(Gal 6:10) and James can see the principle of Leviticus 19:18 applying to what was probably Jewish Christians (2:1-14). Furthermore, Paul urges his congregations to be neighborly, and we are probably justified in seeing such exhortations applying primarily to Christian fellowship (Rom 13:...
Then we hear a verse of a Civil Rights song: “They say that freedom is a constant struggle … Oh Lord, we’ve struggled so long, we must be free.” The dancers’ bodies shift from oppression to liberation, while the screen shows powerful footage of crowds on the march for justice. A...
The thousand-year period is not literal, just like the thousand in the following verse is not literal either: “For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills.” Psalm 50:10 The word thousand in these instances means many or a great amount. The cattle on the th...
The Psalms of lament, which include Psalm 69 above, always have a moment where the voice of the psalm turns the corner. Note the last verse, which has jumped ahead in the psalm a fair amount: I will praise the name of God… the Lord hears the poor…” God hears us, and our lament...
Shannan Martin:Psalm 27:13is such a hopeful, beautiful verse. “Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living.” This is our promise that wherever we are, God is already vibrantly alive and at work. As we pay attention t...
What I find lovely about this construction, literarily, is how one can use it to measure the space between saying and being, or one could say “word”-ing and “create”-ing. The repetitions and graduated iterations of the phrases describe potential geometries of the relationship between words...