Author: Dave Dishman (Page 130 of 458)

I’m always amazed when I read the story about the golden calf. When Moses failed to return from meeting with God on top of a smoking, blazing mountain, the Israelites panicked and fashioned a idol. Turning from the mountain, they bowed instead to this hand-crafted god.

Why ditch the Lord so quickly? Why substitute an image for the living God? How did they eat manna for breakfast and later thank this shiny cow for their supper?

The Lord frightened them. The children of Israel (not all of them, it should be noted) wanted control over their lives and futures, and so they needed control over their god.

I’m much the same. I cannot fully grasp the Lord or totally understand his ways. He’s mysterious, and yet requires my allegiance. God is strict. I watch lots of people move away from the Lord for this reason. Better the flattering self than a master with rules. One modern teacher epitomized such faulty thinking: All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love.

Yet the Scriptures tell a different story. The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

What we need is definitely not already within us. We need a touch from the God atop that smoking mountain. We need to lean into our Creator. God is still God and his ways, while stringent, lead to our flourishing. Ditch the cheap gods in your life. Avoid the substitute. Stick with the real thing.

Exodus 32 & Jeremiah 9 in Through the Bible in 2024

Photo by Possessed Photography

I spend a good bit of time following politics and international events. Not only do these goings on affect our lives, I find the constant shifting and striving for power fascinating. Often the rise of a nation comes at the expense of their neighbors. Extremely rare are those leaders who help everyone around them flourish.

More often humankind makes a mess of our world. Struggles for power never settle down. Like those volcanoes in Iceland, hatreds boil out of site, waiting for a fissure to open and spew destruction.

Thankfully, in the midst of our see-sawing world the Lord remains the ultimate power. The psalmist wrote:

The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

God controls all nations and all peoples, whether acknowledged or not. Later in the Psalms we read that the nations will fear the name of the Lord, all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.

Eventually all will comprehend God’s preeminence. Some day we’ll reach this marvelous end, but not in my lifetime. Lots of politicking and power-shifting still ahead. I endure the games knowing that the ending will be infinitely better than the world we see today. I keep the faith despite the fractures around me.

Psalms 33 & 102 in Through the Bible in 2024

Photo by Jonatan Pie

When reading about the consecration of priests in ancient Israel, I’m struck by the vast amounts of blood involved. Aaron and his sons, the men undergoing the ritual, corralled a bull and two rams. After praying over the bull, they slaughtered it in the meeting tent. With their fingers they painted the horn of the alter with blood, then poured the rest out at its base.

Next they slaughtered the first ram and splashed its blood against the side of the alter. They applied blood from the second ram to the lobes of their right ears, the thumbs of their right hands, and the big toes of their right feet. They splashed more blood on the alter, then sprinkled blood over each of the priests and their garments. Only then were Aaron and his sons considered consecrated before the Lord and qualified to serve in his temple.

That’s a lot of blood. Such a foreign practice in my experience, (although I have seen chickens sacrificed in a temple in India to a different god). Only the spilling of blood purified and made holy the priests and their house of worship.

The author of Hebrews sheds light on these sacrifices: The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

According to the Scriptures, only blood yields forgiveness. It’s easy to forget this in our sanitized world. We don’t haul animals to church for liturgical slaughter anymore. The system collapsed because of one sacrifice—good for all times and all peoples—on the cross.

We avoid the whole bloody mess because Jesus became a bloody mess for you and me.

Exodus 29 & Hebrews 9 in Through the Bible in 2024

Photo by Alan Bowman

I ask for lots of things from the Lord, like wisdom in a hard decision or patience to get through the day. I pray for God to provide financially and I give thanks for my food (for which I’m truly grateful—I enjoy my times at table).

But I rarely pray for God to show me his splendor. Yet Moses, in his psalm, asked for this very thing: May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.

Moses experienced God’s splendor like no other. From a burning bush to the angel of death, walking through an ocean laid bare and forty days consumed in smoke and fire on a mountaintop. In his prayers, Moses asked that following generations would experience the Lord’s splendor as well.

The Lord’s splendor is all around—if my eyes are open. But most days I focus downward and inward, unable to perceive much beyond myself. So I’m asking the Lord to show me. If Moses made the request, perhaps his prayer will bear fruit for me.

Ask to see the Lord’s splendor. Pray for eyes open to the magnificence of the Lord. What can it hurt? By doing so we’ll gain a fresh appreciation for God’s work in the world and his personal attention to you and me.

Psalm 90 in Through the Bible in 2024

Photo by Explore with Joshua