April | 2018 | Pedestrian God

Lessons from Prepositions

Apr 30 2018

Over the past two months, I have been slowly memorizing Ephesians chapter 1. I’m trying to get every word perfect. But the prepositions are killing me!

A preposition is a word that is usually before a noun or pronoun that expresses a relation to another word in the clause. They are words like “about,” “before,” and “in.”

Paul, an apostle OF Christ Jesus BY God’s Will, TO the faithful saints OF Christ Jesus, AT Ephesus

So many prepositions! Why couldn’t he just say, “From Paul to the saints?”

The entire chapter is written like that. Paul is constantly adding prepositional phrases like “For He chose us IN Him, BEFORE the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless IN love BEFORE Him.

His prepositions teach us a lot about God. Paul repeatedly uses the phrases “In Him” or “In Christ” to emphasize Jesus’ role in our salvation. He reiterates that everything is being brought together in Christ. That everything centers on Him.

And everything is done in love – not just ordinary love – but love so perfect that you and I are brought back to a right relationship with God because of it.

I’m thankful for these prepositions. I’m thankful that I’m IN Christ. That He chose me to be holy and blameless IN love. If you haven’t read Ephesians chapter 1 in a while, I encourage you to read it now – and pay special attention to the prepositions.

I’d love to hear from you – how has memorizing Scripture brought special attention to examples like this in your life? How do you best encourage yourself to make Scripture memorization a habit? Comment below or contact me on social media.

Sin’s Cycle

Apr 18 2018

Have you ever read a passage and Scripture and thought, I’m pretty sure I’ve read this somewhere else?

That happened to me the other day when I was reading Psalm 7. I found a verse that felt really familiar.

Psalm 7:14 says, “See, the wicked one is pregnant with evil, conceives trouble, and gives birth to deceit.”

It took a couple minutes for my brain to kick in. And then it went – hey, I know that example! The idea of evil conceiving and giving birth? The cycle of sin that progressively gets worse? James uses that same language!

Here it is from James 1:15: “Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.”

Don’t you love when you find places like that in Scripture that you hadn’t connected before?

It makes sense, after all, James was raised with a knowledge of the Old Testament. It’s likely that he learned the pregnancy metaphor from Psalm and continued it in his writing.

Futility to Celebration

Apr 03 2018

Has the excitement of Easter already come and gone for you? Are you left with a fridge full of multicolored, boiled eggs and a floor strewn with empty plastic shells? Has Spring Break broken your spirit?

Do you find yourself lamenting like Solomon in Ecclesiastes chapter one?

Everything is futile! (verse 2)

All things are wearisome! (verse 8)

There is nothing new! (verse 9)

It’s easy for us to get bogged down in our daily, earthly lives. After all, the dishes have to be cleaned, the floor vacuumed, and the toilets scrubbed.

And guess what? No matter how good I scrub, I’ll have to clean the bathrooms again. And in a few hours, we’ll be hungry and I’ll once again be at the sink washing dishes.

For the past two weeks, I have been assembling and installing bookshelves when I get home in the evenings. Who knew that floors aren’t perfectly level? And who knew how difficult that would make installing bookshelves? Not one-week-ago-me. One-week-ago-me was convinced I’d be finished in two days. Ha! How little did I know that Ecclesiastes 1:15 would become my new life verse:

What is crooked cannot be straightened

Was Solomon right? Is everything useless? Is it all futile?

Archive - April 2018

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