Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

I have personally witnessed three rather minor plagues in my life, involving grasshoppers, cockroaches, and tarantulas.  They did not intimidate me the way the threat of plagues intimidated the Chosen People into returning to their God.  We look at the Prophets and their predictions of plagues - and we consider how we today must adapt to the lack of outward warnings when we are going astray morall...

I once met a man in bank near USC who had the same name as me.  Our conversation did not get off to a good start, but he ended up coming to my mind years later when I reread the Book of Jonah.  We look at this parable, where a reluctant Prophet tries to flee God, spends three days and nights in the belly of a fish, and then goes on to learn a tough lesson about forgiveness.

A few years ago a massive fire swept from the Rocky Mountain foothills east, burning parts of 3 cities.  We look at a biblical rebuilding effort, from Haggai and Zechariah, as the People of God return from exile to rebuild their Temple.  We consider what we, as Christians, see as the true rebuilding, renewing effort in our lives.

I once spoke with a man who had done some very evil things in his life.  He was wondering if God would ever want to have anything to do with him.  We look at a story, an allegory, from the Book of Hosea.  It is about Hosea's wife and three children.  We see what it teaches us about our relationship with God.

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 wha...

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 l...

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 mea...

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...

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 voic...

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...

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...

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 anot...

We pick from last week in our discussion of the Book of Romans.  We consider a man who was near the end of his life and didn't know if he truly had faith.  We consider the Book of Romans, what it has to say about faith, and what its impact has been on Christianity.  We look at this question that this man was confronting and use it to ask each of us if we do indeed have the kind of faith that makes...

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...

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 b...

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 l...

We look at the story of the Tower of Babel, and at its traditional interpretation, along with some newer twists on that interpretation.  We consider how this ties in with a story from the New Testament, and how the Tower of Babel, combined with a New Testament slant, tells a very uplifting story.  We also look at a man I met a while back who was building his own Tower of Babel, and how that went w...

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 minimiz...

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 acci...

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 th...

I used to tease my kids, telling them things that were not real and getting them to believe it, before telling them it was a joke.  This backfired when my little daughter refused to eat an ice cream cone that I told her was safe to eat - convinced that I was trying to get her to eat cardboard.  I had turned myself into a wolf in sheep's clothing, a dad that was not to be believed.  We look at the...

Wendy and I once traveled in Ireland with our kids - when they were quite small.  We had some adventures, in particular, a surprise concert at a nearby zoo, by U2.  We look at the book of Ecclesiastes, a very enigmatic and literate book that talks about the difficulties of finding true satisfaction and meaning in life on Earth.  It can be a very jaded read.  But it teaches us some very important p...

I met a young man who considered himself a modern "Gnostic" - and I learned about the dire limitations of his faith.  We look at 1st John, a deeply theological letter that strives to set the reader straight on the basic tenets of Christian faith.  We look at issues such as Christ being both fully human and fully man, at the source of love, and the need to recognize the reality of sin.  We see why...

I visited Israel once, and drove the length of the old Unified Kingdom under David and Solomon: about 100 or so miles.  We look at the history of the 10 tribes of Israel, the United Kingdom, and the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  We consider the tiny size and brief period during when the Unified Kingdom existed.  We consider what a couple of Prophets and the New Testament has to say about...

We consider a couple of prominent Bible passages that superficially seem to back up the "fire and brimstone" sermon that I once heard from a rather strident pastor.  But we look at these passages more closely.  We consider whether God really is vengeful and violent.  We consider an alternative interpretation of these New Testament passages - and see if perhaps there is a common misinterpretation o...