Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Samuel 1:4-20 Hearts on the Altar The flickering flames of the holy place gave her away.   The way they exposed her silently moving lips, the way they caught their reflection in the tears that she could not control.   She wasn’t looking for an audience; she wasn’t trying to attract the attention of the cynical priest.   The flickering flames did that.   She was simply there to pour out her heart before God.   On this day, in her pain, that was the truest offering she could bring.   The silently moving lips, the tear stained face, they were part of that offering.   They were signs of the prayer that rose up from the deepest well of Hannah’s soul: both complaint and vow, lamentation, tinged with as much hope a shattered woman could muster.   You don’t show up if you don’t believe at least a little bit.   It wasn’t just that her pride was bruised by the constant taunts of the other wife in the h...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Job 38:1-7, 34-41 The   Cause of Love This is kinda like the Sermon on the Mount, this passage from Job, if Jesus had a much more confrontational presentation style.   Instead of “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them” we get “Gird up your loins like a man and answer me this: who feeds the raven its prey?   I know: not you.”   So like I said, similar but different. Now I’m not going to assume that everyone here is an expert on the book of Job.   We’re dropped into the 38 th chapter today; 37 chapters worth of stuff has already happened, leading us up to this point.   He’s the quick and dirty summary: Job is wealthy and righteous.   He loses everything right at the beginning of the book.   Everything, that is, except his wife, who urges him to curse God and die.   He doesn’t do that.   Instead, he sits in ashes an...