Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

I once visited a woman in the hospital who had requested a Bible.  But all I could find for her in the Chaplains' office was a New Testament and Psalms volume.  We talk about her reaction to this.  We also look at several of the 11 passages from the Book of Psalms that appear on signs on a short, steep trail leading up to a place called Bible Point at the YMCA Camp of the Rockies.  We consider what these passage...

I once visited a man in the hospital who had seen an angel in his room just before dawn.  He inspired me to think more deeply about angels - and to write this podcast.  We look at several Bible stories that involve angels, primarily one in Judges where an angel appears to Gideon and commissions him as a great Judge of Israel.  We notice something odd in a few angel stories in the Bible, and this leads us to a much fu...

I once spoke to a dying man who was a Native American.  He reflected on the differences between the Christian notion of forgiveness and the Native American notion.  I explained that our notion has shifted, however, over time.  We look at how various of our spiritual beliefs have evolved from the Hebrew to Greek Scriptures, and from the life of Jesus on Earth until now.  We reflect on what this means with respect...

Not long after moving to the edge of the Mojave Desert as a fourteen year-old, I took a job building a sprinkler system in the desert.  I ended up have trouble with the heat - and very much scaring the young woman who, along with her husband, had hired me.  We look at the story of Elijah and the woman with only a bit of meal and oil, and with her son, facing starvation.  We see Elijah testing her faith, and when she ...

I had a rather short Boy Scout career that ended when I set off some dynamite for fun.  We'll look at Isaiah and how he answered the call from God to serve as a prophet.  Isaiah ended up the most referenced prophet in the New Testament and perhaps the most impactful prophet of all the Hebrew prophets.  We carefully look at how we can more carefully tune our spiritual hearing to be open to the voice of God calling us....

We consider the common belief that Christ replaced a notion of justification by following the intricacies of Mosaic Law with justification by faith alone.  Is this true?  What did the Jews of Jesus' day truly believe about being made righteous in the eyes of God?  We talk about Jewish man I visited in the hospital and two rabbis who had come to see him.  The group of us talked about misconceptions that Christian...

In the third in our series on the Book of Romans, we consider a young man, a Christian, who was badly injured helping others.  We look at a part of Paul's letter that has often - and quite wrongly - been used to support the notion of Predestination, that we cannot control our salvation.  We explain what this passage really means, and how it fits naturally into the central focus of the letter.  We consider our free wi...

When I was a small child I had seizure-like fits.  My parents took me to numerous doctors, and even a few scientists who were studying seizures in kids.  They were faithful people - and it made them confidently determined.  They never doubted that God would guide them to a cure.  We look in detail at the letter of James - and how he taught us that faith leads to persistence.  We also consider another benefi...

We look at the most influential document in the New Testament, outside of the Gospels: Romans.  We consider why it is that historically, some scholars and pastors have not liked it, and have considered it to diverge from Jesus' teachings in the Gospels.  But we also consider it as an "occasional writing", that is, a document meant for a focused purpose - as a letter to a church at a certain place and time, and with a some...

I once visited a woman who was sick with a chronic condition and had a concern about her ability to continue to serve God with the gifts he had given her.  She wondered if her life was over.  We look at the theological issue of whether we can earn gifts from God.  It's a complex issue with a few different perspectives presented in the Bible.  We try to come to a conclusion about what it means to be blessed by Go...

When I was a boy, I was confronted by an angry officer with a gun who wanted to arrest me.  He thought I had just attacked and badly injured an elderly lady.  When he found out he was wrong, he went out of his way to apologize to me and my father.  We look at forgiveness in both the Old and New Testaments.  We consider what it really means to have forgiveness be an integral part of our Christian lives.  We ...

A man with no home and no family once showed up at the hospital having a seizure.  We look at how this man responded to being treated with compassion.  We also look at the "sandwiched" stories of Jesus curing the daughter of a rich man and Jesus healing a poor woman.  We look at a very special word in the inner story - kraspedou - and how the way it is typically translated tends to greatly minimize the true impact of...

I once met a former EMT who was using a high tech wheelchair because she was an incomplete quadriplegic.  She was in the hospital for a test, but was highly traumatized, suffering from a PTSD attack because she was back in a hospital - after having spent months in an ICU after her accident.  She told me the story of how, as an EMT earning a bit over the minimum wage, she had been in a traffic accident while on an emergenc...

Supposedly, Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, but in truth it was written 700 years later.  I studied Greek philosophy and literature in college at Occidental, long ago.  Something stuck with me later: Ecclesiastes was probably written in part as a response to the Greek influence on Hebrew culture at the time Ecclesiastes was written - just after the height of the Epicurean age.  We consider the jaded view present...