Today's Reading August 03

Trying to get back on schedule. Yesterday was a very very long day. I think that the meeting/interview went well, but then I have been wrong before.

And sometimes odd things happen. I met an older guy, a security person at one of the airports, sort of a first line before you get to the TSA station. He looked at my ID, and remarked that he'd been a pastor for some time in a town about 15 miles from where I now am. Since that was hundreds of miles and a different time zone from where I now am, that was odd in itself. He told me he'd been a bi-vocational minister, his day job was as an engineer. I told him about our bi-vocational pastor who is leaving us this week. He said, '' why don't you do it?''. Well, as I told him, while I love to teach, and do, I've not ever heard a call to preach and I'm approaching the age that most pastors are thinking about retirement in the not-too-distant future. But it was an interesting exchange - he asked me to convey his regards to his successor in a nearby church, which I will try to do.

Funny how God puts improbable people in your path, though.
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Today's reading from the Old Testament, is Psalms 70, 71, and 72. Psalm 72 is noted as a Psalm of Solomon. But Psalm 70 captures where my head has been sometimes,

Chapter 70
1 MAKE HASTE, O GOD, TO DELIVER ME; MAKE HASTE TO HELP ME, O LORD.
2 Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.
3 Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha.
4 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.
5 But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.

Does that sound to you like ''HELP! HELP!!''? It does to me. Been there.

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From the New Testament, Romans 4.
I don't know that it is possible to summarize this chapter. It builds throughout, and you really need to go over it, slowly and thoroughly, and probably several times. Paul is talking about salvation by grace alone by faith alone. He hasn't quite completed it to ''in Jesus Christ, alone'', but that's where it's going.
Romans is as close as I can think of to an outline of the faith. It's very intense and it is very important, and it is very good reading.