Daily Reading Passages

Click below for access to the passages. Biblegateway.com is an excellent site with many versions of the Bible. The link below opens in NIV.  Youversion.com is a new site that allows you to annotate your own Bible, make notes, and comments once you create an account. That link opens in the TNIV version. Other versions are available at both sites.

Coaching Comments

Leviticus 13:1-59, our Old Testament reading for today, continued the clean and unclean laws. Here we move to the priests' role in helping manage infectious disease. In these passages we can see very clearly the hygiene function of these rules. In a culture that didn't have a working knowledge of germs, viruses and the like, these rules would effectively put a damper on the transmission of contagions that had the possibility of doing real damage to the community.

Our New Testament reading today is three scenes from the Gospel of Mark, Mark 6:1-29. First, we see Jesus return to his home town. Until this point Mark has shown us a Jesus with great authority and power. But now, in His hometown, where the people think they know Him, He is unable to do much at all. They had a whole set of preconceptions about who He was, and they were never able to let Him be more than that. Their certainty about what they thought they knew limited their ability to experience what God wanted to do for them.

Following this, Jesus sent His disciples out on their own for the first time. This was part of His mentoring strategy. He gave them their instructions and sent them out with very little other than His authority - which really is all one might need. He gave them a very interesting instruction about not wasting their time on people who weren't ready to hear from them. Their ministry was very effective.

Finally, we get a flashback to the execution of John the Baptist. This comes up because some people wonder if Jesus isn't John the Baptist back from the dead.

Today's Psalms reading, Psalms 39:1-13, is another very interesting Psalm. It's a good follow up to David's song of despair from yesterday. In this Psalm David's heart is very heavy, as He has lived with God's rebuke for a while. He made some choices, and God responded with discipline. But the discipline has been very heavy, and David both wants to learn His lesson, and have God's hand lift from Him. In his heart he feels like he can only take so much.

One of the things that passages like these say to me is this: Walking in the path of God is not always easy or pain-free. Even the "one after God's own heart" dealt with what looks for all the world like depression, certainly it was a deep spiritual pain. And yet, he was still someone God worked through to do mighty things, and someone that God considered a friend. When I am in my own dark places, this is another reminder that God is near - even when it doesn't feel like it.

The Proverbs reading today, Proverbs 10:10, warns us about two kinds of people. The first, "he who winks maliciously" is the person who is saying that they are one thing, but really aren't. The wink is the give-away that they know they are conning you. This person causes grief. They might think they are funny but in reality they are hurtful. The second, "the chattering fool" is the person who constantly talks about things they really know nothing about. This course leads to ruin. The reminder to us: be upfront, be honest, be thoughtful in our speech.

2007 Cohort Comments