Meditate on it

Section 68 ANOTHER AVOIDING OF HEROD'S TERRITORY MATT. 15:29 MARK 7:31 Section 69  THE DEAF STAMMERER HEALED AND FOUR THOUSAND FED MATT. 15:30-39 MARK 7:32-8:9 Jon Courson helped me to see the feeding of the 4,000 in a meaningful light.  All of the below is his topical study on this incident: "The passage before us is controversial. Many scholars suggest it is nothing more than a retelling of the "feeding of the five thousand" story in Matthew 14. Why? It's the only explanation they can offer for the seeming stupidity of the disciples. You see, here in chapter 15, the disciples ask Jesus how they are to feed such a large crowd. Why would the disciples wonder how to feed four thousand if only a mere chapter earlier, they had seen Jesus feed over five thousand? "The only logical answer," conclude the scholars, "is that Mat_14:14-21 and Mat_15:32-39 are two different accounts of the same event." I, however, reject their premise for th

Sections 66 & 67 SECOND WITHDRAWAL FROM HEROD'S TERRITORY MATT. 15:21 MARK 7:24 HEALING A PHOENICIAN WOMAN'S DAUGHTER. (Region of Tyre and Sidon) MATT. 15:22-28 MARK 7:24-30 The Bible never fails to catch me sleeping at the wheel.  Stories that I've dismissed too quickly turn around and tease me, "So you think you know me already? Well...." The last few mornings it's been the story of the Syrophoencian woman lingering in my thoughts.  The journey began with The Fourfold Gospel providing broader context for this miracle. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by race . -Matthew 15:26 "The Macedonian conquest had diffused Greek civilization throughout western Asia till the word Greek among the Jews had become synonymous with Gentile. The term Canaanite was narrower and indicated an inhabitant of Canaan--that is, a non-Jewish inhabitant of Palestine. The term Syrophoenician was narrower still. It meant a Syrian in Phoenicia, and distingui

"For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.  -Psalm 75:6-8 "The contents of this cup have a different effect upon different characters. To the righteous it is a pleasant cup. Its blooming, sparkling mixture is delicious and inspiring. Not so to the wicked; what is delicious and sustaining to the good is distasteful and pernicious to the evil. Moral character changes subjectively the very nature of things." Matthew Arnold has somewhere described God “as a stream of tendency that maketh for righteousness.” His meaning, I presume, is that the whole procedure of God in the moral world tends to put down the wrong and to raise and glorify the right. -Homilist. I'm intrigued by this il

P A R T S I X T H FROM THE THIRD PASSOVER UNTIL OUR LORD'S ARRIVAL AT BETHANY. Time: One Year Less One Week Section 65 JESUS FAILS TO ATTEND THE THIRD PASSOVER. SCRIBES REPROACH HIM FOR DISREGARDING TRADITION. (Galilee, probably Capernaum, spring A. D. 29) MATT. 15:1-20 MARK 7:1-23  JOHN 7:1 Here, the Pharisees and scribes attack Jesus for not washing his hands when he eats.  Jesus flips the questions so that transgressing "the tradition of the elders" is juxtaposed against transgressing "the commandment of God." Jesus observes,"This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Matthew 15:8-9 It is important to keep the plumb line accurate--not what we have added onto our interpretations, but God's commandments as set forth in the scriptures are enough.  Christ goes on to clarify that it's not what we eat, what we put into our mouths, that

Chesterton's Everlasting Man  is full of broad ambitious sweeps.  He identifies the differences between a pagan view of our world and a Christian one.  Asserting that we are often not aware of the assumptions we carry, he sifts through them and shows us that much of modern theology or philosophy is half-baked.  In a sea of ideologies, Chesterton asserts that Christianity is unique. His observations are presented in an invitational fashion that encourages the reader to set aside their reservations and take the journey with him.  He uses humor and word play in clever ways that catch you off guard. I see how C.S. Lewis could be wooed by such a mind and writer. It lifts my heart to see the strokes of one great thinker impact another.  I see the seeds of Lewis' style, approach, and thought in Chesterton.  Interestingly, Chesterton's spiritual influence goes back to his wife Frances who strikes me as a gentle soul, content to allow her husband the spotlight though she had a

More notes and quotes to return to someday.... ************************ Chesterton cleverly picks up the cave-man  imagery he used in the first section of The Everlasting Man and flips it on its head by connecting it to Christ: "God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life." Chesterton p.110 Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.112  Mythology is a search. 115  Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does 117 not realise that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religion  But it is true in a sense that God who had been only a circumference was seen as a centre; and a centre is infinitely small. It is true that the spiritual spiral henceforward works inwards instead of outwards, and in that sense is centripeta

Chesterton's Everlasting Man is full of complex and well-developed argument.  If I were to try and organize all of my thoughts in a logical fashion, it would require weeks of review.  Right now, I'm ready to move on and get back into the gospels.   Maybe at some point, I'll have a fresh wind to sort through my jumbled notes below, but for now, I'm letting them stand unsorted. *************************************** *Chesterton asserts that men are different from animals, in kind even more than in degree. Chapter III--The Antiquity of Civilization pg. 30 Chesterton argues that even from the earliest beginnings of civilization, man was civilized.  He points to Egypt and Babylon as evidence. Also, barbarism and civilization have long existed side-by-side with some countries civilized and others on edge (38). He stresses that we need to see primitive man as human--telling jokes, stories, etc. p. 40. Page 41, he uses the term "fairy tales of science"

I'm not certain how I ended up in Psalm 13 this morning, but I did.  It's short, sad, and turns on a dime.  As with many of David's thoughts, it begins in despair, but turns to hope in God. "That which the French proverb hath of sickness is true of all evils, that they come on horseback and go away on foot; we have often seen that a sudden fall, or one meal’s surfeit, has stuck by many to their graves; whereas pleasures come like oxen, slow and heavily, and go away like post horses, upon the spur. Sorrows, because they are lingering guests, I will entertain but moderately, knowing that the more they are made of the longer they will continue; and for pleasures, because they stay not, and do but call to drink at my door, I will use them as passengers with slight respect. He is his own best friend that makes the least of both of them." -Joseph Hall