Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

We consider something that I have had trouble conveying in my church and in my podcasts: how we know that we can relax and depend on God to take care of us.  We do this by looking at the Book of Esther, an ancient Hebrew story (and not really "history") about a woman who saves the entire Jewish people from annihilation.  God is never mentioned in the story.  Neither is prayer, the history of the Israelites, the covenant with God, o...

When I was a boy, a girl went missing while playing Hide and Go Seek with some of us.  Her mother ended up offering a prayer, which I later identified, I believe, as the Prayer of Manasseh, from the Apocrypha.  We look at the history of the evil King Manasseh from the Kings and Chronicles Books, and at this prayer which is attributed to him (which he certainly did not write).  From the beautiful, poetic prayer we can learn a lot ab...

When I was a young kid in school, I was exposed to a boy who would probably now be called "neurodivergent".  I ended up learning a lot about what it means to be different, but still be made in God's image.  We look at Samson, a sinful, arrogant, corrupt, even laughable man who is manipulated by God to serving despite his apparent desire to dishonor his position as a Nazarite.  We look at the many lessons we learn about what God can...

We look at a story from Judges: the female judge Deborah and how her army destroyed the far more advanced army of their enemy.  In the Bible, it is an epic of the Iron Age of the Canaanites vs. the Bronze Age of the Israelites.  We study both the prose and the poem version of this story.  We see how with God's help, the rag tag Israelite army destroys the experienced Canaanite army which is invading on their iron chariots.  We look...

We look at the traditional view of Holy Week, from the triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, to the gruesome crucifixion, to the glorious resurrection.  We note that low point between the ride into the Holy City and the rise of Jesus from death.  But we consider a somewhat different view - that the crucifixion does not break the joy from Palm Sunday to Easter.  We look at Jesus' last words on the cross and how they have been...

I once spoke with a highly educated physicist who was a psychiatric patient.  We call her Annie.  She talked to me about the Newtonian misconception of gravity as a force, when it really has more to do with the bending of spacetime.  We consider the biblical story of the invasion of Canaan, and the evidence to counter and to defend the validity of this story.  We then get back to the bending of spacetime - and we see that there is ...

Years ago, when I had an as-yet untreated corneal disease, I had very limited vision.  I once accidentally stepped into a coffee cart line in a hospital lobby, and without meaning to, cut off a number of people.  I got yelled at loudly - and felt both angry and embarrassed when the woman who yelled at me didn't seem to care that I couldn't see well.  We look at a few quotes, from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes, that have to ...

When I was a boy, the cross on the top of my church was covered with gold leaf.  We consider the First Temple, Solomon's Temple, which King David declared "will not be for man".  We consider an amazing vision of the Prophet Ezekiel: a valley of dried and disconnected bones rising up and reforming the lost people of God.  We consider the result of the gold leaf being put on the cross of my childhood church by a person who was honori...

My wife and I once saw a side-dump trunk tip over and completely bury and crush a car - with a man still inside.  It seemed like the perfect example showing that we can die at any time.  We look at the Lord's Prayer, its text from the Gospels, what it really meant (as opposed to what we might think it means), and we consider how it relates to us today.  We look at the Lord's Prayer as the perfect prayer to offer at any time we are ...

When I was a boy we used to look for particularly salacious or gross stories in the Bible and talk about them on the playground at recess.  My favorite one is the bread that God orders Ezekiel to bake - by cooking it over human poo.  We look at the Old Testament purity laws and what they were really meant to inspire in the People of God.  We look at what they mean for us today.  We consider how we can be "pure" in the eyes of God -...

I once spoke with a young woman who had been badly traumatized in life.  She understandably had a jaded feeling about the ability of Christianity to change humanity.  We look at two similar stories in the Gospels, about the "Second Coming", or the "Parousia" in Greek.  We look at this from the perspective of a spiritual, not a physical, second coming - and what this could mean for those of us who still believe that people could tra...

I once met a man who had lost one foot and had just been told he would lost part of his other foot.  He had something to say about how this relates to faith.  We look at the age old debate of salvation through faith vs. salvation by acts.  We consider a bit of a different perspective to try and see if we can find a way out of the seeming conflict.  Is there a way to look at faith that does more than conclude that a person with fait...

A buddy of mine, long ago, once gave me surfing lessons.  I grew up near the ocean and was aware of its dangers.  Sure enough, my first time on a board, I ended up under water, spinning, trying to discern up from down.  We look at the Book of Revelation, specifically how it uses the Sea as a metaphor for the chaos of the world and the power of God.  From this we draw the bottom line: the true message of Revelation, written by John ...

I once prayed with a man who was watching his grandmother pass away; she had largely raised him.  I prayed for a joyous eternity in the Kingdom.  He asked me if the story of Jesus in the New Testament was engineered to match Old Testament prophesy, and therefore, Jesus wasn't really the Messiah promised by the prophets.  We consider the classic passage in Micah that predicts a savior born in Bethlehem.  We look at the aspects of th...

I came upon a man at the San Francisco airport who was reading his Bible, studying a passage from the New Testament where Jesus speaks of himself as being a Temple.  The man at the airport had had a severe conflict with his brother, another Christian, over a Bible translation, and was wishing that we could, as people of faith, come together as true community.  We consider the view that as Christians, we are collectively, like Jesus...