John Tillman - The Park Forum

May 1, 2026April 30, 2026

Everyone

Links for today’s readings:

May 1 Read: Micah 1 Listen: (2:46) Read: Psalm 79 Listen: (1:50)
May 2 Read: Micah 2 Listen: (2:11) Read: Psalm 80 Listen: (1:58)
May 3 Read: Micah 3 Listen: (1:51) Read: Psalms 81-82 Listen: (2:36)

Scripture Focus: Micah 1.1-2, 8-9

1 The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 Hear, you peoples, all of you,
listen, earth and all who live in it,
that the Sovereign Lord may bear witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.

8 Because of this I will weep and wail;
I will go about barefoot and naked.
I will howl like a jackal
and moan like an owl.
9 For Samaria’s plague is incurable;
it has spread to Judah.
It has reached the very gate of my people,
even to Jerusalem itself.

Reflection: Everyone

By John Tillman

In the 1994 film, The Professional, Gary Oldman delivered a one-word line that became legendary. Oldman’s character tells a man near him, “Bring me everyone.” The henchman replies with a questioning tone, “Everyone?” Oldman explodes, screaming, “EVERYONE!”

Screaming the line was intended as a joke to make the director laugh. But the director, Luc Besson, used the screamed version in the film. To this day, fans will shout “EVERYONE” to Oldman when they see him.

Micah, the prophet, had dire warnings from the Lord. If you asked him who they were for, he might reply, “EVERYONE!” They are for Samaria, Judah, and all the peoples of the earth. Micah starts with Samaria, but in the course of his message, he will leave no one out.

Like the lines in a film script, we read the prophets’ words but must imagine their inflections and voices. When we read condemnatory passages, we might imagine shouts like Gary Oldman’s “Everyone!” And we might be right. When we read other passages, we might hear sarcasm, bitter irony, or an insulting sneer.

Prophets say angry, critical words and do strange and offensive things, like Isaiah and Micah walking around naked. (Isaiah 20.2-4; Micah 1.8) Today, we call people like that angry extremists. Many people dismiss such critics as “hateful” or “deranged.” This would sound familiar to biblical prophets. John the Baptizer was called demon-possessed. Jesus was called a drunkard. (Luke 7.33-35) Elijah was called a “troubler of Israel.” (1 Kings 18.7) This doesn’t, however, mean every kook is a prophet.

Angry prophets, like the God they speak for, are driven by love, not hate. Anger against corruption is not hatred of country; it is love for country. Anger against oppressors is love for the oppressed. Anger against false gods is love for the true God. We see this in Micah’s mourning. He weeps. He wails. He denies himself clothing to take on shame. These are acts of love. The Holy Spirit has gifted some to be prophets. But some prophetic responsibilities are for “everyone.” Yes, everyone.

Don’t be ashamed to weep and wail at injustice, harm, and oppression. Don’t be ashamed of making others uncomfortable so long as you are telling the truth.

Don’t be ashamed of making good trouble. Don’t be ashamed to call everyone to repentance. Don’t be ashamed to tell everyone about God’s love.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the whole earth. — Psalm 96.1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Exit the Spiritual Rollercoaster

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 30 Read: Jonah 4 Listen: (1:56) Read: Psalm 78.38-72 Listen: (7:12)

Scripture Focus: Psalm 78.35-39, 52-54

35 They remembered that God was their Rock,

that God Most High was their Redeemer.

36 But then they would flatter him with their mouths,

lying to him with their tongues;

37 their hearts were not loyal to him,

they were not faithful to his covenant.

38 Yet he was merciful;

he forgave their iniquities

and did not destroy them.

Time after time he restrained his anger

and did not stir up his full wrath.

39 He remembered that they were but flesh,

a passing breeze that does not return.

52 But he brought his people out like a flock;

he led them like sheep through the wilderness.

53 He guided them safely, so they were unafraid;

but the sea engulfed their enemies.

54 And so he brought them to the border of his holy land,

to the hill country his right hand had taken.

Reflection: Exit the Spiritual Rollercoaster

By John Tillman

Israel has spiritual ups and downs. Depending on where you start or stop the story, it’s inspiring or tragic.

The second half of Psalm 78 begins in the wilderness with Israel rebelling against God. They forget God’s goodness in bringing them out of Egypt and they suffer the consequences. Despite being oppressed in Egypt, the wilderness struggles caused Israel to recall enslavement fondly. They were willing to go back to slavery just to get some cucumbers. (Numbers 11.4-5) If the story stops there, it’s a tragedy. Israel needed their hearts, not just their bodies, freed from enslavement.

Psalm 78 closes with Israel in the promised land, settled under David’s rule. Stopping the story there gives it a happy ending, but we know dark things happened during David’s reign and the rest of the story wasn’t pretty.

Our stories also have ups and downs. Our faith oscillates, turning fully toward Jesus then turning away again. We might turn away because of sin and shame, or due to tiredness or burnout, or when experiencing suffering or struggle.

Jesus bears with us and understands our sufferings and our temptations. As God did for the psalmist and Israel, Jesus does for us. He remembers that we are “flesh…like a passing breeze.” (Psalm 78.39) As he said to his disciples in the garden, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Mark 14.38) He is merciful, forgiving our iniquities (Psalm 78.38). Jesus awaits the moment we turn to his face in repentance to be healed, restored, and accepted.

This does not mean that God does not grieve our wandering, our failures, our sin, and our rebellion. He does. Jesus works in us to destroy and eliminate sin and its influence. Like Israel, we need our hearts, not just our bodies, freed from sin and death.

With maturity, our roller coaster of rebellion and repentance smooths out to higher highs and fewer drops and dives. Eventually, Jesus, the true and better David, comes and we exit this rollercoaster for good. Instead of up and down, it will be, as CS Lewis wrote, “further up and further in.”

As desires for Egypt still affected Israel, desires for sin still affect us in our wanderings. Reflect on the destruction of Egypt described in Psalm 78.42-55 as you imagine God destroying the pull and power of sins in your life.

Moses told Pharaoh to let Israel go. Speak to your sins, saying “Let me go.”

Divine Hours Prayer: The Prayer Appointed for the Week

I thank you, heavenly Father, that you have delivered me from the dominion of sin and death and brought me into the kingdom of your Son; and I pray that, as by his death he has recalled me to life, so by his love he may raise me to eternal joys; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

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April 28, 2026April 26, 2026

Marks of Identity and Destiny

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 28 Read: Jonah 2 Listen: (1:20) Read: Psalm 77 Listen: (2:12)

Scripture Focus: Psalm 77.7-12

7 “Will the Lord reject forever?

Will he never show his favor again?

8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?

Has his promise failed for all time?

9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?

Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:

the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.

11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;

yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

12 I will consider all your works

and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

Photo Note: Today’s image is of a Baptist church in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia struck by a Russian KAB-1500L laser-guided precision bomb during a prayer meeting this month, killing at least one person, a minister, and injuring at least eight others. (The Christian Post)

Reflection: Marks of Identity and Destiny

By John Tillman

Federico Villanueva’s commentary on Psalm 77 begins with a story.

“In the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda…newspapers printed a photo of a woman standing in front of the ruins of a chapel after the typhoon devastated the city of Tacloban. Alone and soaked in the rain, the woman’s face is turned towards the place where the altar had stood. This image captures the persistent faith of Psalm 77.” (Asia Bible Commentary Series)

Something horrible happened to the psalmist. In context with the surrounding psalms, the event the psalmist mourned seems to be the destruction of the temple. Why else would the poet fear that God’s promise failed? Why else would the poet wonder if God’s unfailing love vanished?

Have you experienced something that inspired similar doubts? Have you stood, like the Filipino believer and the psalmist, witnessing a wrecked place of worship? Maybe one wrecked by something other than a physical storm? Have you lamented wreckages, damages, abuses, or failures that challenged your picture of God?

Defining moments leave marks of identity. Holocaust survivors have physical tattoos from Nazi camps, but also carry tattoos on their souls and psyches. Other traumatic events such as mass shootings, sexual abuse, unjust incarceration, violent crimes, or acts of war or terrorism can leave similar marks. These marks don’t ruin you unless you let them, but they also can’t be ignored or swept away.

Without experiencing such things, you might struggle understanding those who have. You might cringe at the honesty of someone saying, “It is all the same…He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.” (Job 9.22) You might want to plead, “You shouldn’t say that!” But God welcomes brutal honesty.

The psalmist was irrevocably marked by the temple’s fall, however, a greater event left a greater mark. The psalmist reflected on God’s saving work in the Exodus. This defined God’s and Israel’s identities. This reflection didn’t erase suffering or doubt but provided reassurance of God’s holiness and love which sustained the souls marked by tragedy.

For Christians, the cross and resurrection are our Exodus story. In moments of loss, confusion, doubt, and pain, reflecting on the cross sustains us. The cross is the event upon which Jesus stakes his identity and in which we find ours.

No matter what has marked you, it doesn’t have the final word on your identity or destiny. The cross settles both our identity and destiny as united to Christ.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice and Israel be glad. — Psalm 14.7b

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

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April 27, 2026April 25, 2026

Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 27 Read: Jonah 1 Listen: (2:29) Read: Psalms 75-76 Listen: (2:33)

Scripture Focus: Psalm 74.1, 7-9

1 O God, why have you rejected us forever?

Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?

7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground;

they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.

8 They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!”

They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.

9 We are given no signs from God;

no prophets are left,

and none of us knows how long this will be.

Psalm 75

1 We praise you, God,

we praise you, for your Name is near;

people tell of your wonderful deeds.

2 You say, “I choose the appointed time;

it is I who judge with equity.

3 When the earth and all its people quake,

it is I who hold its pillars firm.

4 To the arrogant I say, ‘Boast no more,’

and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns.

5 Do not lift your horns against heaven;

do not speak so defiantly.’ ”

6 No one from the east or the west

or from the desert can exalt themselves.

7 It is God who judges:

He brings one down, he exalts another.

8 In the hand of the Lord is a cup

full of foaming wine mixed with spices;

he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth

drink it down to its very dregs.

9 As for me, I will declare this forever;

I will sing praise to the God of Jacob,

10 who says, “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked,

but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up.”

Reflection: Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

By John Tillman

David wrote a trilogy of psalms using the tune “Do Not Destroy.” Psalm 75, written long after David, uses the same tune. Perhaps that is because this psalm responded to something precious being destroyed and something more precious surviving destruction.

Psalm 74 and 75 seem to be a pair. Psalm 74 laments. Psalm 75 comforts. Psalm 74 mourns the destruction of the temple, the place of God’s name. Psalm 75 discovers that God’s name is still near.

Why was the place of God’s name destroyed? One reason was misrepresenting the name of God.

The name of God, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3.14), is connected to the attributes of God: compassion, grace, being slow to anger, abounding in love and truth (Exodus 34.6). People, places, and communities can misuse God’s name (Exodus 20.7) by acting in ways that clash with God’s attributes.

When we slander compassion, withhold grace, rush to anger, refuse love, and reject truth, while claiming to represent God, we abuse God’s name and misrepresent God’s character. We are arrogantly exalting our horn (Psalm 75.4-5), our power, our judgment, our deeds. We are defying God’s kingdom from coming on earth as in Heaven. We are asserting our will and calling it by God’s name. (Matthew 6.10)

Because God is slow to anger, this may succeed for a time. It might look like blessing, but in truth God is allowing the arrogant to drink to the dregs a cup of judgment. (Psalm 75.8)

Will we be people to whom God’s name will remain near, even in times of judgment, destruction, and strife?

We may experience precious things that represented God’s name and presence to us being destroyed when God finds corruption in them. Our fruitless fig trees are cursed (Matthew 21.19-20). Our temple’s corrupt tables are flipped (Matthew 21.12). Our shepherds are exposed as ravening wolves (Eze 22.27; Matt 7.15; Acts 20.29).

Do not confuse the loss of places or people who represented God’s name with the loss of God’s presence. The place of God’s name, the temple, was destroyed. Yet, God’s name remained near those of the people who praised God and told of his deeds.

Nothing can, by its destruction, remove God’s name, his presence, from his faithful ones. Empires, cities, churches, and leaders can fall or be lost but Jesus will not lose one of those who trust in him. Represent God’s name as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, loving, and truthful. He will be with us to the end of the age.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus said to us: “…Everything now covered up will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.” — Matthew 10.26-27

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

Links for today’s readings:

Apr 24 Read: Amos 8 Listen: (2:16) Read: Matthew 28 Listen: (2:39)

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Apr 25 Read: Amos 9 Listen: (3:08) Read: Psalm 73 Listen: (2:56)
Apr 26 Read: Obadiah 1 Listen: (3:28) Read: Psalm 74 Listen: (2:34)

Scripture Focus: Amos 8.11-14

11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

“when I will send a famine through the land—

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

12 People will stagger from sea to sea

and wander from north to east,

searching for the word of the Lord,

but they will not find it.

13 “In that day

“the lovely young women and strong young men

will faint because of thirst.

14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria—

who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’

or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’—

they will fall, never to rise again.”

Reflection: Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

By John Tillman

Weather, war, economics, and ecological disasters cause famines. The worst famines have multiple causes.

The Irish Potato Famine began with a fungal blight on potatoes in 1845. It was worsened by tariffs and economic policies of the British government that caused every other kind of food produced in Ireland to be exported to England while millions of Irish people starved to death.

In 1932, the Holodomor, which means “death by hunger,” in Ukraine began with mismanagement. Russia intentionally weaponized and worsened the shortages to crush Ukrainian identity and break resistance to Soviet control. Millions died.

In 1941 Axis powers began an 872 day blockade of Leningrad to cause starvation, desperation, and surrender. An estimated 1.5 million people died—nearly half the city’s population.

Famine victims eat strange or disgusting things. Non-food animals, like dogs, cats, rats, mice, and insects are first. Famine victims also boil and eat leather from shoes, handbags, or saddles to get scraps of protein and items of cotton or linen to fill stomachs. They stretch flour by mixing it with dirt, sawdust, clay, or ground bones. They eat animal-based glues, such as bookbinding or hide glue and scrape the paste off of old wallpaper because it contains potato starches. Cannibalism also occurs, both in some modern examples and biblical ones.

God promised a strange famine to Israel. He took his word from them precisely because they wouldn’t listen to it. He removed food they were already refusing to eat.

Imagine a city with free, delicious bread on every corner. Yet, people scrounge for flour, mix it with dirt and sawdust and eat horrific loaves of famine-bread instead. That’s a picture of Amos’s Samaria and our world today.

We have greater access to God’s word, the Bible, today than ever before. It is like the bread of life is on every corner, yet we ignore it. We need God’s word so badly that ignoring it long enough leads to gorging on disgusting substitutes. We fill our sickened bellies with anything to hide pangs of hunger for God.

Leaders read fake Bible verses (or misapply real ones) on national media. We mix a little Bible with a little politics, a little self-help psychology, and a popular film, and make famine-bread wisdom to eat. And we wonder why our stomachs ache.

Stop eating famine-bread. Devote yourself to the bread of life in God’s uncut and unadulterated word, the Bible.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Search for the Lord and his strength; continually seek his face. — Psalm 105.4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Author: John Tillman

Everyone

Links for today’s readings:

Scripture Focus: Micah 1.1-2, 8-9

Reflection: Everyone

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Read more: Wail-Patterned Baldness

Read more: When Temples Fall

Exit the Spiritual Rollercoaster

Links for today’s readings:

Scripture Focus: Psalm 78.35-39, 52-54

Reflection: Exit the Spiritual Rollercoaster

Divine Hours Prayer: The Prayer Appointed for the Week

Read more: Hardest Words to Say: “I’m Sorry”

Read The Bible With Us

Marks of Identity and Destiny

Links for today’s readings:

Scripture Focus: Psalm 77.7-12

Reflection: Marks of Identity and Destiny

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Read more: Who Tells Your Story?

Consider Supporting Our Work

Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

Links for today’s readings:

Scripture Focus: Psalm 74.1, 7-9

Psalm 75

Reflection: Don’t Misrepresent God’s Name

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Read more: Do Not Destroy?

Read more: Responding in Kind

Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

Links for today’s readings:

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Scripture Focus: Amos 8.11-14

Reflection: Famine-Bread vs the Bread of Life

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Read more: God of the Weak and Doubtful

Read more: Better Things to be Doing