Dear People of St. David’s,
There have been many moments in my life in which I have found myself at the beginning of something; leaving home, starting college, falling in love, marrying my best friend, awaiting our first child, starting a new job, aging. What resources can help us as we meet the challenges ahead, develop the friendships, and engage our life’s work?
I remember as a child observing my parents’ love for each other and their commitment to prayer and Scripture. I would come to see them in the morning, and they would be reading Scripture and praying together. I realized that this must be important. It was quickly apparent that my parents read Scripture to meet their God in real time in their lives. They read that they might discern the various encounters that women and men had with the Holy One and how God heard their cries in times of deep need and national crisis and came down to save. They saw how God came to women and men and asked them to speak the word of God to God’s people when they forgot to “do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).” My parents’ lives were formed in Scripture and prayer so that in times of loss, discouragement, and disease they knew it was all right to cry out to God and then to receive God’s guidance for the way ahead. In times of joy, celebration, and hope they rejoiced and sang. They heard together God’s mission for them and embraced it willingly and invited communities of people to join in daily prayer and Scripture reading.
I began to read Scripture daily as a high school freshman. As I read, I saw that the passages I read helped me understand the events and relationships of my life and informed me on how I might live and serve. I gained a growing understanding of who God is and what God loves. In the major moments of decision, I learned to be informed by Scripture and prayer.
I read a book in college, “The Progress of Doctrine,” which stirred my imagination. The author’s thesis was that there is, throughout Scripture, a progress of the understanding of God by women and men. The understanding of an angry vengeful God in the first five books of the Bible, who is attempting to form a rebellious group of slaves into God’s own people, matures as the cultural moments change. Subsequent generations of God’s people in relationship with God find themselves in different contexts and therefore different experiences of God. The angry, jealous God of Moses’ writings is transformed in the subsequent writings of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, into a redemptive God of love who again and again comes to a people in captivity and sets them free. In Jesus we see God as God is, willing to sacrifice himself for a fallen, continually rebellious people, a God who so loves the world that he gives a son, a God not of condemnation, but of salvation (John 3:16-17). To understand the Scripture, one must pay careful attention to the context in which a passage is written. If we understand context, we can then see how that passage speaks to our current moment.
Through the years I have found Scripture to be a wellspring of wisdom and hope. In reading the various encounters that diverse people have with God and their response, I have seen myself often. Sometimes, like Jonah, I have argued with God. Sometimes, like Mary, I have received the encouragement of the Holy Spirit to embrace a mission that was set before me. In the moments of reticence to serve, God has been patient with me and when I have embraced the call, God has led me step by step as he does Isaiah and Mary.
The Psalms have been among my favorite Scriptures because there the people of God wrestle with life in all its complexity and nuance. The Psalmists appear to express every possible human experience and response. I have learned from the Psalmists that anger and fear are proper human responses. When we express and release our own fears and anger to God, God can begin the careful work of transformation, healing, and restoration. When we repent, as in Psalm 51, God forgives us and transforms the power of alienation and failure into a redemptive resource for God. As we forgive, we are set free (perhaps gradually) from the abuses that might otherwise hold us in bondage.
So much bad theology is written and spoken by those who only read portions of Scripture and use these portions to support their own biases and perspectives. To grasp most fully the heart and vision of God it is necessary to embrace the totality of Scripture, enlightened not by our own understandings and biases. Scripture is most profoundly understood in faithful, humble, Holy Spirit-enlivened-community, in which we seek to discern together what the Spirit is saying to the Church at this cultural moment and what our response can be.
The Scripture is not a compendium of ancient stories irrelevant to the current moment. Rather, the wisdom revealed in God’s encounter with creation and us, gives us living insight into and a call for this very moment in our lives and culture. As in the pages of Scripture, when a woman like Mary encounters God her life is changed. She knows it will not be an easy life, but she chooses to go forward with God and embrace the reality that she will bear and nurture the one who is “God with us.”
Scripture has opened to me a life of joy (though not always happiness), hope in times of despair, a community of faith where I have found healing and acceptance and unity through our corporate longing of “having the same mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5-11), and the delight of a God whom I have loved and served all my life. I pray the same for you.
The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube
Priest Associate
Editor’s Note: Throughout 2025, St. David’s encourages you to engage with scripture daily by reading the Bible cover to cover with us. We’re reading and discussing the Bible each week on our podcast, Cross Connections, found where ever you listen to podcasts. Learn more and sign up for weekly emails here.
Also, the Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube will be leading an Adult and Youth Forum on this subject for four Sunday mornings beginning March 16. Learn more about it here.
Published on February 27, 2025