Background on The Promised Land

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The Song of Israel

Author

Keywords

This is the song of Israel. It begins with the starlit hope of the patriarchs as they sing bleary-eyed songs of their promised future. It becomes a slave song, sung in the chains of Egypt, and evolves...

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The Value of Wastelands

Author

Thomas Merton

Keywords

The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be waste...

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Judaism in Jesus’ Day

Author

William H. Marty

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 12:1–24, Nehemiah 1:1–11 , Daniel 3:1–30, Luke 4:16–30, Mark 12:13–17, Acts 25:26

In addition to worship in the temple, Jews met in synagogues for prayer and for reading the Scriptures. Jesus and Paul taught in synagogues. Jesus was executed by crucifixion, a Roman method of punish...

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A Light in the Darkness

Author

Caroline Cobb

Keywords

Scripture

John 1:1-13

“They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.” (Isa. 8:22) In The Two Towers , the second novel in Tolki...

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A People is Made by Making

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Scripture

Exodus 25:, Exodus 26:, Exodus 27:, Exodus 19:5-6, Exodus 35:21-29, Ezra 3:8-13, Ezra 6:13-22, Nehemiah 2:17-18, Nehemiah 4:6, 1 Corinthians 3:9, Exodus 35:

The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Home We Build Together , points out to the reader that in scripture the description of the creation of the universe in Genesis is given a mere thirty-fou...

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A Marinating Process

Author

Christian George

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 8:2, Matthew 4:1-2, Acts 9:19-30, Galatians 1:15-18

Pilgrimage is a marinating process. The Bible is bursting with people who traveled to places of retreat where God seasoned and tenderized them, preparing them to take the next step of the journey. Mos...

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The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

Author

John R. W. Stott

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:5, James 4:6-10, Matthew 23:12, Luke 14:11, Judges 7:

These ‘meek’ people, Jesus added, ‘shall inherit the earth’. One would have expected the opposite. One would think that ‘meek’ people get nowhere because everybody ignores them or else rides roughshod...

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Eden a Temple, Adam a Priest

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Genesis 2:null

John Walton, in The Lost World of Adam and Eve, argues that the Garden of Eden should be seen as a sacred space (a kind of "Holy of Holies") set off from the rest of creation, with the seven...

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Three Images for Retreat

Author

Ruth Haley Barton

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 6:30, Luke 4:, Hosea 2:14-15, Hosea 11:1-2, Psalm 23:1–3, Luke 4:1–13

Ron Roheiser points out three images for retreat used in Scripture that meet us in our yearning; all of them apply in different ways at different times. ● There is the lonely place to which Jesus ...

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Learning to Be Free

Author

Rachel Clark

International Justice Mission is a global ministry that works to end human trafficking and slavery. An important part of their mission is working with those who have been rescued from slavery to re-en...

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Virtues and Vices Can Offer Fresh Perspective

Author

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

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Reaching back to the tradition of virtues and vices can also give us fresh eyes and expose new layers of meaning in our reading of scripture. Before I read Aquinas on sloth, I would have associated it...

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The Roots of Ash Wednesday

Author

Beth Bevis

Keywords

Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

Since the seventh century, the Western church has observed the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday—the fortieth day before Easter, not counting Sundays. In addition to providing ample time for self-examina...

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Moses’ Need for Adaptive Leadership

Author

Tod E. Bolsinger

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 3:18, Romans 12:2, Hebrews 5:12-14, Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Numbers 14:1-4, Exodus 16:2-3, Numbers 18:17-21

[Jonathan] Sacks comments on this passage, tying it back to his study of adaptive leadership concepts. In the first occasion, Moses was faced with a technical challenge: the people needed food. On the...

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Jesus, the Prodigal Son

Author

Frère Pierre Marie

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:6-8, John 1:10-11, Isaiah 53:3-4, Matthew 11:19, Mark 15:34, Isaiah 53:12, Luke 15:20-24, Revelation 7:13-14

In this excerpt, the French monastic leader Frere Pierre Marie, shares an interpretation of Jesus as the true prodigal son—bringing all of us home with him: He, who is born not from human stock, or ...

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From Apathy to Action

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When Rosina Hernandez was in college, she once attended a rock concert at which one young man was brutally beaten by another. No one made an attempt to stop the beating. The next day she was struck du...

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The Land Slows Us Down

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Scripture

Leviticus 25:4, Deuteronomy 11:11-12, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Jeremiah 12:11, Hosea 2:21-22, Romans 8:19-21, Revelation 22:1-2

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

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The Land of Israel

Author

N. T. Wright and Michael Bird

Keywords

Israel

The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to t...

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The Land Slows Us Down

Author

Jennifer Dukes Lee

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:10-11, John 15:1-2, Matthew 13:31-32, Deuteronomy 11:10-12, Psalm 65:9-10, Leviticus 25:23, Genesis 1:11-12

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

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Our Place of Roots and Beginnings

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

In all our pilgrimages, we begin by going back to our roots. When Christians go to the Holy Land today, we do not go because God is present there in a way in which he is not in New York or Nottingham,...

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The Greatest Promise in History

Author

Nancy Guthrie

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:15, Genesis 22:18, 2 Samuel 7:12-13, Isaiah 9:6-7, Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2, Habakkuk 2:3, Isaiah 40:31

When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...

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The Bible & The Land

Author

Desmond Tutu

Keywords

Scripture

Leviticus 19:18, Isaiah 58:6-7, Galatians 3:28, James 2:1-9, Psalm 82:3

There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said “Let us pray,” and we dutifully shut our eyes....

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Keeping His Promises

Author

Ben Patterson

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 8:28, Jeremiah 29:11

God’s dealings with us are always on the order of what he did with Abram and Sarai. He makes his promises, and he will keep his promises; but just how and when he will keep them is something for which...

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Getting Behind the Myths

Author

Thomas Keating

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 18:22-35, Luke 16:19-31, Matthew 13:3-8, Matthew 20:1-16, Matthew 13:24-33, Matthew 13:44-50, Mark 4:26-29

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...

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Before I Knew God, I knew Nature

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 3:1-12, Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Revelation 12:6, Job 12:7-10, Isaiah 35:1

Before I knew God, I knew nature. I knew the feeling of warmth from the sun on my skin. The crunch of leaves on the sidewalk. The sparkle of the fresh powder snow. It was not until I was a teenager th...

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Scripture Grounds our Story in Place

Author

Eric O. Jacobsen

Keywords

Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains...

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Anticipation Lifts the Heart

Author

Luci Shaw

Keywords

Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled – perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages. Isaiah uttered his prophetic words about the renewal of the natural Creation into...

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A Place of Revelation

Author

Marlena Graves

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:14-15, Exodus 33:18-19

On this earth, then, in our deserts, God personally reveals and names himself. When he does so, his pleasure floods our senses, his beauty engulfs us, and our God-misconceptions are devastated. He mov...

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The Privileged Site of God’s Comfort

Author

Robert Barry Leal

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1-2, Deuteronomy 8:2, 1 Kings 19:4-5, Psalm 63:1, Isaiah 40:3

Especially in the Hebrew Bible, wilderness is the privileged site where God comforts the Hebrew people or their representatives at times of crisis in their lives. In the wilderness God calls and leads...

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The Covenants of Scripture

Author

Merrill F. Unger

Keywords

Covenant

Scripture

Hebrews 13:20, Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 1:26, Genesis 3:14-19, Genesis 3:14, Genesis 8:20-9, Genesis 9:5-6, Genesis 12:1-3, Galatians 3:16, John 8:56-58, 2 Corinthians 3:7-9, Deuteronomy 30:1-10, Deuteronomy 30:1, 2 Samuel 7:4-17, Luke 1:31-33, Acts 1:6, Revelation 19:16, Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, Hebrews 8:8-12, Galatians 3:13-20

Eternal covenant, Heb 13:20—The redemptive covenant before time began, between the Father and the Son. By this covenant we have eternal redemption, an eternal peace from the ‘God of peace’, through th...

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The Upside-Down Pilgrimage: Saul’s Journey to Damascus

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Saul of Tarsus did not intend to be a pilgrim when he set off to go from Jerusalem to Damascus. Indeed, why would any pilgrim make that journey? Pilgrims went to Jerusalem, not away from it. No: Saul,...

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