Category: Morning Musings

Morning Musing: Mark 8:35-37

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“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it. For what does it benefit someone to gain the whole world and yet lose his life? What can anyone give in exchange for his life?” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When is a time you have sacrificed something you wanted in order to get your hands on something you wanted even more? Was that decision easy or hard to make? If it was very easy to make, it probably wasn’t all that much of a sacrifice. The simple truth about this life is that we can’t have it all. Oh sure, we’re told we can, but those assurances are uniformly false. Our lives in this world are a complex series of tradeoffs and sacrifices. We want one thing, but want another more and so forego the first in favor of the second. But as Jesus reminded the crowd – and us – here, what’s true about our individual lives is just as true about our very souls. Let’s talk this morning about losing and gaining and swapping out what is good for what is even better.

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Morning Musing: Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

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“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When God was creating the world, everything was good. Again and again this refrain echoes across the unfolding drama of creation. Each thing God makes He pronounces good. Then He gets to us and says it is very good. It’s really a beautiful picture. That’s chapter 1. In chapter 2 we get a more intimate look at the story of creation focused in on the creation of people. There, once God has created all of the world and just the man something suddenly changes. God says, “It is not good.” And what is the thing that isn’t good? It is not good for the man to be alone. We were not made to do life on our own. And while marriage is one way to make sure we don’t have to try it, this morning I want to talk about another, equally valid and more broadly available option (since not everyone is called to marriage): friendship. And I want to do this through the lens of a recently concluded Netflix series. Here’s why you need to watch Alexa and Katie.

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Morning Musing: Mark 8:33

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“But turning around and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever gotten more than you bargained for? Sometimes this feels like a very good thing. I once dropped four tokens on a Kung Fu Panda video game at an arcade where you had to punch these pads in the right sequence…and won it. The whole thing. Right in front of my kids. I was super dad. We got so many tickets all three boys went home with playground balls. If you know how arcade reward transactions go, you’ll understand we hit the jackpot. Maybe you’ve hit an actual jackpot. You put that one last nickel in the slot, pulled the handle, and filled up your bucket. (Disclaimer: I’ve never actually been to a casino, but that’s how it looks like it works on TV.) Sometimes, though, it doesn’t feel so nice. You playfully tease someone after a day that’s been much harder than you realize and instead of playfully teasing back, they bite your head off. What Peter experienced here was a bit more in line with this second situation. His getting burned, though, offers a lesson we do well to learn (spoiler alert: it’s not that we shouldn’t argue with Jesus).

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Morning Musing: Mark 8:27-29

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“Jesus went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the road he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ They answered him, ‘John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he asked them, ‘who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Can I pull back the curtain on my nerdiness with you just a bit? I love tests. I do. It’s disgusting, I know, but I love them. It helps that I’m generally a pretty good test taker. I don’t get anxious; I just get to work. But I really do enjoy them. Well, mostly. When it’s a test I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do well on, I don’t look forward to those. Generally speaking, though, I look forward to them. They give you a chance to prove what you know. They give you a chance to demonstrate that you really do know something. The other side of that, though, is equally true. They reveal whether or not you actually know it. As Jesus and the disciples were on this retreat through Gentile lands, Jesus gave them what amounted to their mid-term exam. There was just one question and the answer was pretty straightforward. What hung on that answer, though, was eternity. Well, we may hundreds of years removed from this mid-term exam, but the question is still one we all will have to answer at some point in our lives.

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Morning Musing: Mark 8:14-16

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“The disciples had forgotten to take bread and had only one loaf with them in the boat. Then he gave them strict orders: ‘Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’ They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Most days, when I get home from an event in the evenings, I just grab my stuff out of the car and head inside. Sometimes, though, I stop on the way in and look up. Where I live, although we have a bright street light in our front yard that I wish wasn’t there, we are far enough out in the country that light pollution is pretty minimal. On clear nights, when you look up, the stars are pretty spectacular. It’s one of those things that’s always there, but that you don’t always notice. It’s amazing how often we miss things that are right in front of our faces. The disciples regularly did that. Let’s learn from their cluelessness.

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