Coming Up For Air

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law… A classical wag commented acidly on a dictator who found himself unemployed when deposed by the town he used to rule. The only employment he could find for his skill set and experience was as an elementary school teacher. Just so, Paul looks skeptically on the desire to become a teacher. These in th...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, Baseball writer Robert Creamer in the Ken Burns documentary series took a philosophical view of some of the stranger things baseball manager Casey Stangl said. Creamer figures that Stangl hated dead air, that silence made him uncomfortable, and that he felt compelled to fill the space with something. Often that something didn't make much sens...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed… Philip Yancey wrote of a strange experience in a café looking out on the geyser Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. The natural wonder drew thousands, but he watched the crew working in the restaurant as the time for the geyser's eruption came and went. They no longer paid attention. It was too common, and they went about their business. So it is in the Christian c...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith… Cultural commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks cautioned, "People in what feels like a hostile environment often reduce their many affiliations down to just one simple one, which they weaponize and defend to the hilt." The Ephesus in which Paul is bolstering Timothy to minister in the opening of 1 Timothy 1 certainly qualifies as an hostile environment. Someone as intrep...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience,… On the show Friday Night Lights , Brian "Smash" Williams is Dillon High School's overachieving, irrepressible running back, until he suffers a serious knee injury. The knee is repaired, but Brian's "Smash" persona is not. He says point-blank after the injury, "I'm slow." He can't find it within himself to trust the full extent of the new life the surgery has given him on the f...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart… On Star Trek: The Next Generation , Captain Jean-Luc Picard, even to a futuristic culture that prizes evolved self-discipline, is a model for it. He is able to keep perspective on the conflict and immaturity he sees and offer the cool, considered voice of reason before those he influences charge in. The viewer is actually somewhat surprised to find out that this wasn't always so. As an impetuous cadet at Starfleet Academy, it turns out that young Pic...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. 5 now the purpose of the commandment is love… Donald Whitney frames in Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life, "God has offered you this time to discipline yourself for the purposes of godliness." We are a little taken aback at first at the pairing of discipline and godliness. Isn't it, after all, a work of faith and the Spirit to change us? Aren't we, we excuse, passive passengers as God changes our affections and then our actions? Perhaps not. As Timothy swims in the distorted n...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith. "Love," equates Rev. John Wagner in "How to Pray for Your Church, "is indissolubly linked to faith." Paul is no stranger to lengthy arguments connecting clause to cause and century to century in order to buttress his case, but he offers the same one-to-one correlation to Timothy in what comes to us as the fourth verse of the first epistle between them. He has all the studied caution of an ordinance expert in laying out for Timothy the potential dangers in Ephesus, but there are no qua...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification… My wife and I have been catching up on Out-Daughtered , the reality show featuring all girl quintuplets who are now two years old. This stretch has been a retrospective, revisiting the girls' gestation and birth. The precariousness of this., No doubt, is easy to overlook amid the present bustle, so the obstetrician's German-accented sobriety is a shift in mood as well as time. In the womb, he was very concerned for the safety of the quintuplets and had to deliver them when he could no longer determine if each was gett...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes… Years ago, I was blessed to help out in a role at my local church. The more the Lord blessed my contribution, the more passionate about the work I became, and that's good. As happens in His humbling sovereignty, He sent someone on to help on the same team, toward the same end who had not only a different technique in mind but a personality completely different from my own. Passion stewed along with pride into a nearly unrecognizable self-righteous zeal, all within the confines of my own heart. Thoughts of confrontation may have had some biblical origins, bu...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies… Heritage hung in the sticky June air in ways that even a 19-year-old could not fail to notice. My grandparents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, and Eshlemans from far and wide under it by descending on the Pennsylvania countryside in which they were wed. Our orchestrated activities apart from those specifically related to the anniversary added to the atmosphere, or attempted to. Aunts and uncles showed a passel of grandchildren historical markers which indicated our forebears had come to this area in faith three centuries before. A history major at heart having...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables… In The Statesman and the Storyteller , Mark  Zwonitzer parallels the lives of friends John Hay and Mark Twain.  Zwonitzer compares that while Hay worked through the channels of the Establishment in positions up to Secretary of State, Twain's means were different.  "He was shy to do the shaking himself, except in the guise of one of his fictional characters." Twain was onto something biblical. As Paul's first epistle to Timothy continues to demonstrate the bond between the two, Paul is a man who understands the pull of the even an acknowledged to be untrue. Some interfering with Ti...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine. On Downton Abbey , parents of the English gentry are grieving the death of their daughter in childbirth. As the tragic events unfolded, Lord Grantham made the decision to take his daughter's care from the family physician to one with title and national reputation. His American-born wife lashes out at what she says is a very English decision. The notable physician missed a small sign of the daughter's demise, swollen ankles, because he assumed she normally had thick ankles. The grieving mother fires that the family physician who cared for her from the time she was a little girl would have known. He, she rails, would hav...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus… Mark Twain closes out Huckleberry Finn with his title character determined to "light out for the territory." Like the American spirit he represents, Huck is suspicious of the sedating and conforming effects of civilization. He has his eyes on the freedom of the frontier. Though they speak quite differently, Huckleberry Finn and the apostle Paul have that much in common. Paul has a pioneering heart. He doesn't want to preach the Gospel where it has already been preached. He doesn't want to lay work on another minister's foundation. He has an apostolic calling to break new ground and no doubt in excitement at the signs and wonders of testimony which result in c...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, 2 To Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Queen Victoria has got to rank among history's more self-assured personages. Yet, even she chafed when, she said, Prime Minister William Gladstone addressed her as if she were a public meeting. We see the difference in Paul's inspired opening of 1 Timothy. Paul's calling, he says again in this letter is as an apostle, an earth mover of entire cultures. The Authority commissioning him thus is even more vast, as both the Father, interestingly and somewhat counter-intuitively titled Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ put Paul to this work. Moving to the end of verse two mercy and peace, Paul says, come from the same to impressive, sometimes imposing Sources. Timothy as an individual recipient of this epistle is nearly lost in the middle, the sh...

"Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior in the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope…" 1 Timothy 1:1 I was determined this week would be different. As the man's Bible study of which I am a part launched into a new book in the Bible with Paul's first epistle to Timothy, I was struck by the prominence of the hope in Christ Paul offered. I wrote about it yesterday, and it was still near the forefront of my mind this morning. I got to lead my Sunday school class in prayer this morning and figured nothing would reinforce that hope like hearing confession of its primacy come out of my mouth publicly. Christ teaches us to ask for what we need, and I wanted to do nothing to undermine that basic dependence. Even so, I wanted to put Him as the solid foundation for our ongoing hope front and center, before the needs and wants of the week pressed in as squatters on sacred space. Seeking to read aloud Paul's actual 1 Timothy 1:1 words to set the tone, I s...

From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope.... In The Pilgrim's Regress , C.S. Lewis draws the reader into his review of intellectual history by personifying big ideas. John is Lewis's pragmatic protagonist representing all of us likely to pick up the thinking that we grasp most protects us in the moment. John is admonished by History, "There is no avoiding danger in our country. Do you know what happens to people who set about learning to skate with the determination to get no falls? They fall as often as the rest of us, and they cannot skate again." Paul's opening words in his very personal epistle to Timothy strengthen similarly. Before Paul unpacks pastoral practicalities throughout the letter, he has a carry-on present they can both enjoy. This is the kind of gift too precious to be packed away which is handled lovingly by the traveling father in the faith. What is this presen...

The New Yorker allows me to sample a worldview without the spiritual nutritional deficits that would come from overindulging. This is particularly the case with the author profile, allowing me to learn from the perspective and craftsmanship of authors I am unlikely to read in part because their attitude on sexual matters differs so markedly from the Bible's. Disconcertingly, though, I often find similar biases behind the thinking of the very secular authors, and that of myself and my fellow Christians. Radically different symptoms can manifest the same disease of sin and ego. Thus I encountered novelist Otessa Moshfegh in the most recent issue. Her perspective on how she mines real-life experience for writing material intrigued me. "I just want to see the edge of the building, and then I want to go and build it myself," she explains by way of metaphor. This professional detachment extends to how she builds characters from encounters with real people. "That's h...

Generally, I idealize the military like only someone who has not been in the actual military made up of actual, fallible humans can. History major that I am, I see it as an implacable island of continuity in a sea of change for the sake of change. Since I was reading, appropriately, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966 one year ago today, I came across this counterintuitive observation from an upholder of great traditions, West Point superintendent Dave Richard Palmer. He said the Army's corporate memory was little more than one generation long, stretching back no farther than the experience of the men in it. What?! Fortunately, I was in the company of someone who could help me resolve this seeming non sequitur. As one of the formative experiences of his life which he often references, Dale served in the actual military rather than the one in my head. He helped me reconnect with what I knew from civilian life about the young and ambitious. Dec...

"You offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear You." Psalm 130:4 It takes a while, intones the usually strict Elizabeth Elliott, for revelry to turn into reverence. In this, she taps into the same well of persevering compassion as does the psalmist in Psalm 130:4. Both recognize the clumsiness or disrespect with which we approach the Divine. They look back and credit Him with forbearance as He overlooks the most glaring marks of our spiritual immaturity. As we enjoy communion with Christ, He knows His company is the literal Miracle-Gro to our sanctification. Just as lesser misplaced fears are learned, the fear of God which accompanies hunger and thirst for righteousness is learned over time also. How do we react, though, when someone violates our latest understanding of how sanctity behaves? Sleep in church? How dare they! I did that well past the point when people would overlook it because of my age, and yet God has been faithful to grow His Word in my heart in His time...

From I Timothy 2 – 1 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. In the movie Gettysburg based on the novel The Killer Angels , Gen. Robert E Lee is planning late into the night with his chief, indispensable aid, Maj. Walter Taylor. Noting the hour, Lee concedes, "We should have a larger staff." Taylor takes umbrage or at least manages to manufacture it. "I would be insulted. I can do the work." As Lee settles into a rocking chair and transforms from The Old Man into an old man, weary, Taylor tenderly covers him with a blanket so he might rest. So is the attitude Paul would have from us in reference to the exalted and sometimes reve...

My friend Calli English in a blog-like 21st century equivalent to the circular letter admitted to a certain peevishness on vacation and out of her routine as she and her husband Isaiah moved from one activity to another.   As she examined her feelings, she admitted, "I often hoard reflection and 'soaking in' time because I fear losing what I’ve learned." I resemble that remark. Reflection and soaking in time for me has been richly rewarding.   As this time in God's Word yields insights, I want more, and that's mostly good. Since Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening has proven to speak to my soul, I can't miss it.  I've also added Tim Keller's daily devotionals Songs of Jesus and God's Wisdom for Navigating Life without pruning anything from this rigid introvert's daily list. Gaining insight from such trusted sources, I prioritize remembering it and putting it where I can access it. To do otherwise would be to look in the mirror and...