Morning Musing: Hebrews 12:1-2

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“Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

My oldest boys are running cross country this fall. Personally, I have enjoyed it immensely. It has been a nice, little nostalgia-fest for me of my own days running cross country. One of the things that was really emphasized when I was running was the importance of running light. Our shirts were made from the lightest material they could find. Our racing shorts were so short they barely covered our backside. And the best runners (a group that never included me) would pay huge prices for shoes that were as light as a feather. The goal was to eliminate anything that might slow you down because even fractions of a second could make a difference in a big race. As we turn the page at last on chapter 11, we find our author borrowing an illustration from the world of running to offer an encouragement in pursuing the life of faith. Let’s take a look at this with him.

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Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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This past Sunday we wrapped up our teaching series, What Jesus Hated, by switching things up. Instead of talking about something else Jesus doesn’t like, we focused our attention on something Jesus loved. Through a look at one of Jesus’ best-known parables, we looked at love in action and talked about why getting that right matters so much for us. Thanks for tuning in with me this week.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I’m going to ask you a question to get things started this morning. When I do, I want you to shout out the first name that comes to mind when you hear it. Ready? Won’t you be my neighbor? Now, if you’re at all like me, there are two possible names that rushed to the front of your mind, and one of them is a whole lot likelier than the other. The second one of those names is Daniel Tiger from the PBS cartoon series, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. My kids, but especially Micah, used to watch Daniel Tiger all the time. Secretly, I loved it. Besides its being a fantastic show, the songs they included in each episode to teach some basic moral lessons to kids were like gold. We used them with our kids all the time. You probably only thought about Daniel Tiger, though, if you have had preschoolers any time in the last ten years or so. More likely, the name that came to mind first—as you shared out loud like I asked—was Mr. Rogers. 

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Morning Musing: 2 Timothy 4:3-4

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“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a day when two competing trends are holding sway in our storytelling. The first is the fact that we love stories with happy endings. We want heroes to win and bad guys to lose. The second trend is our belief that there really aren’t any bad guys. In order to prove this, as we have made stories about all the heroes, film studios hoping to make some more money have started taking characters who were villains and attempting to rehabilitate them by having them star in stories as the sort of good guys. A recent and highly anticipated film on Disney+ not only puts these trends on display, but also reveals how silly this trend is. Let’s talk today about Hocus Pocus 2 and Disney’s loss of any kind of a meaningful moral vision.

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Morning Musing: Hebrews 11:39-40

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“All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

At the end of the day, faith and sight are not the same thing. If we have sight, we don’t have to exercise any faith. Once I am sitting in a chair, I don’t have to have faith it will hold me like I do before I sit down. I know it will because I am experiencing it. I can “see” it with my own eyes. Here at the tail end of Hebrews 11, the author gives us one last reminder of this truth before setting things up for where we are going next. Let’s talk one last time about living by faith and two reasons we should do it.

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Morning Musing: Hebrews 11:35b-38

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“Others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes when we step out and exercise faith in God, everything goes great. In fact, it goes better than great. We get not just what we wanted, but far more than we could ever ask or imagine. Those kinds of outcomes to our faith are the stories we like to tell. Many of the stories in the Scriptures have these kinds of happy endings. Every story of faith Hollywood tells ends this way. At some point it may look like things are going to go poorly because of faith, but then God saves the day, and they all live happily ever after. But what if things don’t turn out that way? Because in real life, sometimes they don’t. The second set of stories of the results of faith the author of Hebrews shares with us aren’t happy endings. At least they don’t seem to be. Maybe you have a story of faith that didn’t appear to end well. Let’s talk about when we have faith and nothing goes according to plan.

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