Scripture Focus: Hebrews 6.11-12
We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Reflection: A Long Journey to Maturity
By Jon Polk

“Now I know my ABCs. Next time won’t you sing with me?”

Letters of the alphabet are the elementary building blocks of language. The learner must comprehend the sounds of letters before combining letters to make works, before combining words to make sentences, and so on.

Once the student has mastered a language, it would be foolish and useless to continue to rehearse the very basic ABCs.

Like language learning, there are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity, but how will we know when we have arrived? We must move past merely knowing the basic teachings about Christ’s life, death and resurrection and beyond simply acknowledging our need for faith and repentance.

To be sure, no one but our sinless high priest Jesus will ever be fully spiritually mature in this lifetime, but there are some indicators to help us know we are headed in the right direction.

As rain-soaked land is expected to produce a bountiful crop, the mature Christian should produce what Paul describes to the Galatians as the fruits of the spirit, i.e. God-honoring, selfless character traits. As land that produces thorns instead of crops is worthless, James declares that faith that does not produce actions is dead, useless.

Marks of spiritual maturity include character growing in likeness to God and actions that demonstrate our love for God and care for his people. In reality, we can never truly arrive; this is a never-ending process.

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson describes discipleship—the process by which we mature spiritually—as a lifelong journey:

For recognizing and resisting the stream of the world’s ways there are two biblical designations for people of faith that seem useful: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ. Pilgrim tells us that we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the journey of spiritual maturity is a one-way trip. We are warned of the dangers of falling away after tasting the goodness of God. Our calling is to diligently work until the end of our lives, moving forward ever onwards towards maturity.

As the writer of the anonymous hymn succinctly stated, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Righteousness shall go before him, and peace shall be a pathway for his feet. — Psalm 85.13

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle
Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 6 (Listen – 1:48) 
Hebrews 6 (Listen 2:58)

This Weekend’s Readings
Song of Songs 7 (Listen – 1:55), Hebrews 7 (Listen 4:01)
Song of Songs 8 (Listen – 2:23), Hebrews 8 (Listen 2:22)

Read more about A Sign of Immaturity
The immature demand signs because they walk by sight—not faith.

Read more about Work, Ministry, and Generosity
Generosity transforms our work into an instrument for cultivating faith—planting seeds for the spreading of the gospel of Christ.

Scripture Focus: Hebrews 5.11

11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Reflection: Keep Drinking the Milk of the Word

By John Tillman

In Hebrews chapter 5, the author wishes to discuss complicated topics of Christ’s transcendental priesthood, the Trinity, and the incarnation. But how is this possible when the readers are not ready for such theological complexity? The writer rebukes the readers, telling them that it is difficult to teach them when they don’t even try to understand.

Just like the chastised readers, the maturity of western Christianity is in question.

Our world needs a gospel-driven worldview, yet half of those raised in church can’t identify the Great Commision. What is it? Who said it? What does it mean? Where is it in the Bible? One out of two don’t know.

This is not just an indictment of our lack of biblical knowledge. More knowledge isn’t the answer. Jesus didn’t call Peter to build a biblical trivia team. Peter, and by extension every Christian, is called to feed a flock, starting with the young. Starting with milk. Milk changes a lamb to a ram.

However, even the simplest of disciplines, church attendance, has been in decline since 1959. (We can’t, therefore, blame millenials for it.) It’s not that we are still drinking milk when we should have been weaned, but that we’ve never drunk it consistently.

Perhaps our culture disdains milk and small beginnings too much? We desire something for nothing. We want spiritual marathon ribbons without putting in the hard miles of training.

Drinking the milk of the word should not be a marker of immaturity and shame but of growth. The purpose of milk is progress. One doesn’t leave milk behind, but adds to it, learning to consume and digest spiritual foods of greater complexity. 

Babies physically grow faster in their early years than at any time in their life. But the growth of the visible is nowhere close to as impressive as the cognitive growth that is happening in their brains. The growth we can experience by the simple application of spiritual practices to our lives can be similarly exponential.

Prioritizing the basics of faith—Bible reading, reflection, prayer, and corporate worship—is a spiritual intake process that matures with us, leading deeper into scripture as we repetitively read and absorb God’s Word.

If we expect to effect change in our complex and demanding world, we need to consistently drink our milk.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him. — Psalm 62.6

Read more about Slavery to Maturity
Perhaps the best thing God can do for our spiritual maturity is to lead us through a desert of trials, mistakes, and dangers

Read more about The Purpose Beyond Growth :: Throwback Thursday
Reproduction, not mere development, is the goal of matured being—reproduction in other lives.

Scripture Focus: Hebrews 4.1-3
1 Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said…

Reflection: Transcendent Peace and Rest
By  John Tillman

Quarantine experiences vary widely. Some of us are at leisure while some are pushed to work around the clock. Some suffer in boredom and some in financial panic. Some are in danger outside the home at essential jobs and some are in danger in the home from abusers they cannot leave home to avoid.

Despite the variety of our experiences, there is a resource available to believers that the rest of the world cannot tap. It is a type of rest in which the busiest can recharge and a type of refreshment and stimulation unavailable in the most captivating leisure activity. There is a place of peace that those in peril can hold on to. There is security unattainable even by those with stockpiles of resources. Christians can rest in God.

This is a spiritual rest that can exist in the midst of strenuous activity. It is transcendent rest, that is unassailable by physical suffering. It is rest that, although invisible, is as tangible as our next breath.

Hebrews speaks of this rest by referencing the Genesis account. Many commenters note that the end of the seventh day, the day of rest, is not noted as the others are. It has no “morning and evening,” no beginning and no end. God’s “rest” was not intended to end. But for sin, Adam and Eve may have lived in a continual “seventh day” period, experiencing “shalom” or peace with God. 

In Jewish culture, sabbath, or shabbat, and peace, or shalom, are linked. We find shalom within shabbat. We find peace within the sabbath. This weekly illustration was never intended to mean that we can only have peace on one day out of seven. Instead, we can experience God’s peace in every day and any moment. Hebrews tells us that “we who have believed enter that rest.” 

God has made a new day for us to live in. The author of Hebrews and David the psalmist call it “Today.” It is a day of opportunity. This day we choose who we serve, as Joshua said on the banks of the Jordan. God sets before us the Promised Land, the Sabbath rest. 

Israel, when they trusted their strength, failed. So will we. Israel, when they trusted in wealth, caused needless death. So will we. Israel, when they trusted only in God, saw impossibly great walls fall to the ground. So will we.

Trust and enter his rest. Carry his peace with you always.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
The Lord is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully. — Psalm 145.19

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 4 (Listen – 2:46)
Hebrews 4 (Listen -2:43)

Read more about A Restoring Sabbath
This post by Dena Dyer from 2019 reminds us of the value of a Sabbath. How are you using the unintentional Sabbath of Quarantine? How are you allowing yourself and your “land” to rest

Read more about Better Things to Do
Amos 8.5-6, 11
When will..the Sabbath be ended
that we may market wheat?
…buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals…

Scripture Focus: Scripture: Hebrews 2.14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Reflection: Ennobled by the Incarnation
By John Tillman

Jews were accustomed to visitations of God in various categories but Jesus frustrated and overturned their expectations. 

They were used to ambiguous messengers such as the three “men” who visit with Abraham (Genesis 18.16-17) prior to Isaac’s birth and the destruction of Sodom, the “angel” who wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32.24-30), and the “Commander of the Lord’s Armies” who speaks to Joshua (Joshua 5.13-15). Some interpret these as angels speaking for the Lord but some call them “theophanies” or appearances of God, or even of a pre-incarnate Jesus. 

Other common visitations were supernatural, non-human forms such as the voice from the burning bush (Exodus 3.1-5), Elijah’s whisper (1 Kings 19.12-13), Joel’s image of God riding at the head of columns of locusts (Joel 2.1-11), or God’s voice speaking from the storm to Job (Job 38.1). 

In Hebrews, Jesus is the redeemer Job prophesied would “stand upon the Earth (Job 19.25).” The writers remove ambiguity, proclaiming the humanity and divinity of Jesus without sacrificing either to better explain the other. 

Hebrews systematically elevates Jesus. Jesus is “greater than” is a recurring theme. Jesus is greater than the prophets, greater than angels, greater than Moses, greater than Abraham, greater than Aaron…But despite his preeminence, Jesus comes to us. 

Jesus comes not to condemn our humanity but to share in it. The incarnation is an ennobling epiphany. (Hebrews 1.3; Colossians 1.15-18) Our bodies are not hopeless or meaningless partly because Christ has become one of us.

To the gnostics, the early church had to emphasize that Jesus was not an incorporeal spirit, pretending to have a body. In more modern terms, Jesus is not a spirit-alien wearing a flesh-space-suit. Jesus is the most “real” human to ever have lived. 

Christ’s human “realness” makes the gospel tangible. His defeat of death was not symbolic but actual. Jesus did real things in the real world and calls us to be real human beings who act to benefit our world in real, tangible ways.

Just as Jesus came to us humbly we are commanded to humbly go to others. Just as Jesus was able to live among us we are sent to live among people. Jesus shared in our humanity in order to reach us, so we should share in the humanity of those around us as we walk and serve as his hands and feet on Earth.

How is Jesus calling you to enter and experience the humanity of your community to enact the gospel?

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
That evening they brought him many who were possessed by devils. He drove out the spirits with a command and cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He himself bore our sickness away and carried our diseases. — Matthew 8.16-17

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 2 (Listen – 2:15) 
Hebrews 2 (Listen -2:47)

Read more about The Internet as Babel
When you are worshiping them, idols don’t seem religious. They seem immensely practical.

Read more about God Who Speaks
The Jews this text was written to were people accustomed to the idea of a God who spoke. Most religions were not. Most gods don’t speak. But our God does.