power from heaven

Good morning friends,
Today's reading starts the story of Pentecost, and is many ways the birth of the church. Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they receive power from heaven. In today's passage that power comes, and the disciples (including women) begin their ministry.


God bless,
Sam


Acts 2: 1-13

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.


5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

biblical satire

Good afternoon sisters and brothers,
Today's reading shows us Job voicing his complaint to God. Job is a great book both for the raw emotion and for the poetry and even satire it uses to express that emotion. In this passage we see Job turning several Biblical images upside down.

For instance, Job says, "What are human beings that you make so much of them," which echoes Psalm 8: "What are human beings that you are mindful of them..." In the Psalm, the writer is amazed and grateful that God bothers with people even though we are insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. Job turns that around to ask why God bothers to torment someone so insignificant. Job also calls God a "watcher," meaning in this case that God looks out for ways to accuse him. We see that same idea of God watching over us in places like Psalm 121, where it is a powerful image of hope and comfort. Biblical images are rich and the more we read them and let them sink into us, the greater our ability to feel and express God's love and the breadth of human emotion.

God bless,
Sam

Job 7:1-21

“Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer? ²Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages, ³so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. ⁴When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn. ⁵My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. ⁶My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope.

⁷“Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. ⁸The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone. ⁹As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up; ¹⁰they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more. ¹¹“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. ¹²Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?

¹³When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ ¹⁴then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, ¹⁵so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. ¹⁶I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

¹⁷What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, ¹⁸visit them every morning, test them every moment? ¹⁹Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? ²⁰If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? ²¹Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”