outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from applyityourself.co.uk Recently, I was asked to speak at another church, and the passage of Scripture which was assigned to me was John 1:6-8. "There came a man commissioned and sent from God, whose name was John. This man came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe [in Christ, the Light] through him. John was not the Light, but came to testify about the Light." (John 1:6-8, Amplified Bible) The first question I usually ask when reading something in the Bible is this: What does this tell me about God? Two things are immediately obvious - God is a sending God and God wants to communicate - but there is a third which merits a bit more attention. Though God could communicate directly with humanity, sending truth and love to every individual via some divine mind-and-heart-meld, God chooses to send messengers. Not only that, instead of introducing Jesus directly to the world as the main event, an opening, warm-up act appears as a precur...

I am a reader. The stacks of books in my bedroom, living room, and office, many of them still waiting to be cracked open, testify to this fact. I love to read, but I also know that not all reading is the same. Some is more work and some is more pleasure. A light work of fiction requires little of me but to engage my imagination and be carried away by the story. Online reading requires a bit (or a lot) of discernment to make sure the sources are reliable and the facts check out. Academic reading requires me to reason through the arguments being made and connect them to what I already know or have read in the field. Reading an ancient text requires that I suspend my 21st century perspective as best I can and learn a bit about the worldview and language of the time. Acknowledging a text's context, intent, and genre enables me to hear the words and ideas in such a way that my view of history and the world are enlarged. Reading, interpreting, and understanding the Bible are importan...

Image from thefinancialbrand.com A nasty virus hit me a week ago on Thursday evening and laid me out for most of three days. I had proposals I was working on, a pile of paperwork on my dining room table that needed attention, preparations to make for church on Sunday, emails to answer, supplies to be bought, a house to clean, and laundry to be done. All of that was disrupted. The sickness rendered me unable to think, read, work, stand upright for any length of time, or do much else other than sleep and ingest the occasional protein smoothie. I thought of chocolate and had no interest. I thought of checking my email or Facebook and it just didn't seem to matter. I picked up a book and put it down again without even cracking it open. My fever finally broke Saturday evening, but I was still pretty useless the next day, my brain and body not capable of much. Monday morning, I woke up feeling almost normal. I decided to read a theology blog. My brain ate it up like it was the first ...