Author: Dave Dishman (Page 244 of 458)

My wife and I shopped for furniture recently. The most difficult part of the experience was wading through the myriad options available if we ordered a new piece. Multiple wood types, various stains, fabrics of every color and hue. Thousands of options, when all I really want is something to hold my socks.

The people of Israel and Judah devolved into shopping for their gods. They picked through fascinating options promoted by the priests and shamans of surrounding lands. They crafted images of these gods, burned incense to them and prayed for their blessings. Some even sacrificed their children to these gods by burning them in divine fire.

All in a meaningless display of religious delusion.

Isaiah carried a stark message from the Lord: This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.

Everyone searches through the options of life to find peace or fulfillment or meaning, while some simply decide pleasure and attention are enough. Augustine famously prayed, Our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you, O God. The end we’re all looking for remains the Lord.

We can chase after fables or pretend gods or demons in disguise. As many promote, we might follow our own enlightened self. But all lead to the same dead end.

The Lord told the children of Israel—I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.

It’s ok to stop shopping.

Isaiah 43 & 44 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Yasamine June

The doors whooshed open as the ambulance crew wheeled in a patient. Sitting up in a gurney, a gentleman held his hands in his lap, one wrapped with a mass of bloody gauze while the other held something smaller. The emergency room staff assessed the situation. A half-hour before, the man cut his finger off in an accident at work. Now the rush was on to reattach and save the finger.

After stabilizing the patient and starting an IV, we wheeled him to a suite where a surgeon took over. The surgeon indeed sewed the finger back on, but I never found out if the finger stayed healthy, or if infection set in and he eventually lost it.

I thought of this incident from my summers working in an emergency room when reading Paul’s encouragement to the church at Corinth: Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. A line before he wrote: If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

The severed finger in the emergency room could not live on its own. From the moment the ambulance call went out, professionals rushed to reattach the finger—the only way to keep it alive. The patient desperately wanted his body made whole, because who wants to go through life missing a finger?

So it works with our Christian faith. I cannot cut myself off and live as a follower of Jesus. I cannot ignore the life that flows from time spent with fellow believers. Sometimes it’s a hassle, and sometimes these folks annoy me (as I’m sure I annoy them). But I need them and they need me.

A severed finger quickly turns rancid. A severed life, over time, tends to do the same.

I Corinthians 12 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by camilo jimenez

I enjoy going to friend’s homes when I don’t have to change shirts before I go over.

When it comes to prayer, however, I often feel like I need to put on a clean shirt before going before the Lord. Much of that feeling is proper—our Holy God, Lord of heaven and earth, deserves my respect and attention. But the scriptures also encourage our raw emotion or frustration or anger when we pray. We can blurt out our thoughts to the Lord.

David led this way in his psalms. His prayers are earthy, real and certainly not high falutin’ or pompous.

He starts safe enough: Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

But a skip ahead David records the Lord’s response: your feet may wade in the blood of your foes, while the tongues of your dogs have their share.

That’s a lot of blood. I don’t remember ever praying to wade in the blood of my enemies, but it’s right there in the psalms. The same man who wrote the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, hoped to watch his dogs lapping up the blood of his adversaries.

Throws my idea of prayer on its head. But it opens my eyes to the reality that I can be real with the Lord. I can pray frustrations and pain and anger along with gratitude and thankfulness and praise.

I can come as I am when I go to the Lord.

Psalm 68 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Jon Tyson

This month, the flowers in my beds fade in anticipation of the fall. A few plant varieties create late blooms, like chrysanthemums and monk’s hood (also called wolf’s bane, whose purplish flower resembles a monk’s cowl). Still, I watch the season closing around me.

Flowers drop, vines die back, freezes descend. Nothing lasts forever.

Or I should say, only a few things live on and on and on.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.

It’s worth dwelling on this line from the prophet Isaiah. The word of our God endures forever. The time we spend reading or listening to the scriptures intertwines us with eternity. We touch truths with no end, that carry through, that never die.

I scroll through lots of ideas and entertainment that are fascinating today and forgotten tomorrow. I try not to think about so much time wasted. But the few minutes of my day interacting with the scriptures point me to to the everlasting ways of the Lord.

May the flowers falling this season remind us of truth that endures forever, and rests patiently at our fingertips.

Isaiah 40 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo of Monk’s Hood—Wikipedia