Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, special people.

Nice day out there at present. I hope to have a sign installation done by bedtime for TEEN CHALLENGE in Portland. I need to keep moving to make that happen.

My brother and a friend came down from the Yakima Valley yesterday to pick up a horse that a friend of mine was offering. I’ve already been on that horse’s back this morning, after which he was loaded into the trailer for the journey back to central Washington. Hope that venture works out OK. He’s a really nice horse, but needs a training refresher course.

Blessings on your day. I genuinely like the idea of seeking His blessing—without which I reason that I am entirely on my own. And that’s scary!

Love, Dad/Ray.

The NIV Bible uses an interesting English expression to describe Herodias’ bitterness toward John the Baptist: She “nursed a grudge against John.”

We’re all familiar with the idea of a mother caring for and feeding her baby. We say she “nurses” him. She has a strong God-given desire to keep her child both alive and healthy. Herodias was doing that with her hatred for John the Baptist—which was definitely not God-given—quite the opposite. She wanted her unhealthy attitude to remain alive and healthy. It created an emotional focus that found her alert and ready to gain revenge when the “opportune time came.”

Have you ever nursed a grudge? I’m sure you have. And I’m sure that if you’ve ever tried to do that as a serious Christian, you soon learned that maintaining a healthy grudge was absolutely incompatible with maintaining a healthy faith. The two are at odds and cannot peacefully coexist. A grudge is to hate. Faith is to love.

Turn grudge around into an opposite emotional focus and you have the essence of love. If you love God, for example, you will nurse that attitude and keep it alive and healthy. It will produce the spontaneous fruit of obedience and righteousness when opportunities come.