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

The Old Testament reading (Genesis 23:1 - 24:51) for today contains two stories: The death of Sarah, and the romance of Isaac and Rebekah.

The death of Sarah is really about Abraham acquiring a piece of land in which to bury his wife. Again it is interesting to note how the people who lived near Abraham reacted to him. They really saw him as a "community leader" and someone they wanted to have on their good side. But the real significance of this passage lies outside the text. This is one of the earliest passages pinned to a verifiable geographical location. This particular field and cave have been known for centuries and since both Abraham and Sarah were buried here, along with several of his children, it became a very important religious site for Jews, Moslems and Christians. Of course that has led to difficulty over the years. But none the less, this is a location you can still go to today. You can read its history and see a few pictures in the wikipedia article about it.

The remainder of the reading revolves around the story of how Isaac and Rebekah met and came to be married. Abraham wanted a wife for Isaac from his own people, not from the people of the land where he was living, so he sent a trusted servant of his with a caravan back to his hometown in Ur. The servant prayed that this special girl would be revealed to him through her kindness. It's a pretty incredible and interesting story as it unfolds. It's such a great story in fact, that I bet most of you read it to the end, even though our reading today stops short of the whole story by 15 verses or so.

Turns out the servant finds such a girl. Turns out she's beautiful. Turns out she's a distant relative of Abrahams! Turns out the family is amenable to the plan, and shortly later, she's on a camel headed, along with the caravan, back to Abraham and his son Isaac. And apparently it was love at first sight.

The New Testament reading is (Matthew 8:1-17). Now Matthew begins to show Jesus in his ministry of healing. We get three pericopes (big Bible scholar word that refers to a complete little story that stands on its own within the text) about healing.

First, Jesus comes across a man with leprosy. The man asks to be healed. Jesus heals him. Then Jesus tells him to do the impossible - keep quiet about it. This happens so frequently that Bible scholars have come to call it the "messianic mystery." Why did Jesus do it? Was it to prevent huge lines asking for healing? Was it to keep his abilities secret? Was it limit the impact of his actions with the authorities until the time was right? Was there some spiritual reason for it? I just can't imagine being healed from a terrible lifetime of disease and then not jumping for joy and telling every single person I met what happened.

Next, a Roman military officer approaches Jesus and asks for healing for a beloved servant. Jesus agrees to go, but the officer tells him that he's not worthy to have Jesus in his home, and Jesus can just heal the servant from a distance. Jesus agrees and comments on the faith of this pagan. Then He gives a stern warning - It's people like this, with the wrong spiritual background, with incomplete knowledge of God, who will edge out the "chosen" and the "church people" who know it all, simply because they trust completely in God and act on that trust. A necessary warning for us, I think.

Finally, Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law (which means Peter was married...) and many others. This section ends with a reference to Isaiah the prophet, and reveals Matthew's intent for sharing all these healing stories. He is demonstrating that Jesus lives up to the prophecies of the messiah being a healer.

The second half of the 9th Psalm is our Psalms reading for today. (Psalms 9:13-20) The Psalm becomes a prayer asking God to act on behalf of the persecuted person. One of the things that sticks out in this and many Psalms is how closely linked supplication and worship are. We tend to separate our prayers asking God for things and our worship of God. They happen in separate prayers, separate songs, even separate times in our lives. We ask when we need stuff, and then from time to time, when we remember it, we praise God for His good deeds. Over and over in the Psalms we see them tied together, sometimes in the same breath. David and the other Psalmists will in one moment praise God for His goodness and ask Him to be good to them.

The reading from Proverbs is Proverbs 3:1-6. With one final reminder to pay close attention to wisdom, we get two particularly important proverbs.

The first, "Let love and faithfulness never leave you..." is truly a foundation for living. Living out of love, and choosing to act faithfully toward God and towards those around us, simply covers a whole multitude of other instructions. This is the way to live. It draws people to us. It expresses the character of God. Everything ought to be about this.

But what about when it comes to those hard decisions or those moments when it's unclear what to do? The next proverb, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart..." addresses that. There are times when we need to get beyond ourselves, step beyond what we understand. When we do this, we can trust that God will be working in us, "making our paths straight."

2007 Cohort Comments