| Home > e100 > Essential 100 -- Reflections on Being a Scribe |
| Essential 100 -- Reflections on Being a Scribe | | Date Created: Mar 30, 2005, 07:50 AM |
58 — Wednesday March 30 — Matthew 13
One of the difficulties of blogging (or any other public diary, I suppose) is knowing how to handle encouragement and separate it from pride. I battled to find something else to write about in this morning's passage. And one of the problems with finding anything else was a problem alluded to in the Essential 100 booklet -- there's so much in this passage to which I want to react intellectually; professionally this is a very meaty chapter in terms of Matthew's redaction of Mark and his view of Jesus' purposes in teaching. A professional New Testament guy can often be like a expert in textiles and other materials who goes to the cinema and spends most of the time wondering what exact compound the screen is made out of -- how does it get just that quality of reflectivity, why does it absorb the reds like that, et cetera.
But in all that a verse of encouragement also stuck out for me -- the houseowner who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old (Matt 13:52). In the current climate of "biblical teaching" I think perhaps the reverse is more important: to bring out of the text the older truths as well as all the new that people seem to find -- but in any case, I can't help feeling encouraged and my calling confirmed. This is who I want to be, Lord. No doubt every heretic the church has produced looks to this verse for comfort. |
|
|
|
