Good morning! Well, I'm still "on the road" as they say, though it's not a road trip, it's waiting for the earliest flight I could get back to Fort Myers. I'm tempted to look at this as a huge inconvenience, but you don't need me to tell you that's not how I should see - how God wants me to see it.
First of all, we are very grateful that the hurricane missed us (this time), but now it was someone else's turn to get hit, so we remember in prayer those whose lives are disrupted. I don't actually know if there were fatalities, but I assume there were, and so we pray for the souls of the dead, and for the spiritual health of those left behind to grieve.
There's also a chance that the delay might give me an opportunity to visit a cousin in the hospital today (not really sure yet) but that could be the silver lining here. Time will tell.
I don't know why it's so hard to keep the proper perspective at all times, but it seems to be part of the (fallen) human condition that this is the case. I think I'm much better at this than I was as a younger man, and I can tell you that it's only through prayer that I have become better at seeing the hand of God in everyday things, and submitting to the will of God, even when I don't know what that is. And when I say "it's only through prayer," this is quite apart from whether any individual prayers were answered the way I had hoped, but it has everything to do with the effect of prayer itself - regular and deep prayer - on my spirit. Which only reinforces my conviction that the goal and purpose of prayer is primarily our sanctification and salvation, and we simply do not mature spiritually without it, and without making it a commitment in our lives.
Today - just for today - let's try to see inconveniences as opportunities to "recalculate" (like the GPS navigation) our intentions and expectations for the day. Perhaps what seems like an inconvenience is an opportunity to course correct back toward the will of God.
I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:
This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App
Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.
Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.
Enjoy!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
Here's Matt Walsh's take on it - he says what I'm thinking...
if you watch this, I'd love to hear your thoughts
So here are the verses I look at to check whether a Bible translation is a good one:
These are mostly in the NT, but with regard to the OT, I don't want a Bible to minimize the phrase "Son of Man" so for me a Bible cannot render "son of man" or even "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13 as something like "human being" - that's a paraphrase and while it may convey the correct meaning for SOME OT passages, it does not convey the correct meaning for all of them, and you lose the connection to Jesus' own self-identification as the Son of Man in the NT, especially in Matthew 16:13-15.
Matthew 6:7 - better not say "vain repetition" or imply that repeated prayers are bad - Jesus was criticizing going on and on extemporaneously, not memorized prayers. The word "vain" is nowhere in the Greek!
1 Cor 11:2, and 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6 - better not render the word "teachings" just to avoid the positive connotation for tradition(s), especially if Col 2:8, which has a negative connotation (human traditions) is...
I've seen some YouTube posts lately by some of the Catholic apologists, apparently talking about the best Bible translations (and/or offering rebuttals to Protestant videos on the same topic). I don't actually watch these videos, mind you, because I'm not interested in entering into any debates over it (and I suspect a lot of it has to do with the deuterocanonical books anyway, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a non-issue, since the Church fathers DID read them, and Jesus DID quote them), but as you know, I do have my favorite translations, and some that I feel pretty strongly are no good. In the early days of the Original Church videos, I did a video about this, and I talked about how I have certain test verses, that I use to check a translation. I'll post my video and my test verses later, in case you want to refresh your memory.
For now, those of you who have been following The Journey from the beginning know that when I started, I was using the NABRE as my starting point (and then ...
