Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

Job 7:1-21

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment


            Few people have ever suffered such agonizing loss as the Old Testament character of Job.  He literally lost everything but his life.  All his kids were killed, and he was so racked with physical pain and ill health that even his closest friends barely recognized him.  Yet the most severe suffering of all came from the grinding silence of God about the whole affair.  Job felt the spiritual pain of a seemingly distant God:  “Why have you made me your mark?  Why have I become a burden to you?”
             Indeed, when one is in the throes of grief, and God does not respond, the suffering seems pathetically senseless.  As I write this, another spate of shootings have this week rocked American towns in the West and Mid-West.  Where is God in all this?  As families grieve and communities reel in shock, how can the loss of life and safety square with a God who is Sovereign over all creation?
             It’s the silence that often hurts so badly.  Groans, laments, and anguish seem to fly up and away with no easy answers and no immediate relief.  Yet, God hears.  God sees.  And God knows.  We have a big picture perspective of the book of Job.  We know the end of the story.  We even know why Job suffered, even when he himself never knew.  But even with such an understanding, there is still a large mystery to the ways and the silence of God.
             It is a great temptation for many Christians to give neatly wrapped answers to life’s most difficult realities.  But the book of Job does not allow for it.  What we have is a man who never understood all that happened in his life, yet held onto his integrity and his faith in the God he never fully understood.  After all, if we understood all there is to understand about God, he would not be God at all.
             Invisible God, you are not only unseen physically, but many times spiritually and emotionally unseen, as well.  Open the eyes of my heart so that I might catch but a glimpse of your working.  Even though I am but a child and know so little, yet I trust in your steadfast love even in the most difficult experiences of life.  Amen.

Psalm 26

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Although we are several millennia removed from the Old Testament world, we still share a great deal of solidarity with our believing brothers and sisters throughout the ages.  Times may change, yet the basic nature of people remains the same.  Evil is still evil; and, integrity has permanence.  Maybe because I am a pastor, I see the inner workings of sin more than the average Joe.  And I will say that evil still exists, and it is every bit as ugly as it was in biblical times.
             Followers of Jesus throughout the world still stare into the face of wickedness, and of those who would seek to do them harm.  Even in this enlightened age, in this modern Western world I live in, there are those who twist the truth, and try to bend every circumstance to their own advantage, not caring whom they damage in the process.  If you know this to be true, and you are or have experienced the slanderous breathings of devious persons, then Psalm 26 is for you, my friend.
             Although the psalmist had to endure situations he did not deserve, his response was twofold:  he was determined to walk with integrity, no matter what others might do or say to him; and, the psalmist left room for God to work instead of paying back evil for evil.  It would be good to pray along with this psalm, “Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering….  As for me, I shall walk in my integrity:  redeem me, and be gracious to me.”
             The lectionary repeats the same psalm every three days, every week, for a reason – to encourage us to pray biblical prayers that allow truth and sound theology to permeate our spirits and sink deep into our needy souls.  And those prayers are perhaps most needed when we are undergoing the adversity of human evil.
             O Lord God Almighty, prove me and try me; test my heart and my mind.  Your steadfast love is before my eyes and I walk in your faithfulness.  Do not sweep my soul away with sinners.  Be gracious, merciful, and kind to me today and always for the sake of Jesus Christ, your only Son.  Amen.

Galatians 3:23-29

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            If you are new to this blog, or to the Revised Common Lectionary, or just need a reminder, here is a very small explanation of how it works.  The Lectionary is one way of reading through the Bible in a three year cycle (known as Years A, B, and C).  The daily readings of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all anticipate the Scripture texts for Sunday; and, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday readings all reflect back on the previous Sunday.  And each year is attentive to the major events of the life of Christ and of the church.
 
            So, today’s New Testament text looks forward to World Communion Sunday, a day in which we intentionally celebrate the truth that we as individuals and local congregations belong to a much bigger Body of Christ – Christians from different cultures and nations all share Jesus together, symbolized and remembered through our common eating from the Lord’s Table. 
 
            The Apostle Paul needed to give the Galatian churches some remedial teaching on the basic nature of God’s gospel of grace in Christ.  The Gentile believers had begun to buy-in to the notion that they needed to become Jews in order to really be Christians.  Paul would have nothing to do with it because it betrayed the nature of the gospel that in Christ all are one new society, and not old Israel.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
 
            The gospel of grace is the great equalizer.  In Christ, God has created a new society in which all come together by faith.  That means people do not need to become Jewish to become a Christian; it also means that no one needs to become an American or any other type of person in order to truly belong to Christ.  The gospel of grace means we are not to only be around people who are just like us, looking for others to conform to us.  It means we appreciate and embrace the wonderful variety of people of all races, classes, ethnicities, gender, and cultures without demanding they be just like us.  In Christ, we are all one new society, one gospel culture celebrating and enjoying Jesus.  It would be poignant for us all to remember this wonderful reality when we approach the Table this Sunday.
 

 

            Gracious God, you established the church as a new egalitarian society through your Son, the Lord Jesus.  Help me to connect meaningfully with others very different from myself so that grace will be my only rule for life.  Amen.

Pronoun Trouble

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
One of my favorite Warner Brothers cartoons is the 1952 “Rabbit Seasoning.”  Check out the hilarious dialogue between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck:
Bugs Bunny [to Elmer]:  Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home?
Daffy Duck: Shoot him now! Shoot him now!
Bugs Bunny: You keep outta this! He doesn’t have to shoot you now!
Daffy Duck: He does so have to shoot me now! [to Elmer]: I demand that you shoot me now!
[Elmer shoots him.]
Daffy Duck: Let’s run through that again.
Bugs Bunny:  Okay.  [in a flat tone]: Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home?
Daffy Duck: [flat tone] Shoot him now, shoot him now.
Bugs Bunny: [flat tone] You keep outta this. He doesn’t hafta shoot you now.
Daffy Duck: [with sudden passion] Ha! That’s it! Hold it right there! [speaking to the audience]: Pronoun trouble.  [to Bugs]  It’s not: “He doesn’t have to shoot *you* now.” It’s: “He doesn’t have to shoot *me* now.” Well, I say he does have to shoot me now! [to Elmer]  So shoot me now!
[Elmer shoots him.]
 
            Pronouns are important.  I am not trying to be some weird grammar nerd (although I would be okay with that reference).  What I am attempting to get at is that the use of pronouns in the way Christians talk and write belies how we view ourselves, our world, the church, and, even God.  If we are not careful, pronoun trouble will get us sidelined from God’s agenda for the church.
 
            For example, a person comes up to the pastor and says something like “we don’t like _____.”  Go ahead and fill in the blank.  It could be anything.  The gun goes off.  The important thing to note is that an individual is speaking on behalf of a group, or the entire congregation.  That says a lot about the person.  It says that not only is the person taking on a grandiose position of assuming that he/she knows what everyone else is thinking, but, maybe even more significantly, this person does not differentiate him/her self from the group.  The person is so enmeshed in the group or system that speaking as an individual is not practiced.  Many people within the church need the ability to step back and discern what it is they actually need and want, then be able to state “I would like to see ______.” 
 
            Let’s take the opposite kind of example.  A parishioner approaches another congregant and emphatically states something like, “my needs are not getting met here, so I am going elsewhere.”  In this case, the individual is too detached from the larger congregation and can only use the personal pronoun.  The parishioner needs to adopt some plural pronouns in order to better connect with others.  The real problem is one of not having a sense of community and the role that the individual plays within it.  There is too much of a focus on self and not a missional sense of working together to achieve a noble cause.
 
            So, then, there are here two approaches to be avoided.  On the one hand, some congregations can be so entrenched in a particular system and way of doing things that they cannot imagine doing things differently.  “We have always done it this way” are the seven deadly words of the church.  On the other hand, there is the solitary person who can never quite seem to think of others but constantly evaluates everything done in the church through the filter of what she can get out of it for herself. 
 
            How Christians talk of others outside the church is also of much importance.  “They” and “them” are pronouns that can easily be used to refer to some nameless people that we do not want within the fellowship.  It is prescient to keep in mind that a pronoun refers to a proper name.  Who are “they?”  Are “they” really a threat?  It would be much better to define who we are talking about and why. Sometimes pronouns are not the best way to talk to each other.  “The missions team would like to reach young urban professionals with the gospel of Jesus” is better than an amorphous “we do not want them in our church services.”
 

 

            I hope you get the picture here.  Pronouns are important.  Their proper use can either further the mission of the church, or they can get us into trouble.  Pay attention to language, because it has been given to the church as a sacred trust.