June 9

As I was slogging through more genealogies in 1 Chronicles this morning, my wife reminded me of how important these genealogies were to the Jews returning to the Promised Land following the exile in Babylon. As we will read in July, following the fall of the Babylonian empire, the Jewish exiles were allowed to return home. Of course, after decades in exile, they had the problem of determining who was really a Jew and had the right to recover their property and who wasn't and didn't. Because of this it was extremely important to be able to trace your ancestry and thus your right to the land.

No, this doesn't make reading genealogies exciting, but it does remind us of their importance.

As we continue in 2 Corinthians in our New Testament reading, we hear Paul continuing to explain why his testimony is credible. Paul acknowledges that he is not a trained speaker, but that his other training, in knowledge and experience, is more important.

It is tempting to read this passage and to begin to think of Paul as an example for us to emulate. What would it mean to be as faithful as Paul, to be so dedicated to being a Christian that you would be willing to suffer as Paul did. But even though Paul is willing to hold himself up as an example, I think his real intent is to get us to focus on Christ.

There's an old Buddhist saying that the student gets lost looking at the dirt under the fingernail of the master's finger that is pointing at the reflection of the moon in a muddy puddle. What the master wanted the student to do was to look up at the moon. Often we get caught up in looking at the disciples when what we should be doing is focusing on Jesus Christ as the example of what it means to be truly human. One of the challenges in reading Paul (or any of the people we read about in Scripture) is that we tend to spend our time looking at the dirt under the fingernail.