Monthly Archives: November 2010

My Grandfather’s Bible

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Over the weekend, I was given a Bible. It’s worn. There is a handwritten date inside: 1914.

This was one of my great-grandfather’s Bibles. It was given to my grandfather at some point, and now it’s been passed to me.

There are a couple things between the pages, as often happens with Bibles. One is a piece of a calendar page. It’s from March 1931, before my mother was born. It’s there because of a couple notes scrawled on the back. There is another card with a painting of flowers and a verse from 2 Timothy printed on it.

So cool. But it is impossible to use this Bible.

It is in Swedish.

My great-grandfather came from Sweden as an adult. My grandfather came a decade later, when he was eleven. My mother never learned Swedish, not more than a few words. The linguistic key for this Bible is gone for me.

This Bible is a reminder of a spiritual legacy, but I cannot depend on the legacy. I have to read for myself. But they have left me some starting places.

There are some references in the front of this Bible, penciled remnants of some past study. Someone wrote “Luke 10:38-42” and “John 11:17-28.”  These are two stories of Mary and Martha, stories I’ve written about. (See, for example, Doing what you can do best). I love these stories about these two women and their brother Lazarus. I wrestle with the implications of their biography for me.

Though my grandfathers and I don’t share the same language or the same life experience, we do share the same underlying text, what is described as The Word of God. Left in any one language, it languishes, becoming an interesting historical artifact. Yet I am thrilled to have their Bible.

However, I am transformed by having mine.

Timothy is out of jail.

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That’s really good news, right? That Timothy was released from jail?

Of course,  many people have known that for a really long time. In fact, as long as people have been reading the book of Hebrews, they have known that Timothy is out of jail and is on his way somewhere.  (Hebrews 13:23)

I, on the other hand, did not know that he had been released. Truth be told, I never knew that he had been arrested. I had no idea.

I knew, of course, that when Paul, who had mentored Timothy, wrote one of his instructional letters to Timothy, he reminded Timothy of all that they had been through. Paul said,

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:10-13)

I knew that, but I had never noticed that Timothy, apparently, had been through the whole process himself.

Why am I making such a big deal of Timothy’s release? A couple reasons.

1. Because I’ve spent some time reading the Bible, talking about it, teaching it. For all I know, I’ve probably taught some or all of Hebrews. And yet, there are things that I just haven’t noticed.

2. Because once noticed, this little observation connects with and fleshes out a picture of Timothy that I hadn’t thought about before.

There is a lot, I’m discovering, that I have to learn about what’s written here, about how I can keep learning. I’ll try to keep you posted.

An Advent reader

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Sorry to bother you. I know it’s Saturday. But tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, and I thought some of the people who visit 300 words might be interested in an Advent reader.

Three years ago, I wrote an Advent series at advent2007.wordpress.com. I looked at the idea of anticipation, trying to see through the eyes of the people in the book of Luke.

The following year, I published those posts as an ebook. You can get it as a PDF (Anticipation) or as an ebook through yudu. (Anticipation-yudu).

(And if you don’t have printing resources, send an email with your snailmail address and I’ll send you a copy –  jnswanson [at] gmail [dot] com. If you are getting this by email, you can probably just hit reply.)

It’s designed to run the 25 days of December, with the first reading on next Wednesday. I know that the ebook says 2008, but December 1 is December 1, regardless of the year.

Thanks for your time. You can go back to your regularly scheduled Saturday activities now.

Still thankful: a repost

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(This was first published the day after Thanksgiving 2009.)

It’s the day after the ritual.

We are exhausted and confused. Our bodies aren’t used to that much food, to this much time out of the routine, to the tension between expectations and reality.

The antidote for the day after Thanksgiving confusion is not shopping. It is giving.

Giving thanks.

The best way to make sure that our thankfulness is not limited to one day but becomes part of a life of gratitude is to spend the day after thanksgiving giving thanks.

There are people in the Bible who have a life of gratitude even when the conditions of their lives weren’t great.

Paul constantly thanks God for the people he writes to, even when all he can thank God for is the fact that He is working on them. And Paul had physical and emotional and spiritual challenges all the time, from inside and out.

David constantly thanks God, except when he is talking about oceans and mountains thanking God. And when he is inviting everything that has breath to thank God.  And David spent the first part of his life being picked on, the next part of his life being chased, the next part being king, and then next part of his life dealing with a fractured family.

I know that sometimes it is hard to thank God for. “Thank you for this horrible experience” feels wrong somehow. “Thank you that“, however, can be just as accurate. “Thank you that I was preserved, that you were present, that you think outside of time, that justice isn’t momentary.”

It may be challenging today to be thankful. That’s fine. It’s a good test of how much gratitude we have.

We gotta start somewhere.

“I thank God every time I think of you.” See? Not so hard. Of course, meaning it…

 

Thanks.

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I’ll let Paul describe how I feel about you. Thanks for showing up here. You have no idea what it means to me.

Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality. You have, after all, stuck with me all the way from the time I was thrown in jail, put on trial, and came out of it in one piece. All along you have experienced with me the most generous help from God. He knows how much I love and miss you these days. Sometimes I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:3-11

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