Read To Me Daily Semester 3ናሙና

JEREMIAH 28-29:
In yesterday's reading in Jeremiah, we moved from more poetic content to the story of Jeremiah being opposed by priests, other prophets, and royal officials. Remember that God has promised that he will protect Jeremiah in the face of opposition, and this certainly was put to the test. At the end of yesterday's reading, we heard how Jeremiah prophesied that even more valuable articles would be taken away from the Temple, and that they would be brought back eventually. When we read the book of Ezra, we will hear that this prophecy was fulfilled.

PROVERBS 2:
Yesterday's reading in Proverbs contained the first speech of Lady Wisdom, who is the personification of God's wisdom. Note that the personification of Wisdom is shown by ‘she’ and ‘her’ in English. This causes a difficulty for translating for some languages in the world which do a poor job of keeping track of masculine/feminine gender— like Indonesian. And that  language has an additional problem: Indonesian never uses the figure of speech called personification. But even in English, it does seem weird when the abstract noun Wisdom builds a house, calls out to people who pass by, and does other human actions.

1CORINTHIANS 9:
In 1 Corinthians 8 Paul began his explanation about whether Christians can eat food left over from sacrifices to idols. To me it is another sign of inspiration and God-given wisdom that Paul did not just give a simple rule to answer this question. 

Let’s pray.
Dear Lord, may we be given wisdom in following what Paul has taught in 1 Corinthians 8. He didn’t tell them, “Teach those weak people how to believe properly, and don’t pay any attention to how they feel.” Instead, he had the wisdom to know that living like that would alienate believers from one another. He said for the strong to humbly make accommodations to please the weak. He said that he at times lived like someone who did not know the truth of our new freedom in Christ, in order to win those who still did not know the truth. We are so sinful and arrogant when we seem to prefer that others perish so that we can go on pleasing ourselves. We not only must live with clear consciences before You, we must be willing to make changes so that we will not wound the consciences of our fellow Christians. Thank You also, Lord, for the wisdom we can learn from Solomon. Transform our stubborn hearts, and make us willing to listen with respect and reverence, in order that we may become truly wise.