“Save Markham Hill” is a slogan you’ve likely seen if you’ve ever driven through the neighborhood where we live on the west side of campus. The signs sporting the slogan started sprouting about a decade ago when developers bought the mostly wooded property and started promoting their plans for development. You’d have thought they were planning to strip mine the place for the furor it created with some of the neighbors. All kinds of invectives were thrown at company and a litany of reasons for leaving the land as it was were produced. The irony seemed lost on those protesting that if some past developer had not bought and built on their part of Markham Hill, the very people protesting the development would not be living in a development on the very same hill they claimed shouldn’t be developed….
Such is our tendency to see history, and our actions that contributed to that history, in a skewed way. The Bible is not an exception to this bias. What is exceptional is that through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we can often a see a story within, or underneath, or around the story. And even with the bias, the Bible is unique, and yes, inspired in the way it tries like no other record to tell the whole story, warts and failures, mistakes and tragedies and all.
This week we take a look at a people coming into a place that presumably didn’t want them there and the justification they used for coming in anyway and setting up shop. Let’s see what we can find.
Grace and peace y’all,
John Ray and the teaching team
Lord’s Prayer
Christ, who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory forever. Amen.
