Between the Lines: Epiphany 5: February 5, 2012

Text: Isaiah 40:21-31

but those who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

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What do you know about running and growing weary? About walking so long and far that you feel faint? How in your life are you experiencing such things these days? Where are you running? After what? Away from what? What are symptoms that such running is wearing you down and causing you to grow weary? Where are you walking? Headed where for what? When along the way do you feel faint? What do you suppose is meant by “waiting for the Lord”? How might one do such waiting? Wait rather than what? When was the last time you waited for anyone or anything? What might you do to experiment with “waiting for the Lord” in terms of prayer and meditation, working and playing, giving and receiving, winning and losing, doing and being? The promise is that it will renew your strength and that you will mount up with wings like an eagle. Consider the possibility rather than running and walking through your days as usual.

- Bill Dols

Between the Lines: Advent 1: November 27, 2011

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

The word “banishment” is a synonym for “exile.”  The definition includes the forcible expulsion or exile of somebody or something.

In my new book, Restoring Life’s Missing Pieces: The Spiritual Power of Remembering and Reuniting with People, Places, Things and Self I talk about “losing” my voice at a young age and spending years trying to find ways to bring my natural ability to sing “home” again. When or where in your life have you felt a physical, emotional or spiritual part of you being forcibly or unintentionally banished by a comment or other action by someone else in “authority?”  How did that happen?  Where did it go? How has the absence of that part or quality affected your mind, body, and spirit?

- Caren Goldman

Bible Workbench: Epiphany 5: February 6, 2011

Text: Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

It is sometimes hard to know what someone has in mind when they talk about fasting during Lent or on Fridays or before a blood test, as part of a diet or preparation for a sports event. But Isaiah is rather clear. Fasting for the prophet is not so much about giving up as taking on—labors of justice and liberation, of caring and compassion. The text makes it almost sound like a quid pro quo. It sounds like when one fasts as Isaiah prescribes that the result is light, healing and vindication. If you fast in this way you will discover that when you call for help the Lord will be there. Don’t be offended and just write it off! Test it from your experience. What has followed when you have fasted in this way? How has loosing bonds and breaking yokes, sharing bread and clothing the naked made a difference in your relationship with God, the world, and even with yourself? How is your sense of the Holy and of your Self altered when you fast as compassion rather than simply denial?

- Bill Dols

BibleWorkbench: Epiphany 2: January 16, 2011

Text: Isaiah 49:1-7

But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God….”

I retired this past June from forty years of teaching community college students; in the moment feeling pretty good about the way I had spent my adult years.  It wasn’t long, however, before I found myself in a group of friends saying the modern equivalent of “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity…” Around the room, my accomplished, thoughtful friends one by one echoed the same thought.

Bible Workbench: Advent 2, December 5, 2010

Text: Isaiah 11:1-10, [11-16]

Shoots, stumps, branches, and roots.  Family trees.  Curses and blessings.

My daughter Katie and her husband Marc are expecting their second child in November.  (By the time you read this, if all goes well, this yet unnamed baby will have arrived.)  They are doing what most prospective parents do, going through all the family names and names of friends, trying to decide what this child will be called.  In naming this baby, they will also name their associations, their hopes, their aspirations – going back into the past and its stories and going forward into the future.

What is your name?  Write out your whole name.  Look at it.  Is it a family name?  A name associated with another person?  If you were named for someone, what do you know of them?  What role did they play in your life?  A “new” name?  What was given birth when you were given your name?  What else comes with your name?  What roles, what dangers?  If you could choose your own name, what would it be?

What is your real name, the one no one knows but you?

- Beth Harrison

BibleWorkbench: Pentecost 25, November 14, 2010

Text: Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. Is it really possible to create or discover a new earth without remembering the former things? Take time to watch YOU TUBE: “Holocaust – Forget Me Not!”

Elie Wiesel writes: “I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.” What has been the cost of how our 21st century has remembered or forgotten the Holocaust? In your life what are those painful, embarrassing, haunting and guilt laden memories that you have worked hard to forgot and can’t? How do they define who you are? How do you limp such memories through your days? How do they continue to teach and guide you in ways that are life giving as well a source of strength and courage?

- Bill Dols

Bible Workbench: Epiphany 3: January 24, 2010- Isaiah and Haiti

Text: Luke 4:14-21

This week’s study invites participants to reflect on the proclamation of good news to the poor in the text that Jesus reads in the synagogue:

“What might be some of the ways in which you are poor, captive, blind, and oppressed? How do you experience poverty, being captured, being unable to see, and being put down in your job, school, neighborhood, church, and even family?”

The Rev. Jerry Drino suggests following the disaster in Haiti this past week that we consider how we are connected to that experience and the people affected. How might we erase the difference between us and them; how might we grow into an understanding that we suffer together with any in the human family who suffer?

What do “good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free” mean in relation to Haiti? How does one “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”?

How has “this scripture been fulfilled in your hearing” today?