Scripture: 1 Corinthians 5:3
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit.

Reflection: The Art of Ending
The Park Forum

The magnitude of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys is astonishing — 48 locations, and over 8,000 miles of travel, in less than two decades. Add in the intensity of traveling on foot and animal, without modern cartography or weather prediction, and we begin to see the nomadic apostle’s fortitude.

Physical strain was only part of the weight Paul carried though. He mentions at times ferocity of spiritual attacks, but his writings allude to another pain he would have carried daily: the emotional weight of leaving friends and work behind as he pursued his calling. In his letter to Corinth he reaches back as if to say, though our time together ended, my love for you has not.

“Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Endings in vocation or relationship are difficult. Industry leaders soften the blow with words like pivot or merger; relationships now dissolve after one party gets ghosted.

“Whether we like it or not, endings are a part of life,” explains Dr. Henry Cloud in his book Necessary Endings. “They are woven into the fabric of life itself, both when it goes well, and also when it doesn’t.”

“Certainly I am not saying that every time something is not working, it should end. In fact, it is usually the opposite…. But there is a time, a moment, when it is truly over.” — Henry Cloud

We try to avoid endings because of the pain they bring. Yet sometimes endings need to happen — new opportunities need to be pursued, painful (or abusive) relationships need to be abandoned.

The word in scripture for life without endings is “eternity” — until that point we must navigate endings well. Dr. Cloud suggests three principles:

1. Accept life cycles and seasons.
2. Accept that life produces too much life.
3. Accept that incurable illness and sometimes evil are part of life too.

Dr. Cloud concludes, “When done well, the seasons of life are negotiated, and the proper endings lead to the end of pain, greater growth, personal and business goals reached, and better lives. Endings bring hope.”

One of the reoccurring themes modeled in the apostle Paul’s life is his profound grasp on hope — Christ himself, who would never leave nor forsake us. It was the good news of Christ’s steadfastness which allowed Paul to traverse the many endings of life, even death itself.

The Greeting
The Lord lives! Blessed is my Rock! Exalted is the God of my salvation! — Psalm 18:46

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Samuel 24 (Listen – 3:36)
1 Corinthians 5 (Listen – 1:58)

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 4:11-13
To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.

Reflection: The Strength in Being Broken
By John Tillman

The Apostle Paul never took a strength-finder test. He preferred to boast, not in his strengths but his weaknesses.

Modern evaluative tests can be a helpful tool to match up serving opportunities with our temperaments, but when relied on too heavily, they can put the focus on ourselves. There is a danger of allowing our consumerism to affect even how we choose to serve in the church.

We live in a day where the popular idea behind ministry training is to focus on developing one’s gifts. Gift inventories, personality surveys, and strength indicator tests are the rage among those who want to be equipped for ministry today. But these kinds of tests set your eyes on your gifts. They put the focus on your strengths and your natural abilities. They make you the center of attention. However, the Lord is far more interested in your weaknesses than in your strengths. He’s interested in breaking you. Why? Because when there is less of you in the way, there is more room for Him to work.

As we survey church history, we discover that A. W. Tozer’s piercing observation is most accurate: “All great Christians have been wounded souls.”

Where we have been broken, we rely more heavily on Christ. And where we rely on ourselves, we are unlikely to do successful work for the kingdom.

It’s not hard to spot a Christian in ministry who isn’t broken. Unbroken people don’t know how to lay their lives down and lose. They only know how to try to win. If they’re criticized, they retaliate. If they’re attacked, they return fire. If misunderstood, they defend in anger. They are capable of doing all sorts of damage to others in order to save their own ministries and keep their reputations. On the contrary, people who have been broken by the hand of God know how to turn the other cheek. They know how to go the second mile. They know how to give their coats when asked for their shirts. They know how to speak well of those who misrepresent them. They know how to return good for evil. They know how to lose. And in so doing, they exhibit the Spirit of the Lamb and allow God to win.

What we learn through brokenness can’t be learned any other way. The strength we need to find has its source in Christ alone.

*Excerpts condensed from God’s Favorite Place on Earth by Frank Viola

The Call to Prayer
Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are they who trust in him! — Psalm 34:8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Samuel 23 (Listen – 4:18)
1 Corinthians 4 (Listen – 3:15)

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3.21
So then, no more boasting about human leaders!

Reflection: Idolatry of Identity
By John Tillman

In the Old Testament people reverenced household gods for prosperity, wealth, and identity. Today we reverence household brands. It’s unclear which group is more deceived.

In any market there are brands that appeal to desires for exclusivity and luxury. These brands broadcast signals of success and dominance. There are also brands who go the other direction—mocking luxury and exclusivity in an appeal to simplicity and common goodness. And then there are brands that combine mocking luxury with exclusivity—hipster brands. These brands strive to make their customers feel like they are taste leaders—that they are the smartest people around for discovering, before anyone else, this carefully marketed product.

Virtue signaling through conspicuous consumption of the right brands is an established norm. We have a strong desire to be identified as people who have good taste—even if the way we define good taste is by our distastes. We define our identity by what we support and what we disdain. This is true even among churches and Christian teaching.

In the Corinthian church, individuals were identifying with the “brand” of Christianity they associated with different Christian teachers. Their selfish pride in being a follower of a particular teacher was a shocking mark of immaturity to Paul.

We aren’t that different today. We often treat churches and Christian leaders just like any other brand. We follow them. We compare them. We promote their successes or complain about their failures. We even experience a bit of schadenfreude when those we disapprove of suffer or fall.

Christian leaders show this same weakness when they rely heavily on branding to appeal to followers. When the primary language of our culture is brand marketing, what choice do churches and Christian leaders have?

Paul places the burden to refrain from forming identity around a leader and not around the Gospel firmly on church members. Paul doesn’t condemn himself, or Apollos, or Peter of wrongdoing or theological error. (Apollos was corrected in his theological errors by Priscilla and her husband, Aquila.) The burden placed on leaders is that of building the church with lasting and sustainable teaching—the Gospel.

We desire marketable idols to identify ourselves as theological tastemakers. May we make no more “household gods” of Christian teachers. We are God’s field. May we give thanks for growth to the work of the Holy Spirit while still giving proper honor and support to the workers who help God’s field to thrive and be fruitful.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week
Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all people, to the glory of your Name…

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Samuel 21-22 (Listen – 6:35)
1 Corinthians 3 (Listen – 3:05)

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:1-2
I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Reflection: Paul’s Anti-Anti-Intellectualism
By John Tillman

Paul’s words in the second chapter of 1 Corinthians have often been misinterpreted. Some take them to mean that we need not concern ourselves with education, or reading, or study, or aesthetics—that we need not work to make worship or preaching a work of art, that we need not hone our logical mind, or use our analytical intelligence to seek and find God’s truth. It is always tempting for us to use spirituality as an excuse for our own laziness—intellectual or otherwise.

Even the original temptation in the garden was one involving knowledge without work. Just eat, said the snake, and you’ll be as wise as the maker. No need to continue in your boring tasks of Taxonomy or Botany. No need to labor to care for the earth. Just take knowledge you didn’t work for.

Those who disdain intellectualism like to make much of the fact that many of the Apostles were “unschooled men.” But the entire point of mentioning that the leading disciples had little formal training was the surprising fact that they argued well, with intellectually compelling logic and scripturally sound reasoning.

The New Testament is composed primarily by the two leading intellectuals of Jesus’ followers — Paul, the accomplished Pharisee and Luke, the Doctor. Paul was so famously intellectual that Peter said he was difficult to understand, and Festus accused him of going mad from too much reading and study.

Inspiration of the Spirit is not an excuse to neglect one’s homework, but neither does spiritual discipline stop with the intellect. It must have an emotional connection as well. John Piper says, “If a person doesn’t move from intellectual awareness of God and right thinking about God to an emotional embrace of God, he hasn’t loved God with his mind.”

Being without eloquence, wisdom, or knowledge—these aren’t markers of spiritual fervor. Being dry and distant from emotion is not a marker of superior discipleship. Paul did not mean he did not possess intellectual rigor, education, the wisdom of experience, and superior communication skills. He obviously possessed all of these traits.

Paul’s intent was that developing faith should not be dependent on the eloquence of a speaker or the artfulness of argumentative tactics. It is not an apologist who “wins” you to Christ, it is the power of the Gospel itself. We must indeed learn to be wary of worldly philosophies, but we must do so without casting aside spiritual and intellectual disciplines.

The Call to Prayer
Love the Lord, all you who worship him; the Lord protects the faithful, but repays to the full those who act haughtily. — Psalm 31.23

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Samuel 20 (Listen – 6:42)
1 Corinthians 2 (Listen – 2:26)