Category: Book Bites
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Imagery In The Psalms
Psalm 23 has been particularly cherished in Jewish and Christian spirituality, though it is most associated with funerals. Its preciousness derives in part from its lyricism and metaphor. One cannot tie down any aspect of some concrete situation that its author had in mind. Everything is imagery. The consequence is that readers can directly access…
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Expressing Anger In The Psalms
The attitude of the psalms and of the martyrs is that when people resist God and persist in oppressing other people, eventually God must punish them for their wrongdoing and free their victims. But such action lies in God’s hands, not in ours. We trust God to take action; and “it is an act of…
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How To Build A Theological Library
There comes a point when you shift from randomly collecting books that catch your eye to intentionally gathering resources to form a working library. For me, this point came during my last semester of seminary. Partly because I didn’t know where I was moving when I graduated, and partly because I knew that being a…
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Plea Prayers In The Psalms
The balance between protest or expression of pain, and plea or request, is the reverse of that which characterizes Christian prayer. Christians are reticent about telling God things that God presumably knows, though they are then oddly unrestrained about itemizing what God should do even though they recognize that God could work this out. Prayer…
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Set Apart By Kisses
With these scriptural themes in mind, the depth of the beloved’s words to and about her lover begins to become apparent. If the “best ointments” are those given by the Lord to us—if, as Leviticus puts it, the “anointing oil of the Lord” (oleum unctionis Domini; 10:6–11; 21:10–12) is what sets apart the priests of…
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The Purifying Flame of Christ’s Passion
The Lord, therefore, your scriptural imagination can tell you, wants to kiss your lips with a passion, to redden them with the redness of his passion for you. The “scarlet thread” of the beloved’s lips, stained by the blood of the Lord’s passion and inflamed by the heat of his kisses, belongs to the Lord’s…
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Worship As Identity Formation
When you sing your praise, lament, and gratitude, you are not only—nor even principally—expressing your feelings or aspirations or beliefs. No, you are reconfiguring yourself as one who praises, one who laments, and one who is grateful, and at the same time making more intimate (more full of kisses and embraces and caresses and delight)…
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The 7 Backstories of The Hebrew Bible
Just recently, Eerdmans was gracious enough to send along Gregory Mobley’s The Return of The Chaos Monster – And Other Backstories of The Bible. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, and even just flipping through the introduction, I can already tell its going to be thought provoking (and probably deserving of a…
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Stephen Wellum on How People Put Together The Bible
Within evangelical theology, dispensational and covenant theology largely frame how people “put together” their Bible and, as such, function as dominant theological viewpoints. Each “system” serves as an interpretive grid for understanding the story line of Scripture and thus functions as “whole-bible theologies” (i.e. biblical theologies) which lead to systematic theological conclusions. In this way,…
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Nehemiah: A Church For The City, The Nations, The Generations
This coming Sunday is the 3 year anniversary of the church we’re part of here in Florida. So we’re commemorating it with our yearly Vision Sunday. If you’re in the area, you ought to come check us out and see how God has been at work. And, if you’re not currently part of a church…