Biblical Reflections

  • Day 5 – The Restoration of the Twelve

    ByJobin

    Dear brothers and sisters, Day 5 of the series is now on the blog.
    Today’s reflection is on the election of Matthias, and one thought has stayed with me since writing it.
    Matthias is chosen to complete the Twelve. And then he disappears from the New Testament entirely. No recorded sermon, no miracle, no letter. He took the place that was given to him, served faithfully, and left no historical trace that we can find.
    The kingdom of God is not built only by the famous. It is built, day by day, by people whose names appear once and are not heard again, who showed up when they were needed and were content to be known only to God.
    Most of us are Matthias. And that is not a small thing.

  • Fifth Sunday After the Resurrection – He Set His Face Toward Jerusalem

    ByJobin

    Fifth Sunday After the Resurrection – He Set His Face Toward Jerusalem | Luke 9:51-62

    Three would-be followers. Three costs.

    “I will follow You wherever.” Christ: foxes have holes; the Son of Man does not. The cost: no home.

    “Let me first bury my father.” Christ: let the dead bury their dead. The cost: no delay.

    “Let me first say goodbye.” Christ: no one at the plough who looks back is fit for the kingdom. The cost: no backward glance.

    St. Cyril: one teaching in three movements. The cost. The urgency. The direction. Forward.

    The Ascension is ahead. The face is set. The plough is moving.

    What are we looking back at?

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    Third Sunday After Resurrection – New Wine, New Wineskins: St. Mark 2:13-22

    ByJobin

    Third Sunday After the Resurrection – New Wine, New Wineskins:Mark 2:13-22

    The resurrection is new wine. It demands new containers.

    The old categories of who belongs and who does not. The old assumptions about how God works and who God calls. The old frameworks that held the old wine perfectly but cannot hold what God is doing now.

    St. Ephrem: the wine of the resurrection is still fermenting. The Church must keep stretching. The moment it says “we have expanded enough, included enough, grown enough,” the wineskin hardens. And the wine will burst it.

    Three weeks after Pascha, the wine is still expanding. Is your wineskin still stretching?

    For our journey today:
    – Look at who Christ is calling
    – Sit at the mixed table
    – Stretch the wineskin

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Second Sunday After the Resurrection – Come and Have Breakfast

    ByJobin

    Second Sunday After the Resurrection: The Shore, the Net, and the Charcoal Fire: John 21:1-14.

    All night: nothing. Professional fishermen on their home water. Every cast. Every adjustment. Zero fish.

    One instruction from a stranger on the shore: “Cast on the right side.” And the net was too full to pull in. 153 large fish. The net did not break.

    St. Ephrem: the night of human effort without divine direction is always empty. The morning of divine direction changes everything. Same lake. Same boat. Same net. Different result. Because the voice spoke.

    The fast is over. The ordinary is back. And sometimes the night produces nothing. But the voice from the shore is still speaking. Cast on the right side.

    For our journey today:
    – Cast on the right side
    – Come to the fire
    – find Him in the ordinary

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • She Thought He Was the Gardener: Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

    ByJobin

    🌅 Since the first week of Great Lent this blog has been walking through the lives of men and women in Scripture.
    Adam. Eve. Cain. Noah. Abraham. Sarah. Hagar. Jacob. The Theotokos at the Cross. The Good Thief.
    Today we arrive at the first Paschal face.
    Mary Magdalene. Who came to the tomb in the dark. Who stayed when others left. Who thought the risen Christ was the gardener. Who heard her name and turned and knew.
    The series has been moving toward this garden since the first post.
    The gate that closed on Adam has opened here. In a garden. At dawn. In one word spoken to a weeping woman.
    First Paschal reflection now on the blog.

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    She Stood There: The Theotokos at the Foot of the Cross

    ByJobin

    She Stood There: The Theotokos at the Foot of the Cross

    🕯️ Thirty-three years before Golgotha, Simeon held the infant Jesus in the temple and said to Mary:

    “A sword will pierce through your own soul also.”

    She did not know then what the sword would look like.
    Today she knew.

    St. John Chrysostom says the sword was real. The pain of watching her son crucified was not spiritualised away or made bearable by some special divine protection. She felt what any mother would feel. The theology of the Incarnation does not exempt the Theotokos from human suffering. If anything it intensifies it. Because she knew, with a clarity no one else had, exactly who it was dying on that Cross.

    She knew He was the Son of God.

    And she stood there watching the Son of God die.

    And she did not leave. Not until He gave her somewhere to go.

    Good Friday reflection on the blog. On the Theotokos at the foot of the Cross. On the sword that was promised and the standing that received it.

    She stood there. And today we stand with her.

  • Wrestling Through the Night: Jacob and the God Who Wounds to Bless

    ByJobin

    *Wrestling Through the Night: Jacob and the God Who Wounds to Bless*
    _Faces of the Fast – Movement II, Post 3_

    🕯️ He went into the night self-sufficient and strategic.

    He came out limping.

    Jacob wrestled with God at the ford of the Jabbok all night long. And as dawn was breaking the mysterious wrestler touched the socket of his hip and wrenched it out of joint.

    With a dislocated hip Jacob was still holding on.

    *_”I will not let you go unless you bless me.”_*

    The wound and the blessing came from the same encounter. They could not be separated. He crossed the river into the morning carrying both of them together.

    Now stand that image beside what we are remembering this week.

    The risen Christ appears to His disciples and shows them His hands and His side. The wounds are still there. The Resurrection did not erase them. It transfigured them. The wounds of Good Friday are present in the glorified body of Easter Sunday. Still real. Still visible. Now luminous.

    Jacob’s limp and the wounds of the risen Christ are the same testimony in two different moments of salvation history. The blessing and the wound came from the same night. The glory and the marks came from the same Cross.

    Holy Week reflection on the blog now. On Jacob. On Gethsemane. On what it means to hold on through the darkness when you have run out of everything else.

    Full reflection on Seeking Theosis:

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    The God Who Sees the Unseen: Hagar in the Wilderness

    ByJobin

    🕯️ When was the last time you felt truly seen?
    Not noticed. Not assessed. Not judged.
    Seen. By name. In the actual place you were standing.
    Hagar was a servant woman in the wilderness with nowhere to go. And God found her at a spring and spoke her name before He said anything else.
    She gave Him a name in return. El Roi. The God who sees me.
    New Lenten reflection on the blog. On the God who sees into every wilderness. Every margin. Every place where a person sits feeling invisible.

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    From Eden to the Upper Room: Walking Through Scripture from Great Lent to Pentecost

    ByJobin

    From Eden to the Upper Room.
    Great Lent is here — and this year I’m walking through it with the men and women of Scripture whose lives feel, the more I sit with them, less like ancient stories and more like mirrors.
    A new series begins this week on the blog. Faces of the Fast — running all the way from Great Lent to Holy Pentecost. Adam. Hannah. David. The Prodigal. Mary Magdalene. Peter on the lakeshore. The Upper Room.
    Forty days of fasting. Fifty days of Pascha. One continuous journey toward the Light.