Small Things Are Great

Juzi. Ama ni jana? I think ni juzi. Yes, it was juzi. Thursday. 😂 A friend was shocked to discover that “God” is not a name but a title. We were discussing some New Testament texts and happened to land on Jesus referring to Satan as the “ ruler of this world ” in John 12:31. Elsewhere, in 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul actually refers to Satan as “the god of this age.” Some translations use “prince” or “ruler” in passages like these, which can make the conversation less obvious, but it is still worth asking: why can Satan be referred to as a “god”? Yes. God is a title, not a personal name. That is why Scripture often substantiates which God we are talking about—God of heaven, God of Israel, Creator of heaven and earth, and so on. The same applies to “Lord” (Bwana in Swahili). Sarah, for instance, referred to Abraham as her lord (1 Peter 3:6). I know when we say Bwana yangu in Swahili, we rarely stop to realize that we have just called the man a “lord.” Which, apparently, is what men are supp...

Lest we miss it in this journey of realization, I would want to calibrate our minds back to what is going on as we read. Most of the time, if we are not careful, it is easy to fall back into the “just reading” posture, or the “word for the moment” mentality where we open the Bible looking for something to address the season of life we are currently in. There is nothing wrong with receiving a word for our season, but it's wrong to approach scriptures that way for there is something much bigger happening in scripture than that. As earlier noted, we are now studying through the books of Kings and Chronicles with inserts of the prophetic books at the intervals they're believed to fit in. These are, in many ways, the tales of the kings: how they led, how they bled, how they made decisions, how they succeeded and failed, and, through the Chronicles(diaries), a deeper look into their records and the history surrounding their reigns. But there is something we can easily miss if we only...

Yesterday night, as I was presenting somewhere, something new dawned on me, even though ilikua usiku. So I slept, woke up today, then allowed the dawning to become a real one. As I was highlighting the place of “EL” in the names of people and places in the Bible, I realized that I had missed something in the story of Joel. The place of “EL” is its representation of God. Jo-el means Yahweh is God. Beth-el means house of God. Isra-el, Eli-jah, Eli-sha, Eloi Eloi... you get the drift. Whenever you see a name in Scripture carrying “El” as either a prefix or suffix, it is worth pausing to consider what that name is communicating about God. In English, we often encounter the translated name as a noun. In its original setting, however, the name can function descriptively, pointing us towards an aspect of God. Yesterday, while reviewing Joel, I was already aware that Joel means something along the lines of “Yahweh is God.” That is not a light statement to carry as a name. As early as the days ...

Genesis 14 introduced us to a mystery waiter by the name of Melchizedek. He shows up, serves(wine and bread), gets paid and exits the scene. 🤦😁😂 It's true, but I hope you also get the joke. However, this Melchizedek figure caused a lot of problems in the early Church and still does to date. The following write-up, might be of help in shedding light on Melchizedek as recorded by Moses, David and Paul. Thank you for reading. There are chapters in Scripture that feel like a gentle walk. Then there are chapters that make you wonder whether you've accidentally started reading another book. Genesis 14 belongs to the second category. It's one of those sections that has names that add nothing to the spiritual man. We scheme through it too fast until...you land on a name like Melchizedek and wish you read slowly to see how he comes into the story. Last night I found myself reading Genesis 14 alongside Hebrews 7, trying to understand this mysterious statement that Jesus is "a...

As we've been reading through Kings and Chronicles while intercepting with the latter prophetic books, one of us confessed that it sometimes feels as though she's reading the history of some modern extremist communities. She mentioned Jehu in particular and observed that, if we judged his actions by today's standards, many of them would be considered criminal. There is war, bloodshed, executions, slavery, and conquest throughout much of the Old Testament narrative. Then she asked a series of questions that I believe deserve to be asked. How do we reconcile the God we meet in the Old Testament with the God we meet in the New Testament? In the Old Testament He appears tough; in the New Testament He appears tender. In the Old Testament He seems focused on one nation; in the New Testament He welcomes all nations. In the Old Testament He appears territorial; in the New Testament He is Lord over all the earth. She became so concerned by these thoughts that she wondered whether sh...

One phrase keeps appearing as I journey through the prophets - The Day of the LORD. Joel repeats it over and over again and is responsible for bringing it to my attention. He is the first prophet chronologically speaking to utter those words. " Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is at hand... " (Joel 1:15) " Blow the trumpet in Zion... for the day of the LORD is coming. " (Joel 2:1) " The great and awesome day of the LORD. " (Joel 2:31) " Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near. " (Joel 3:14) Later on, Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah and Malachi will also speak of it. The prophets seem unable to let it go. Naturally, questions keep forming in my mind. When is this Day? Why a day? What's so important about this day? What will happen on that day? At first, I imagined it as a single twenty-four-hour period somewhere in the future, then Peter quietly adjusts my thinking. " With the Lord one day is as ...