…the Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth [of Jesus] but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our births but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again, how their whole lives were charged with new significance.

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

This is precisely the import of Jesus, and how we should approach the Bible: reverently, but with an understanding that the Bible is far more concerned with impressing upon us meaning and import over raw historicity. This is not to say the Bible is errant or fallible; I affirm it to be both inerrant and infallible. But it’s primary concern is not the dry reporting of facts, but the life-giving message of God’s redemption.

I will not drive [the residents of Canaan] out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.

Exodus 23:29-30

There are two pretty common applications you’ll hear made based upon the narrative of the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan, Israel’s promised land. Neither are interpretations; the interpretation is (in this case) the simple, “Here’s what this means in its context,” and that is plain from the language of the Old Testament. But Paul tells us the Old Testament–and these narratives of wandering Israel in particular–are written for an example (1 Cor. 10:1-6, esp. 1 Cor. 10:6). So it’s within the bounds of orthodoxy to make application to the church, and to our lives within that covenant community.

The first of these two common applications is demolished by this very text: the idea that the promised land is representative of heaven. (On Jordan’s Stormy Banks, anyone?) Unless you believe we come to inhabit heaven gradually, and that heaven is filled with unbelievers that must be driven out, you’ll see that this application is best tossed out as helpful for a careless songwriter, but Scripturally inaccurate and untenable.

A second–and valid–application is seeing the exodus as a model of our salvation from darkness (Egypt) via Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice (seen in the Passover) and our ongoing sanctification (wilderness wanderings and the conquest of the promised land). Again, this is application; the exodus narrative is not actual allegory with this as some sort of “secret” meaning.

But taking that application, and reading Exodus 23:29-30, I want to groan, as I nod in assent. Sanctification is slow, and the idols of my heart are not driven out in a day or even in a year. It is a long, tedious, painful, seemingly never-ending process. It’s frustrating and there are so, so many defeats.

But why?

Exodus 23:29 tells us: so that the land–the soil of our lives, if you will–does not become desolate; so that even worse things don’t fill the “empty spaces” left by vacated idols.

Jesus speaks of this exact situation in Matthew 12:43-45. You can’t clear out a house and leave it vacant. You must fill what is emptied.

For reasons that I don’t understand–and don’t need to understand–it seems that mortification (putting to death) can occur more quickly than vivification (bringing to life). I can unseat an idol, and certainly change sinful behavior, with greater rapidity than I can “fill” the resulting vacancy with love, joy, and commitment to Christ.

It doesn’t happen in a day.

It doesn’t happen in a year.

I need lengthy sanctification, as much as I hate that length. Why? Because without it, I will sanctify my behavior but be unfilled with Christ–and then filled instead with the “wild beasts” and “desolations” of my own depravity, even if in new ways.

Lengthy sanctification is not bad; it is essential.

Morning by morning they gathered [the manna], each as much as he could, but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

Exodus 16:21

The Curious Case of the Manna in the Afternoon. It sounds like the title of a New York Times bestseller. Or perhaps, it’s an apt metaphor for the attitude with which we are to approach God’s Word.

I find it fascinating that God chose to feed his people in the wilderness, after the exodus from Egypt, in this manner (see Ex. 16:21 above). Every day, bread enough for that day, and no more. (The only exception here is the day before the Sabbath, as noted in Ex. 16:22, 25-26.) Every day, the people went out and gathered.

It’s terribly inefficient, this daily gathering. It took time away from other things–even important things like family and cultural responsibilities. Gather a week’s worth, and be done! But that approach failed miserably; see Ex. 16:19-20.

It’s tiring. It had to have been. This went on for nearly forty years (Ex. 16:35)! I can’t imagine the monotony; not just of the taste of manna–something the Israelites complain about in Numbers 11:4-6–but of the repeated waking and gathering and baking and eating. Over and over, the same again and again.

And, of course, the uncertainty! Each day: will the manna be on the ground? There is not enough to eat if not; there are only worms if God does not remain faithful. Hunger is guaranteed apart from God’s daily intervention.

Herein lies the obvious correlation to our approach to Scripture. God’s word, our spiritual food, lasts briefly. Yesterday’s reading and study will not suffice for today’s nourishment. A moving in the Psalter on Thursday is not enough to sustain on Saturday.

We wake up and we gather and we eat, day after day after day. It seems inefficient; speed-reading and pneumonic devices and excellent comprehension of the text do not decrease our need for constant intake.

Yet we try to hold onto yesterday’s food–gripping it in hands tainted by too many colored squares on our iCal and Outlook, too many masterfully-crafted obligations, too many reasons we should be full despite the rumbling of our spiritual bellies. Worms and stink meet our lies; they challenge our calendar and our clever rationalizations, and only going out and gathering again combats these worms.

Then, the deeper metaphor; the typology that Paul reveals in the New Testament: Christ himself is our true spiritual food (1 Cor. 10:1-4, as well as Jesus’ own words in Mark 14:22 and Luke 22:19). He is the bread, he is the manna, he is the sustenance. And he is enough. In many ways, he is more than enough. But in some, he is indeed just enough. It took the entirety of Christ’s sacrifice of the entirety of his sinless life to absorb the entirety of God’s wrath for the entirety of God’s covenant children.

And there is the truth: his mercies–the manna of our Savior–are new every morning (Lamentations 3:21-25). Yesterday’s mercies are to be wondered upon and rejoiced over (Psalm 63:5-7), yet never to replace a fresh grasping of his mercy today. His mercies are new every morning!

We go out. We gather. And we feed on Christ yet again. He is our bread–and he is enough for today.

Paul has a long, convoluted history with the Corinthian church, and you will find references to his interactions with this church throughout not just 1 and 2 Corinthians, but also in Acts and even Romans. And, perhaps more so than any other New Testament epistle with the possible exception of Ephesians, understanding this history is crucial to grasping what Paul is talking about in his letters to the Corinthians.

In an attempt to consolidate some of this information, I’ve put together a sequence of events detailing Paul’s early to late involvement with the church at Corinth. This list isn’t exhaustive, nor are the references. Still, if you were getting ready to read 1 Corinthians, or especially 2 Corinthians, you’d want to have this backdrop clearly in your mind–or perhaps just clearly printed out on a sheet of paper lying next to your Bible.

To be very explicit, this is not original material. Careful reading of the New Testament and a little bit of history will get you most of this information, and I relied heavily on the ESV Study Bible’s introduction to both 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. If you’re looking to understand the historical and cultural backdrops of the New Testament–and you should do just that–I can’t recommend the ESV Study Bible strongly enough.

Here’s the basic timeline:

1. Paul founds the church at Corinth with the help of Priscilla and Aquila.
2. Paul leaves Corinth. Later in his missionary journeys, Paul spends significant time (about 3 years) in Ephesus.
3. Paul writes his first “unknown” letter to Corinth (1 Cor. 5:9) from Ephesus. This letter precedes what we know as 1 Corinthians, and is no longer in existence, in any form.
4. Paul hears of chaos and disobedience in the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 1:10; 5:1). About the same time, Paul receives a letter from the Corinthians full of doctrinal questions (1 Cor. 7:1; 8:1; 12:1; et. al.)
5. Paul writes his 2nd letter to the Corinthian church, again from Ephesus. This is the letter we know as 1 Corinthians.
6. As part of his work in Ephesus, Paul collects money for the believers in Judea, specifically those headquartered in Jerusalem.
7. Paul plans to return to Judea to give those believers what he’s collected. He further plans to visit Corinth enroute, along this path: Ephesus -> Macedonia -> Corinth -> Jerusalem (Judea).
8. In the meantime, Paul sends Timothy to Corinth as a representative (Acts 19:22; 1 Cor. 16:10-11)
9. Timothy finds Corinth to be a mess–largely due to the arrival and uprising of a group of opponents to Paul, probably from the East.
10. Paul hears of the problems in Corinth and changes his travel plans. He now plans to travel from: Ephesus -> Corinth -> Macedonia -> Corinth -> Jerusalem. This gets him to Corinth faster, and allows for a follow-up visit after he has gone to Jerusalem to help the believers there with the funds he’s raised in Ephesus.
11. Paul makes a “painful” visit to Corinth (2 Cor. 2:1; 11:4). It is painful to Paul, more so than the Corinthians, as he is challenged and opposed constantly in his teaching.
12. Paul leaves Corinth peaceably, without attacking the Corinthians or his opposers.
13. Paul writes his third letter, the “painful” letter, to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 2:3-4, 2:9; 7:8; et. al.). This letter lets them know in no uncertain terms of the sin he had seen, and how to discipline those involved. We no longer have this letter; it would have been, if you will, “between” 1 and 2 Corinthians.
14. Titus delivers Paul’s painful letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 7:13).
15. The Corinthians obey Paul’s instruction, rebuke the offenders, and apparently excommunicate at least one of the men involved, who later repents (2 Cor. 2:3-11; 7:14-16).
16. Paul hears of the Corinthians’ actions from Titus and writes 2 Corinthians.

In essence, then, what we know as 1 Corinthians is Paul’s 2nd letter to Corinth, and what we know as 2 Corinthians is his 4th letter. And yes, this all seems like something you’d see on Jerry Springer, or perhaps Jersey Shore.

Here’s the point, though:

The context of the Bible is not your life circumstances. It is a culturally-conditioned set of real, historical events. An understanding of these events is often necessary for even baseline correct interpretation of Scripture.

Put another way, please go get a good study Bible and use the book introductions.

And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Acts 15:12

I find the narrative in Acts 15 to be very convicting and humbling. In it, there is a dispute over the role of ceremonial requirements–such as circumcision–in Gentile salvation. Paul and Barnabas have returned from their first missionary journey, and have seen significant fruit among the Gentiles. Peter has also had his vision (Acts 10:9-16), preached the gospel to Cornelius, a Gentile (Acts 10:23-48), and reported to the church that Gentiles are being saved (Acts 11:1-18).

But it is impossible, even early in the spread of the gospel, to not see Paul as the dominant figure in Gentile evangelization. He frequently speaks of God offering him an open door to the Gentiles (1 Cor. 16:9; 2 Cor. 2:12; Col. 4:3) and is readily identified as the apostle to the Gentiles.

Yet here in Acts 15, at the crucial discussion regarding Gentile salvation, Paul is only recorded as speaking in Acts 15:12. Peter is the initial speaker (Acts 15:7-11), and it is James, brother of Jesus, who proposes a solution and effectively settles the matter (Acts 15:13-21).

How is this conceivable? Certainly, the omission of other speech acts by Paul does not guarantee their absence, but he is clearly not a driving force in these discussions–which is contrary to what any ready of Paul would presume. He probably could be, and probably even should be, based on what we know about the man from the entire New Testament. These are the Gentiles being discussed, his focus, and the people with which he already has the most experience (by far).

But I see here in Acts 15 a man living under his God-given authorities.

Paul was not self-commissioned. He was appointed by God. Further, based on his God-given commissioning, he did not just go running into the Gentile world. He submitted himself for a year to the elders of the church at Antioch (Acts 11:25-26), and again soon after to the elders at the church of Jerusalem (Acts 11:29-30; 13:1-3).

And Paul got it.

He understood something with which modern Christians–and certainly myself–struggle mightily: authority. It doesn’t matter how much Paul knows; how gifted he is; his unique abilities; or even God’s mantle upon him as apostle to the Gentiles. His experience and what he’s heard directly from God are all submitted to the elders at Jerusalem in Acts 15:1ff.

Paul trusts that obeying his authorities is obeying God.

Paul trusts that God will work through those in authority over him, rather than God working around those same authorities.

Paul remains silent and ponders and prays, despite his more-than-able ability to dominate a conversation (and certainly to win an argument).

How often we place ourselves over God’s authorities. Hey, we know better, right? We can just take their advice and pick and choose what to follow, right? Authority really just means “suggestion” in the 21st century. Right?

God help us.

We are to obey our authorities, all the while praying for their wisdom and relationships with God. We are to trust them and God to achieve his ends in his time, in his manner.

This is God’s way, and it was clearly Paul’s way. I desire it to be my way.

God deliver me from resisting the authorities you’ve put in my life.

And [Jacob] blessed Joseph and said,

“The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day…”

Genesis 48:15

This really is an astonishing statement by Jacob. It’s an easy statement to read over, or to attribute as just a generic sort of beginning as Jacob prays a blessing over Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh. However, Jacob’s statement reflects a profound understanding of God and his activity in the world.

First, it’s helpful to remember that Jacob does not have a “raised in church, trusted God at an early age, never got into much trouble” testimony. Rather, he schemed, lied, and deceived from his earliest appearance, back in Genesis 25:22. He cons his brother Esau out of the firstborn’s birthright in Genesis 25:29-34, and tricked Isaac into blessing him as the firstborn in Genesis 27:18-29.

Further, Jacob acknowledges God in his early travels away from home (Genesis 28:18-22), but doesn’t seem to come to any real trust in God as his God until Genesis 32:22-32, when God renames him Israel. In a manner of speaking, then, Jacob’s testimony is “raised by a godly father, but rebelled, lied, cheated, and stole; tried to live life apart from God; yet God (literally) wrestled me to the ground later in life.”

Consider, then–in light of all of that–Jacob’s statement in Genesis 48:15:

“…the God who has been my shepherd all my life long…”

Is this a misspeak on Jacob’s part? Hyperbole from a dying man? Poetic license? How could Jacob possibly mean “all my life long” given his past?

I certainly don’t think Jacob is deluded, confused, or using any sort of literary device.

Rather, Jacob seemed to have a very robust view of God’s working; a theology of God’s sovereignty, if you will. I believe that Jacob would have nodded knowingly at his son Joseph’s statement in Genesis 50:20:

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…”

Jacob didn’t see God as beginning to shepherd him when he wrestled with the angel in Genesis 32:22. Rather, he was able to say, “God has been my shepherd all my life long.” God was always at work, in mercy and over sin.

We need this robust theology. I need this robust theology! There are not times when God works, and others where he does not. There are not seasons of God’s activity in our life, and seasons where he is inactive. He is ever-present, ever-active. He is always working, whether he appears to us clearly, dimly, or not at all; whether he speaks loudly, in a whisper, or does not speak audibly at all.

God is active. He has shepherded me all my life long. He is ever-good, and as his covenant child, he is ever for me. My faithfulness, then, is not contingent functionally upon God’s activity–for God is ever-active. My faithfulness is contingent on my awareness of his activity; my ability to recognize his moving in and around me.

God, give me eyes to see you; to disbelieve the lie that you are not active. Give me a heart that is moved by your ever-presence; your omnipresence.

And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who has authority, and not as their scribes.

Matthew 7:28-29

In Matthew 5:1-2, it says Jesus went up to the mountain with his disciples, away from the people. So while Jesus is teaching–basically about the impossibility of keeping the Law–people are coming up the mountain to hear him. This is not an encouraging message he’s delivering, though. But the people came, still, because he taught with authority (Matt. 7:29).

How was his authority demonstrated? He quotes a lot of Scripture, but I don’t see any revelatory interpretation–except that he reiterates the difficulty of keeping the Law. He doesn’t preach Christ crucified here, an event yet to come, so his message doesn’t seem overly controversial. So how was his teaching so different from the teaching of the scribes?

The scribes knew the Bible. They were well-educated and well-trained. They were experienced. They were just as “harsh” as Jesus with regard to the keeping of the Law. They even added additional rules and laws.

But in Matt. 7:21-27, Jesus begins to speak of himself. Is this the difference? Jesus speaks not just of Law, but of God–and of Father. And he speaks, implicitly, against the public showiness of the Pharisees (Matt. 6:1-5, et. al.).

How can I avoid, then, teaching like the scribes? How can I speak with authority, and emulate the teaching of Jesus? I have to study; that can’t be ignored. But what authority can I claim other than Jesus, the author of the very things I wish to understand and communicate?

Can I become authoritative based solely upon a clear speaking of Jesus? What does it look like to become so deficient in myself that only Jesus is magnified? How can I prepare and lead in such a way that even the most glorious, wonderful truths of Scripture are seen as Christ, as God-sent, and not as some well-studied, cleverly presented gem that I’ve dug up on my own?

I think simplicity is the key. I am not to be clever with the text; I am not to be intentionally surprising outside of Scripture’s own surprise; I am not well-put-together, and I am not subtle. I am merely a delivery mechanism for the obvious and consistent message that is the Gospel.

And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Matt. 8:2-3

This short pericope reminds me of three powerful truths:

1. I am unclean.
2. Jesus is not.
3. Jesus can make me clean, but I cannot make Jesus unclean.

There are so many rich theological and practical insights here. First, we are all spiritual lepers. And like so much of what Leviticus 13:1ff calls leprosy, we are contagious. When the leper in Matt. 8:2 approached Jesus, the crowds would have fallen back, horrified. In addition to fear of catching his physical disease, leprosy, the mere presence of this leper would cause all close to him to become ceremonially unclean.

This man was outcast; pariah; excluded from life and community.

Yet aren’t we all, truly, with this man? Although we dress and spray and apply, we cannot escape the stink and decay of our nature. A richly dressed dead man only attracts higher-end grave robbers.

But in total audacity, this leper approaches Jesus. Somehow (by the prompting of the Spirit of God), he understands that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one. Jesus is clean. And based upon this, the leper asks Jesus for anointing; for healing.

This is truly strange when I examine myself and my own sin-darkened heart, apart from Jesus. My instinct is not to seek the clean; but to seek the dark. Misery loves company and sin desires companionship.

Left to my own devices, my crew of choice is rife with the sick, those just as rotted as my own core. Give me twenty others just a bit less together than I, and we’ve got a party.

How deeply, then, we need a movement from outside of us! Dead men don’t seek out the living unless–and pardon the extended metaphor–they are re-animated and controlled by something living. We all know this intuitively; we pray for the sick and the lost as if we desire God to move then and heal them completely apart from themselves. Of course, we pray as if that is the case because we all realize that is exactly the case; the is exactly what they (and we) need.

How much we need Jesus, the clean one, to cleanse us.

Yet most surprising of all: Jesus did not shrink back. He does not slide away or vanish. He stands in front of this diseased man and touches him (Matt. 2:3). Here, ritual uncleanness comes into contact with sinless perfection; here, the Old Testament law collides with the law-giver and a New Testament covenant of richness and veracity.

In a moment, the law is fulfilled! The unclean is clean, and Jesus yet remains clean himself. Jesus, in fact, does not simply remove ritual uncleanness. He drives it back, destroying it, stamping his own permanence and cleanness atop the dirt and despair before him.

Jesus is clean, yet unafraid of our uncleanness. He is no high priest of old, concerned with his own washing and purification; his sacrifice is once for all who he calls his own, and he drives back the darkness in his children with a touch; with a mere word.

Praise our clean Jesus, who removes our impurity! Praise our clean high priest, who has paid and made sacrifice upon our behalf.

My leprosy is gone!

And while staying with them, [Jesus] ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father…

Acts 1:4

“This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:11b

There are two promises in this passage (Acts 1:6-11). First, Jesus promises the coming, the baptism, of the Holy Spirit. Second, the angel promises the visible, physical return of Jesus from heaven. While these promises are not necessarily linked causally, the ground for both is the same: the promiser, the promise-maker, God.

Further, we have Scriptural evidence (and historical fruit) demonstrating the first promise–the coming of the Holy Spirit–has been fulfilled (see Acts 2:1 and following). Simply put, then, if both promises have the same ground–God–and one has already been fulfilled, it is safe to presume that ground–again, God–is faithful and substantive. Then we can say, based upon a faithful and substantive ground, Jesus will return, and he will do it in the manner promised by the angels.

(You could easily strengthen and expand this argument by acknowledging that all the promises of the Old Testament have as their ground God. At least fifty of these–depending on who you ask and how you count–were fulfilled in Jesus, many of which were simply beyond estimation in terms of probability. How do you work out the odds of a virgin birth? So it’s not just a matter of the ground being faithful based upon one fulfilled promise, but on many, many more.)

There are further issues to consider: how does chance affect the ability of a promise being randomly fulfilled (none, in these particular cases; there is no chance of the Holy Spirit randomly falling, as there is no population of fallings to disperse over a set of outcomes. If that was nonsense to you, suffice it to say that things like virgin births and tongues of fire can’t be assigned mathematical probabilities.) Additionally, for the Christian, this sort of logic would merely supplement existing belief, rather than truly proving or disproving God or Jesus’ faithfulness.

But here’s the important part; the part that goes beyond mathematics and chance and statistics: we have evidence of Christ’s return in the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:1ff. We have proof that the God who makes promises to his people in the Old Testament and to Jesus’ disciples in Acts 1 keeps his word. Do you grasp the gravity of this?

Rejoice! Our Lord is coming! Jesus’ return is not a hope in the 21st century meaning of the word. He is sure; his return is certain.

He is coming!

…[Peter] fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”

Acts 10:10-13

Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”

Acts 10:17-20

This is a pivotal story in God’s plan to spread the gospel from Judea–and primarily Jews and proselytes–to the ends of the earth–populated primarily by Gentiles. It’s also easy to just blow through this story: Peter has a vision that all things are clean; Peter evangelizes the Gentile, Cornelius; the Gentiles are considered clean if they believe in Jesus.

Boom! Simple. Write that thing up with some pictures, clever illustrations, and tell it to the kids in Sunday School.

But–and I just saw and realized this in reading through Acts 10 today–that’s not at all how the actual narrative unfolds.

Peter does get a vision in Acts 10:10-16. But he’s got no idea what the vision means. He doesn’t slap a palm to his forehead and yell out, “Aha!” He doesn’t have a bath, come to a stunning deduction, and run through the streets of Joppa naked, screaming out, “Eureka!”

In fact, when Cornelius’ men arrive in Acts 10:17, Peter was “inwardly perplexed.” The Spirit of God has to tell him to go with these men (Acts 10:19-20), as Peter has not connected his vision to Cornelius and God’s plan to begin steadily converting Gentiles.

It’s not until Peter has met and spoken with Cornelius in Acts 10:28 that he seems to understand the connection between God calling all things clean and a now-open door to Gentile evangelization.

But don’t be too hasty; the journey from Joppa to Caesarea–where Cornelius lived–was 31 miles! That means Peter probably had at least a full day, if not more, to walk, commune with God, pray, and ponder the connection between what he’d seen and what God was doing.

So what? Well, “so what” is that Peter wouldn’t have had that time to ponder, and he wouldn’t have met Cornelius, had he not obeyed the Spirit’s voice in Acts 10:19-20–while he was still perplexed.

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, had to obey without understanding. He had to trust the voice of God over his own recognition of what was going on–even when what he was trying to grasp was a vision from that same God.

This could be nicely summed up in a chorus of “Trust and Obey”–but it’s never that simple in real life, is it?

I want to know what’s next. I want the plan. I want greater light; greater understanding. But who am I? I’m certainly not Peter, filled with the direct authority of Christ (Matt. 28:28) and given near-invincibility for a season (Mk. 16:17-18). But Peter to had to obey when perplexed, and so often, so do I.

So what’s the secret? How did Peter manage this seemingly-impossible task?

I have to believe, ultimately, that it was Peter’s extensive time with Jesus that moved him to go without understanding; to obey in confusion. Jesus had proven himself trustworthy; Jesus had shown himself to be good. But that belief–that foundational trust–came over time. Peter had hours, days, weeks, months, years all piled up at Jesus’ side and before his feet.

My lack of trust in Jesus is not, then, merely a signal to beg God for more trust. It is an indication–an indictment, even–that I have yet to spend enough time with him. I do not know Jesus so well that I trust him as I should. Run to him! Pray to him! Read of him! These things require time; lots and lots of time.

Give me Jesus, Father, give me time with you and your Son. Teach me of you that I might trust you.