Joseph & Nicodemus
by Dr. Latayne C. Scott

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. ~ John 19:38-39

What a disheveled heap
This bled-out bone bag makes
Crusted with spit and sweat
Entrusted with threats to the two of us.
The workman’s wiry muscles, now slack
Are pitiful as they break through the flayed skin
But the blood—it is all gone, tired of flowing
Clotted and forgotten at the dirt footer of
The flogging pole
And of course
That cross.
We avert from each other
But we cannot stop our own tears
Squeezed out between our eyelids
That should shield us from what we see here:
The candlewax pallor
The shamed nakedness we wash and cover first
To give the modesty the audience denied
Our towels dipped in the pots
We lugged down the stairs
The water pinks now
In the lamplight
Part by part
Limb by limb
We dampen and rub away
All the vestiges on
The shell of a delivered-over spirit.
One of the winding cloths rolls below the ledges
We reel it in and wrap his arms
From the swaddles on our grizzled forearms
We have grown wrinkles under our tears
The weight is almost beyond our old-men strength
We heft and lean
Balance and wrap
The acrid spices
The confined space
Bring more tears.
More tears.
We find we do not need
The water any more
 
True friendship means standing by someone in all the stages of life—and in the final stage of death. Even though His lifeless body could no longer bless and heal, His friends treated it with respect, preparing it for a final resting place. Little did they know that it would soon be walking and talking and leaving those grave clothes behind!  ~Latayne
 

​Praise the Lord, all you nations.
Applaud him, all you foreigners.
For his loyal love towers over us,
and the Lord’s faithfulness endures.
Praise the Lord.

I Am A Leaf...
by Patrick Mead, via Facebook originally written in 2020

A leaf is meant for a life on a tree
Until it isn’t
And comes the Autumn
Unknown and not understood by simple leaves
Or trees
And it falls…

A stream receives the leaf and swiftly
Sends it to places it never
Dreamed it would go.
Suddenly moving
Chaotic and frightening
Faster and faster into the shadows of the forest
And the sunshine of the meadow.

On and on it goes
Not of its own volition
But power sourced from another entity
For leaves know nothing of streams
And currents
Or gravity and journeys.
All it knows is that it didn’t plan this trip.
It bobs and shoots and slips and hops
As underwater rocks and sticks
Shape the stream from below
Unseen from above
Unknown to the leaf.

I am a leaf.
I thought I belonged to one place for all time.
But I was moved by forces I did not know
And could not understand. I was taken to new places
At speeds that terrified me.
I didn’t feel comfortable in the stream
Or moving at this speed
Sent there, now here, now over there.

I am a leaf in God’s stream.
His Spirit has sent me to places
I could not have imagined.
He showed me things beyond my tree
And what I considered my place.
I’m a leaf, not a boat, I cried
Again and again and
He replied, you are what I want you to be
When I need you to be
Where I need you to be.
And I will make you adequate for the journey
And take you places you never
Planned to be…
But first… let go of the tree.
Let go of your life.
Allow My Spirit to take you where it goes
When it goes.

I am a leaf
In God’s stream.
I did not plan to be here
And I might not be here long.
I do not know what shapes this stream
Or why the current flows this way not that.
But I trust the One who knows
Who planned it all
Who made trees and streams
And a place for me.

When we pray, we are engaging in combat—spiritual combat. The spoken words said in the Spirit are more powerful than our work. God spoke the world into existence; He did not work to create the world. Work is important, but prayer is more powerful. E. A. 3/5/2025
 

By Joni Eareckson Tada, from a weekly letter

Every year when I read through the Bible, I marvel at the astounding things God did in the Old Testament. Parting the Red Sea, making the sun stand still, and enabling a judge named Shamgar to single-handedly slaughter six hundred bad guys with a cattle prod. 

Today, we don’t see many talking donkeys or floating axe heads. And so, you have to wonder…is God serving up something less than glorious if, in this age, he reveals himself through a book rather than the pillar of fire and cloud of smoke? The answer? The acts of God are no less mighty today than the ones in the Old Testament. What God has given us in the present age is much more miraculous: Almighty God became flesh through Jesus Christ. That is like pouring the ocean into a sixteen-ounce glass. 

And there’s more to this miracle. The God of all-consuming fire on Mt. Sinai revealed himself as the God of mercy on Mt. Calvary who “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:7–8) When this same Jesus walked out of his grave, every benefit of his death and resurrection became ours. “In him we have redemption through his blood…according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will.” (Ephesians 1:7–9)

Unlike God’s people in the book of Numbers and Deuteronomy, we know the mystery of his will through the riches of his gospel. No longer dead in our trespasses, we are a new type of human, a new creation in whom the Spirit of God dwells. Nothing that the greatest prophet in the Old Testament enjoyed can be compared to that (not even Moses).

The Son of God said, “Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matt. 13:17). Jesus was talking about prophets like Moses, and that great prophet would’ve given anything to savor what we so often take for granted. So, here’s my point: the gospel provides you a banquet of blessings not to be nibbled at, but to be feasted upon. Taste his gospel-goodness throughout the Old Testament and compare and see just how great Jesus, the Son of God really is.

For God’s glory,
Joni 
 

Exert from: Weekly blog letter by Latayne C. Scott, 2/21/2025

    The more I teach about the Phases of Faith, the richer it gets for me and others. For instance, young Representational thinker and friend Caylen Boyles knocked my socks off recently with his observation that obeying Phase One commandments can look different on different people.
      At first I disagreed in my mind, thinking, “A commandment is a commandment—you either obey it or you don’t.” But as Caylen and I explored it, that’s not the way the Bible depicts it.
      The master in the Parable of the Talents had the same Phase One expectation of each of his servants—they should turn a profit on his money—but He didn’t give them the same amounts to work with.
My daily Bible reading for the day seemed almost eerily applicable. (I love it when that happens, don’t you?). Romans 12, while beginning to talk about service and self-sacrifice and humility, knocked my socks off again! Let’s look at a literal translation: “For through the grace having been given to me, I say to everyone being among you, not to be high-minded above what it behooves you to think, but to think so as to be sober-minded, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”
I looked at this verse in all kinds of translations, and every one carries the idea that there’s a metric, an amount, a measured quantity of faith given to each of us. That means Phase One faith can be measured, at least by comparison, between individuals. That led to Caylen’s second observation: If your Phase One measure of faith differs from someone else’s, your Phase Three Resolution will look different.

• Bingo: Parable of the Talents.
• Bingo: Romans 12—Different ministries.

Have you ever wondered why some of us have four-alarm conflagrations at intervals, and dumpster fires in between, our whole durn lives long? And others, at least by comparison, lead relatively peaceful lives?
And all of us can stand shoulder to shoulder with perfect faith in God? It’s not just that some people, who survive the fires and emerge still trusting God, mustered up more faith. I’m concluding that they were GIVEN more faith to begin with.
Because I’ve had this roller coaster life doesn’t mean I am better than anyone else. It means I came pre-loaded with faith enough to survive. It means that God loves me and calls me a “good and faithful servant” JUST EXACTLY as much as He approves of the one whose life has had different and perhaps less spectacular trials.
. . .I put it this way: God loves simple people with simple and genuine faith JUST EXACTLY AS MUCH as He loves those we call the heroes of faith. Where much is given, much is expected.
​ And the converse has to be true: when the measure given is less, the Master goes easy on them. Win-Win.
What do you think? Does this not comfort and humble you?