructs young Timothy, God tells young Jerry not to let anyone look down on him because he’s young. God doesn’t put a minimum age on being His instrument. That’s a lesson that earthly religious institutions have never really embraced. Human institutions prefer the bureaucratic control of hoop-jumping and meritocracy to the messiness of mystery, faith, and surrender.

What God makes clear to Jerry from the beginning is that, as the Author of Life, He has had a plan for Jerry before he was formed in the womb. He likewise is authoring the Great Story on a geopolitical scale and the storyboard is already sketched out. Jerry’s job is to fulfill his role and to communicate the script that’s already written.

This gives me encouragement as a disciple of Jesus walking through my own strange times. I believe that I was known before I was formed in my mother’s womb. I believe that what is happening in the modern geopolitical landscape and our own period of history is every bit as storyboarded as the events of Jeremiah’s day. If I really believe what I say I believe, then I have nothing to fear nor do I need to be anxious – just as Jesus instructed The Twelve on the eve of His execution. I simply need to fulfill the role I’ve been given and trust the story that’s already written.

The featured image on today’s post was created with Wonder AI

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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AP Prophetic Lit

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AP Prophetic Lit (CaD Dan 11) – Wayfarer

“His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation. With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.”
Daniel 11:31-32 (NIV)

Throughout my school years, I had various teachers and counselors encourage me to take Advanced Placement (AP) courses. In many cases, like English and History, I was ready for the challenge and it worked out really well in accelerating my studies in those subjects. In other cases, namely math, I wasn’t ready to make the jump that my teacher insisted I take. I never really recovered. Eventually, I ended up abandoning math as a course of study. I have always regretted this.

In a similar way, I know many who at some point in life, perhaps multiple times, dive in and commit themselves to read the Bible. Since most books contain a linear storyline, it’s common to start at the beginning. But the Great Story, while it does have a storyline, is arranged thematically. Some parts read fairly easily for modern beginners, even if the ancient stories contain head-scratching content. At some point, however, most casual readers give up and abandon it like I abandoned the subject of math. I consider this regrettable.

The truth is that some sections of the Great Story are difficult even for learned readers. Among the most difficult are prophetic, or apocalyptic, passages like today’s chapter. Daniel’s complex and detailed vision is actually quite fascinating, but without a little background knowledge of both history and apocalyptic theories, it could easily seem like a hodgepodge of gobbledygook.

What’s fascinating is that most of today’s chapter is a very accurate prophecy regarding the fate of the land of Israel in the centuries following Daniel. The prophetic vision is like a playbill identifying all of the key players in the historic dramas of the Persian and Greek Empires. It leads to one of the most infamous periods of their history, a period most modern followers of Jesus know little-to-nothing about because it happens between the Old and New Testaments.

A few chapters ago I briefly mentioned the heinous ruler arose to power in the land of Judea before the ascendence of the Roman Empire known to history as Antiochus Epiphanes. He sought to eradicate Judaism in Judea. To that end, he famously shut down Jewish worship at the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and then audaciously sacrificed a hog on the altar in a pagan ritual to Zeus. Hogs were considered unclean by the Law of Moses, and his act was seen as a blasphemous abomination prophetically predicted by Daniel in verse 31 of today’s chapter. As I contemplated this in the quiet this morning, I thought about how I might feel if a Satanic ritual abortion was performed on the altar of my local church.

So far so good, but starting in verses 35-36, the prophetic narrative stops clearly describing actual historic events and rulers. The final section of the chapter has yet to be fulfilled historically in any meaningful way and it remained somewhat mysterious for over 500 years. Then Jesus spoke to His followers about the end times and mentions that there will be another “abomination that causes desolation” (Matt 24:15). History does have a way of repeating itself, and Jesus seems to indicate that there will be another version of Antiochus Epiphanes to come. A few decades later, John received his Revelations on the Isle of Patmos and his visions of an antichrist and an unholy trinity of the dragon (Satan) and two beasts (anti-christ and his prophet). The end of today’s chapter seems to fit hand-in-glove with John’s vision of a blasphemous, conquering anti-christ sweeping in to conquer the Holy Land. And so, scholars contend that the final prophetic writings of Daniel have yet to be fulfilled. They are pieces of a prophetic puzzle regarding the end times.

So what am I supposed to take away from today’s AP Prophetic Literature chapter? What does it have to do with me this Wednesday morning in the 21st century?

The first thing is very simple. Daniel’s prophetic vision so accurately predicts the geo-political events of the next couple of hundred years that I’m reminded of what many artists have found to be true: things are already written. And, this leads to the second thing.

When Paul writes that “all things work together for good for those who love God and have been called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28) it is more true than I can possibly imagine. This sows seeds of peace in my soul, no matter the outward circumstances. I think of a scene in The Lord of the Rings in which Galadriel explains to Frodo that the completion of his mission will mean an end to the power of the three elven rings and an end to the elves time in Middle Earth. When Frodo asks Galadriel what she wishes to happen, she replies, “That what should be shall be.”

Having the desire that “what should be, shall be” on the grand scale of the Great Story affords me much-needed context to the rather minor scale of my own life circumstances.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Golf Dream

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Golf Dream (CaD Dan 7) – Wayfarer

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.
Daniel 7:1 (NIV)

The other day I had an unusual experience. All night long I had strange and vivid dreams. Most of them were the typical mish-mash of things both silly, non-sensical, and strange. I woke up, however, remembering one vivid dream about me and an old friend going golfing. This is funny because I’m not a golfer, though I remember playing a few holes with him once. That was over thirty years ago.

I remember from my dream that we were standing in line in the clubhouse waiting for our tee time. It was a busy course. There were others in our group, but I didn’t know them. The tee box for the first hole was literally right outside the clubhouse door in a sort of vestibule with the exterior walls of the clubhouse on either side of the tee box extending and creating a kind of alleyway. The fairway went about ten yards in front of the tee and then did a severe ninety-degree dog leg around the corner of the clubhouse.

What was funny about this is that if I try to hit a golf ball straight, it would probably shank at just that 90-degree angle (which is why I’m not a golfer) but I could never in a million years do that on purpose, and in my dream, I knew this. I was perplexed about how to proceed and considered using my putter off the tee to get the ball past the clubhouse wall and effectively lay up for my second shot. I can remember thinking in my dream what a terrible golfer I must be to have to use my putter off the tee.

For some reason, this dream stuck with me that day and it came to mind as I was getting ready for bed. I hadn’t talked to my friend in a long time, so I texted him out of the blue that evening. I didn’t expect him to reply immediately:

Okay, that was wild. Was there anything spiritual about it, or was it just a coincidence? Here’s where my thoughts on the prophetic provide me with guidance. I won’t dismiss it outright, and I won’t obsess about it. I do believe that everything is connected. I will hold on loosely and enjoy the wonder that my spirit, and/or Holy Spirit, seemed to somehow connect that a dear friend was celebrating a big waypoint on life’s road that day (and that I should have been with him at Pebble Beach that day!!! 😂😂😂).

Today’s chapter represents a huge shift in the book of Daniel. So far, it’s been a string of really incredible stories. From here on out, it becomes largely a record of prophetic dreams and visions. The dream in today’s chapter describes four strange beasts that are metaphors for the successive empires that will rule the Near East in the coming centuries: Neo-Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman. Daniel’s dream ends with a vision of “the son of man” (a title Jesus used of Himself) who will establish a kingdom of “all nations and peoples” with dominion that will be eternal.

It is not unusual for the prophetic to be “layered” with meaning. While it certainly points to the coming of the Messiah, the second half of today’s chapter is also regularly connected by scholars to the visions of the end times in the book of Revelation.

As I contemplated the prophetic and the dreams in today’s chapter, my thoughts led me to consider that God was particularly active in delivering miracles, dreams, and visions during this period of the Babylonian exile. That’s one of the themes across the Great Story. There are seasons and periods of time in which the miraculous and the prophetic are plentiful. Then there are seasons and periods of time in which they are rare. I find it fascinating that the seasons of plenty tend to coincide with periods of struggle. The time of Moses came in enslavement and wilderness wanderings. This period of the stories of Daniel and Esther happens during captivity and exile. Jesus’ arrival on the scene and the subsequent Jesus Movement happen as Daniel’s dream predicts, amidst Roman occupation and then persecution.

So I have found it to be in my own spiritual journey. It is in times of struggle, tragedy, wilderness, and exile that the work of God’s Spirit becomes more active and acute. Perhaps it’s because I’m spiritually more needy, focused, and open during these seasons. Perhaps it’s because God knows that I need more encouragement and a reminder of His provision and presence as I traverse the dark valleys on life’s road. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. Either way, there’s wisdom in embracing the reality that I will experience both types of seasons in my story, just as both types of seasons are present across the Great Story.

And, happy birthday to my friend, Matt. I hope Pebble Beach was a blast. It’s probably good I wasn’t there. Me putting off the tee would have only been an embarrassment.

Featured Image created with Wonder AI

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Culture and Compromise

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Culture and Compromise (CaD Dan 3) – Wayfarer

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Daniel 3:16-18 (NIV)

I’ve recently been devouring a series of fictional spy thrillers by one of my favorite authors writing under a pen name. In one of the books, the author uses a real event from post-World War II history as a backdrop to one of the stories. As a lover of history, I was amazed that I don’t ever remember learning about it. Scholars have said it is the most horrific example of human cruelty in the 20th century, ranking its intensity as worse than the Holocaust though its scope was relatively small.

In Communist Romania, Pitesti Prison was the center of an experimental “re-education system” that was focused on mainly young men who politically opposed the Communist regime. Many of them did so because of their Jewish or Christian faith. No one knows how many victims were subjected to the horror. Estimates range from 780 to 5,000. It lasted from 1949-1951. The experiment’s goal was to re-educate prisoners into discarding past religious convictions and ideology, and, eventually, to alter their personalities to the point of absolute obedience. It systemically tortured subjects both psychologically and physically. Subjects were forced to identify those among their torturers who were less brutal or more indulgent in their torture. Public humiliation was used to get subjects to denounce all personal beliefs, loyalties, and values, which included sacrilegious and blasphemous rituals meant to mock the actual religious rituals the victims had originally held dear. The descriptions of the torture and humiliation are so horrific that I refuse to even describe them.

The past few days, the Pitesti Prison experiment has come to mind as I read about the “re-education” that the ancient Babylonians put Daniel and his friends through. Obviously, their experience as described in the past two chapters has been fairly benign, intended to identify the best-of-the-best for key roles in the King’s administration. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t have its dangers.

History is filled with stories of rulers with absolute power who entertained themselves by making subjects do unimaginable things and killing individuals in horrific ways for sport. The ancient Assyrians and Babylonians were known for their brutality. It’s one of the reasons they successfully conquered so much territory in building their empires.

Today’s chapter is one of the most famous stories within the Great Story. The king sets up a giant image out on a plain and demands everyone to bow down and worship it. The re-educated captives from Judah, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refuse to do so in obedience to the Law of Moses: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

The king, furious over their refusal, threw the three of them into a giant furnace (likely used in the forging and erecting of the giant statue). The king looks into the furnace to watch them burn only to see them hanging out with a fourth individual the king describes as “a son of the gods.” God miraculously protects the boys and Nebuchadnezzar promotes them.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself continuing to contemplate the idea of loving one’s enemy or enemies, and maintaining one’s faith even in the midst of an antagonistic culture. I’m eternally grateful not to have been subjected to an experience like Pitesti Prison or its ancient Babylonian equivalent. Nevertheless, I must consider – even in a relatively free and tolerant culture – how much I’m willing to compromise with popular culture and when I must draw the line because of the convictions of my faith. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were given a very clear line by King Nebuchadnezzar along with very stark consequences for non-capitulation. Along my spiritual journey, I’ve found it difficult when the lines of compromise are vague and the consequences seemingly non-existent.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

“A God in Heaven”

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"A God in Heaven" (CaD Dan 2) – Wayfarer

Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.
Daniel 2:27-28 (NIV)

Along my life journey, I’ve witnessed an amazing amount of change. We are in the age of technology, and my generation has arguably witnessed more technological advances in our lifetime than any other generation in human history. Among my favorites in the daily scroll of memes are those that remind me of life in my childhood. It was so, so different.

The change I’ve witnessed, however, has not been merely technological. It has also been cultural, intellectual, and spiritual. It is also said that we are now living in a post-Christian age, and I have observed this shift. Most of the. mainline Protestant denominational institutions that existed and held sway have fractured, imploded, and exist as a shell of their former selves. Church attendance was waning before the pandemic. Recent research shows that COVID accelerated that decline and shuttered many small churches altogether.

Culture wars enflamed by divisive politics, racial tension, and the pandemic seem to have not only accelerated the decline of institutional Christianity but fostered increased antipathy, even hatred. Consider this headline from Time magazine, a headline that was unthinkable from a major news outlet forty years ago: “Regular Christians are No Longer Welcome in American Culture.”

When I was a youth, it was Christian power brokers who sought to use politics and institutions to cancel enemies, threaten opponents, and enforce their ideology across the cultural spectrum. I have observed the pendulum swing to the opposite side in my lifetime. It is a different group of power brokers who have become the dominant voice of culture, canceling enemies and threatening dissenters, silencing opposition, and promoting its ideology as gospel truth that is not to be questioned or doubted.

I live in the most fascinating of times.

I can’t imagine the cultural shift that Daniel experienced as he was pulled from the life he knew, was drug to a foreign land, forced into a re-education program, and placed into the service of the king who destroyed his home and slaughtered his people. And, in the midst of it, God says He wants Daniel and his people to embrace this change and be a blessing to his enemy.

A couple of days ago, I wrote of the “wilderness” that Jung and Campbell noticed every hero goes through in all the great stories. The fourth step in that wilderness journey is that the hero “encounters allies and enemies, undergoes challenges from which no escape seems possible. The stakes are clearly life and death.“

In today’s chapter, Daniel finds himself with just such a challenge. The King has a dream and demands that his magicians, astrologers, enchanters, and wise men both tell him what the dream was and what it meant. If they don’t, he’s going to kill them all, including our hero Daniel and his friends. Daniel and his friends pray, and God gives Daniel the answer in a night vision.

When Daniel approaches the king the following day, he makes clear that he had no part in divining the answer and interpretation, but “there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.” The title “God of Heaven” is a title used by Abraham back in Genesis, but then it doesn’t appear again until the exile and post-exile writings of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. It appears that Daniel found a name for God that was acceptable to both him and his pagan Persian enemy. He finds a way to bridge the cultural gap and introduce the king to his God who has “raised him up” despite his ignorance of the fact. God making Himself known to King Nebuchadnezzar is a theme in Daniel’s story arc.

In the quiet this morning, I think about myself as a disciple of Jesus living in a culture that I observe becoming increasingly oppositional. At the same time, I observe fellow believers becoming angry, defiant, and oppositional in return. I, however, see in Daniel’s story an example to follow. If I truly believe what I say I believe, this includes the truth of Daniel’s prayer in today’s chapter:

“[God] changes times and seasons;
    he deposes kings and raises up others.”

If God was in control, even in the change of “times and seasons” that Daniel experienced being thrust into Babylonian captivity, then I think I have to consider the change in times and seasons I have witnessed and experienced to also be part of the Great Story that God is authoring. And if that is true, then Daniel’s example of remaining faithful in the courts of his enemy and humbly finding ways to introduce his enemy to God is an example I think God would have me follow in similar (albeit not as extreme…yet) circumstances.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Serving the Enemy

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Serving the Enemy (CaD Dan 1) – Wayfarer

The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service.
Daniel 1:19 (NIV)

Over the past several months, this chapter-a-day journey has traversed the history of the period of the monarchy of the ancient nation of Israel as told in the books of Samuel and Kings. That period of history ends with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. At that point, a new period of history began known as “the exile.”

The nature of empire-building evolved in ancient history. As emerging empires captured more and more territory, they had to learn how to exert power and control over kingdoms and cities that were in increasingly remote locations. The way the Babylonians did it was to bring all of the prominent peoples of a conquered kingdom (politicians, religious leaders, and nobility) into captivity. This allowed the empire to keep its eyes on those most likely to rebel, and those most likely to rebel found themselves in the heart of enemy territory where they would be impotent to instigate a rebellion back home.

Since we’ve already come this far in the journey, I thought it would make sense to follow these captives to Babylon. Today, we pick up the story in the book of Daniel. Daniel was a young man from Judah who was among the first captives taken to the land of his enemy in Babylon. In today’s chapter, he and three of his friends are among those chosen for the king of Babylon’s “re-education” program. They were taught to become Babylonians. They learned the language, the stories, and the customs of the Babylonians. They were given new names to go along with their new lives and circumstances.

The story of Daniel is fascinating from a historical perspective, but I find what’s happening spiritually to be even more fascinating. This exile had been prophetically proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets for years. In fact, prophets like Jeremiah made it clear that the king of Babylon was acting as God’s servant in the event:

Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: “Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the peoples of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations.
Jeremiah 25:8-9 (NIV)

Going even further, God tells the captives like Daniel to embrace their new lives in enemy territory and bless their enemies:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NIV)

Through the 102 chapters of ancient history that we’ve just traversed on this chapter-a-day journey, the narrative has been focused on God’s people and what God was doing in and through them. Suddenly, God tells them that He is also working in and through their enemy. Like yesterday’s chapter, God makes it clear that He has a purpose for them in the wilderness of their captivity. God wants them to bless their enemies, serve them, and pray for them.

On a national, geopolitical level this is a massive shift. But it’s a foreshadowing of the very heart of what Jesus would bring down to a personal, individual level:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
Matthew 5:43-47 (NIV)

In the quiet this morning, it strikes me how often along my spiritual journey I’ve had an “us vs. them” mentality politically and religiously. The history of the Babylonian exile and the shift in God’s paradigm with His people reminds me that God’s love is for all people. His purposes are for all people. If I am going to truly follow where Jesus leads, then I have to let go of my notions of “them.” I have to be willing to see God’s love for my enemy, live in the land of my enemy, bless my enemy, and even serve my enemy.

That’s at the heart of what He calls me to be and do.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.