Matthew 7-9

The Message continues to speak very fresh words to me. Maybe it's that it's been so long since I have read these passages at all, but I really am hearing some of these words as if I've never heard them before. Her's one passage that really speaks to me: "These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on." I so often hear or quote scripture as incidental comments, but it really must become foundational to me. It has been founcdational before, but that has been years ago. I've gotten away from inspirational reading at all, and it's been a LONG time since I turned to the Bible for guidance.

Wesley's commentary makes an observation I've never thought of before. Near the end of Matthew 8, Jesus allows the demon spirits to go into a herd of pigs, which then runs off a cliff into the sea and drowns. I've always known that pigs were undesirable animals to Jews (because of their being forbidden as food), but Wesley comments that it was illegal for Jews to own pigs. Therefore, Wesley says, allowing the spirits to kill the pigs was a humane way for the illegal and undesirable animals to be disposed of. And then Matthew tells how angry the townspeople were over the loss of the pigs, even though they knew they shouldn't have had the pigs to begin with. "They loved their swine so much better then their own souls!" Wesley writes. "How many are of the same mind!" How true that is--that we complain when something bad or harmful or sinful is taken away from us rather than seeing the blessing and protection in the event.

I've always thought of Mark as the book where Jesus moves immediately from one event to the next, but I'm seeing that in Matthew too. In these 3 chapters, Jesus heals so many people, one after the other. No wonder the people were so drawn to him. But he isn't easy to follow. Too many of us want a quick fix without really making life changes. Really loving him and following him means that we give ourselves back to him, not just that we take from him.

The Sermon on the Mount

What a different spin reading The Message puts on this passage. I've always been able to read the Sermon on the Mount fairly impersonally, but with The Message, I couldn't do that. It really hit me between the eyes. The commands and comments were so personal, so modern, so immediate. Jesus preaches such humility, such selflessness, such other-awareness. That's so different from our culture where we are encouraged to be the center of everything.

Living a Purpose-Driven Life

Jason and I have finished 27 days of our 40 days of reading The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, and we're developing some action plans for the kinds of behaviors we want to make habits of. Jason and I have each started daily Bible-reading plans, and he's blogging his thoughts, so I thought I would change my blog settings and use mine similarly.

I always enjoyed journaling but haven't done much of that in several years. I'll have to work on finding time to regularly blog, but once we finish the book, we won't be blogging there anymore. I like writing down my thoughts because it forces me to try to make sense of things that confuse me.

My Bible-reading plan is to work through the New Testament in about 3 months. In addition to reading the scripture itself, I also want to read some commentary to give me an expanded perspective. Today I read Matthew Henry, but I don't want to continue with him. Jason found John Wesley's commentary at crosswalk.com, so I think I'll look for it.

I read matthew 1-3 today in The Message translation and enjoyed the fresh look at Jesus' geneology, birth, and baptism. One thing that really stood out for me was how trusting and obedient Joseph was. I'm sure he had friends and family members who advised him not to marry Mary, but he trusted that his dream was truly from God. I wonder how often he doubted himself, and I wonder how much he and Mary talked about all of that. We tend to think of them as wooden characters who just did what was appointed to them, but they were real people with fears and doubts and questions. They were no different from anyone else whom God gives a job to. I want to develop that kind of trusting and obedient nature.