I open with a brief mention that today completes 7 years of daily blogging: January 6, 2019, through today, January 5, 2026. 2,567 blogs in 2,557 days.

And, as promised, we launch our year’s journey through the prophets.

As I wrote yesterday, Isaiah’s historical setting is pre-exile.

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. (Isaiah 1.1, ESV)

He starts with a bang:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. (Isaiah 1.2 – 4, ESV)

Now, here’s the kicker. Rebels, sinful, laden with iniquity, corrupt, forsaking the LORD and despising him. These people…are still practicing their religion! He says they are like Sodom and Gomorrah and calls them that:

If the LORD of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! (Isaiah 1.9, 10, ESV)

And here’s their religious piety:

• “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings;
• incense is an abomination to me.
• New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
• Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.(Isaiah 1.11 – 14, ESV, bulleted for clarity)

Application to us?

• We practice the Lord’s Supper / Communion / Eucharist “the right way.” Is God impressed?
• We love our church services. Does God?
• We celebrate all the Christian holidays: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. Are we worshiping God…or wearying God?
• What does God think of my 7 years of daily blogging?

Serious questions. Isaiah is clear. God wants more than religious piety and religious activity:

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

• Wash yourselves;
• make yourselves clean;
• remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
• cease to do evil,
• learn to do good;
• seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (Isaiah 1.15 – 17, ESV, bulleted for clarity)

It goes on and on, and that’s just chapter 1! 65 chapters to go!! (Here’s Isaiah 1 in its entirety.)

I close with God’s offer through Isaiah:

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 1.19, 20, ESV)

I don’t write this stuff – I just report it. Join me for a year in the Prophets. It might just change our lives.

Tomorrow we start our year-long journey through the Prophets: Isaiah – Malachi. Five books called “Major Prophets:” Isaiah, Jeremiah, (the) Lamentations (of Jeremiah), Ezekiel, and Daniel. Then 12 books called Minor Prophets, called “minor” because they are shorter.

For each it’s helpful to remember Israel’s history. The Kingdom split into the Northern tribes, “Israel,” and the Southern tribes, “Judah,” as recorded in 1 Kings 12. Then, Israel was scattered by the Assyrians, recorded in 2 Kings 17. The Southern Kingdom, Judah, was taken into captivity by the Babylonians, recorded in 2 Kings 24 and 25. The prophets were men who preached, mostly to Judah either before the exile (Isaiah and others), during the exile (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others), or after the exile (e.g., Haggai and Zechariah).

Isaiah is pre-exile, trying to turn the ship before it’s too late. He fails as predicted:

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 6.8 – 12, ESV)

And preach he does. Remember, the job of the prophet is not so much to predict the future but to change people’s lives today. Here is part of what Eugene Peterson writes in his introduction to Isaiah:

For Isaiah, words are watercolors and melodies and chisels to make truth and beauty and goodness. Or, as the case may be, hammers and swords and scalpels to unmake sin and guilt and rebellion. Isaiah does not merely convey information. He creates visions, delivers revelation, arouses belief. He is a poet in the most fundamental sense—a maker, making God present and that presence urgent. Isaiah is the supreme poet-prophet to come out of the Hebrew people.

…

The book of Isaiah is expansive, dealing with virtually everything that is involved in being a people of God on this planet Earth. The impressive art of Isaiah involves taking the stuff of our ordinary and often disappointing human experience and showing us how it is the very stuff that God uses to create and save and give hope. As this vast panorama opens up before us, it turns out that nothing is unusable by God. He uses everything and everybody as material for his work, which is the remaking of the mess we have made of our lives.

“Symphony” is the term many find useful to capture the fusion of simplicity and complexity presented in the book of Isaiah. The major thrust is clearly God’s work of salvation: “The Salvation Symphony” (the name Isaiah means “God Saves”). The prominent themes repeated and developed throughout this vast symphonic work are judgment, comfort, and hope. All three elements are present on nearly every page, but each also gives distinction to the three “movements” of the book that so powerfully enact salvation:

• Messages of Judgment (chapters 1–39)
• Messages of Comfort (chapters 40–55)
• Messages of Hope (chapters 56–66). – Eugene Peterson, bulleted for clarity

So off we go. Meet me here tomorrow for the start of our adventure. Isaiah pulls no punches:

Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. (Isaiah 1.4, ESV)

It’s January 3…we’re easing into the New Year. Tomorrow I’ll write a formal introduction to Isaiah as we begin our Reading Plan in the Prophets, which we’ll start on Monday.

In the meantime, how about one more look at the Nativity story? Traditionally, Jesus’ birth is considered to be covered in Matthew 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2. We also have the warfare version in Revelation 12. Mark’s Gospel doesn’t do the Nativity – it cuts right to the chase:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ” (Mark 1.1 – 3, ESV)

But what about John’s Gospel? It certainly gives a clear picture of the incarnation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1.1 – 3, 14, ESV)

How did the Word become flesh? That question is clearly answered in Matthew and Luke:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1.18, ESV)

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. (Luke 1.35, ESV)

Is the question also answered in John? Brian Simmons, author of The Passion Translation, believes that it is, in John 1.13:

He was not born by the joining of human parents or from natural means, or by a man’s desire, but he was born of God. (John 1.13, TPT)

He clarifies in a footnote:

13 Or “born out from God.” This verse could be considered John’s version of the virgin birth of Christ.

He goes on to explain:

However, the vast majority of translations and expositors see here not Christ’s virgin birth, but the new birth of those who became “children of God” in v. 12.

For example,

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1.12, 13, ESV)

Brian Simmons’ note affirms:

Both [concepts – the new birth and the virgin birth ] are clearly presented in the Scriptures.

But since the subject of all of John 1.1 – 14 is Jesus, it’s not unreasonable to link verse 13 to verse 14, instead of verse 12. If we changed “who were” in verse 13 to “he was,” even in a standard translation like ESV, we’d have:

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

He was born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And so the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1.12 – 14, ESV, the bold is changing “who were” to “he was” and adding “so” to verse 14)

Something to think about…

It seems that I recognize birthdays in the Ewellogy only when my birthday falls on Friday 13th. But I can’t pass this one up: June is 80 today! (I turn 80 in December. We were born at opposite ends of 1946.)

This picture was made on December 14, three weeks ago. I don’t think she looks 80!

June, Bob, Mark’s daughter, Kesley, and our oldest son, Mark, at the Pikes Peak Center

Mark is giving a party tomorrow, and we are blessed that all four of our offspring will be there, including David and family from Atlanta, and Melody, who lives and works on Grand Cayman Island.

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. (Proverbs 31.10 – 12, ESV)

I like this image… We don’t know where “2026 Highway” will take us. It looks like a bright light ahead, but no doubt your life and mine will NOT be all sunshine and roses in 2026. But we’ll live it, day by day, step by step, with God at our side.

The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand. (Psalm 37.23, 24, NLT)

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30.21, ESV)

It’s New Year’s Eve! Time to think about how we’re going to read the Bible in 2026.

As a Navigator missionary, I send out a year-end letter in early December. For years now, I have included a Bible reading plan, one of which was The Navigators 5x5x5 New Testament Reading Plan. You read one chapter/day, Monday through Friday, and cover the 260 chapters in the New Testament in 52 weeks.

Back in 2022, June and I had the idea that it might be fun to do the whole Bible that way. 5 days/week, one chapter/day, for five years.

• In 2022 we were reading from the New Testament plan.
• So in 2023, we released the Pentateuch: Genesis through Deuteronomy.
• 2024 took us through the History Books: Joshua – Esther.
• And this year, 2025, we read the Poetry books: Job – Song of Solomon.

We were right: it was fun! Going through the text only one chapter at a time, I saw things I had skipped over before. So now we come to Year 5, The Prophets: Isaiah – Malachi, and we’ll be done!

One lesson is that it’s amazing what you can do in small steps if you just stay with it. Sure, it’s not as cool as “reading the Bible through in a year,” but we’re getting it done. (By the way, The Navigators have a plan for “in a year” that’s the most conducive to success that I’ve seen. The first page explains how it works.)

Back to our reading the Prophets this year. The question is when to start since it’s a Monday – Friday plan, and New Year’s Day is on a Thursday. Do we start Monday, December 29, or Monday, January 5? I have elected the 5th. If we start then, we’ll finish on Friday, January 1, 2027.

Join me! The blog won’t be entirely based on the readings, but some of it will, and I always give you a chance to read a chapter for yourself before I publish my thoughts. I’ll meet you here Monday, January 5, with a few thoughts on Isaiah 1.

Blessed is the one who listens to me (Wisdom), watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD. (Proverbs 8.34, 35, ESV)

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near. (Revelation 1.3, NKJV)

We celebrated Christmas Eve with our oldest son, Mark, and his daughter Kesley. Matt and family were supposed to join, but his kids were sick. So with just the four of us, we went to Christmas Eve at First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs, at 3p, had Chinese take-out, and then watched “a Christmas movie.” Which one?

We discussed some options and landed on The Santa Clause with Tim Allen (1994). June and I had never seen it. You can read the synopsis at the link…or see it for yourself. It’s an entertaining take on Santa Claus, who is real, of course, and who really does have an underground headquarters manned by elves at the North Pole. (The movie title is “Clause” – the “e” is added because it’s about a clause in a contract: a “Santa Clause.”)

The Tim Allen character, a single dad, becomes Santa Claus, and after he and his 8-year-old son, Charlie, deliver presents, the reindeer take him to the North Pole. Explaining all this leads to teachable exchanges. Here’s one with Charlie and his psychiatrist step-father:

• Psychiatrist: “I’ve never seen Santa Claus!”
• Charlie: “Have you ever seen a million dollars?”
• Psychiatrist: “No.”
• Charlie: “Just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

I’ve written about this truth before, with respect to the power of the Holy Spirit and falling iguanas. Really! Look it up.

Here’s another, a lesson from a North Pole elf:

It’s not “seeing is believing,” it’s “believing is seeing.”

We see this in the contrast between Zechariah’s response and Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel’s message. Zechariah is waiting for evidence.

And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” (Luke 1.18, ESV)

Zechariah is saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Mary believes right away.

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1.38, ESV)

My friend Mike Metzger said the same thing the elf said:

They say seeing is believing, but it’s truer that believing is seeing. – Mike Metzger, A Personal Note, February 7, 2021.

So, teachable moments from a silly Christmas movie (and a lesson that there are always teachable moments around – see, for example, Proverbs 24.30 – 34).

It’s still the Christmas season, a good time to think about a man who gets a few verses of coverage: Simeon.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2.25 – 32, ESV)

He goes on to give a brief prophecy. (Luke 2.34, 35)

Simeon is the subject of the first blog I wrote when I decided to blog every day, January 6, 2019. I reprise that blog now (with minor revisions).

“My spiritual life isn’t what it should be.” My friend had just written to ask if he might have a special gift for prayer, but then he quickly undermined it with the old standard, “I can’t be called to great things…my spiritual life isn’t what it should be.” And the answer to that is:

So what? Do the next right thing.

Paul said in Philippians 3, “Forgetting those things which are behind…”

I was just reading about Simeon in Luke 2, and his spiritual life was what it should be! The text says he was:

• Righteous and devout
• In touch with the Holy Spirit
• A believer in the imminent appearing of “The Consolation of Israel”

A wonderful list. HOWEVER, if he doesn’t respond to the Spirit THAT DAY and go to the temple, he misses Jesus. What if he had been in the middle of doing something important? Or unimportant for that matter. What if he thought, “I’ve been a good guy for a really long time, isn’t it OK if I take a day off?”

Simeon’s responsibility, my friend’s responsibility, your and my responsibility is to do the next right thing: pray, spend time in the Word, meet a neighbor’s need, encourage someone, write the blog(!), serve your spouse,…. My friend Fisher DeBerry, former coach of the Air Force Academy Football team, had a sign in his office: “You’re only as good as your last play.”

Do the next right thing. The alleged quality of your past spiritual life, good or bad, is irrelevant.

I’ve written about Indifference before, most recently, on July 17. I needed to review and practice the concept this week…

Monday, December 22, we had to rehome our dog, Benji, after he lived with us just 14 months. I wrote about Benji in An Everyday Answer to Prayer on October 26, 2024. So here we are, a dog that was an answer to prayer, that we have really loved and enjoyed (most of the time!), committed a major doggy error which left me no choice but to rehome him. (I don’t want to publish the details.)

I’m not given to crying, but I teared up at the drop of a hat for the 48 hours between the incident and surrendering him to the shelter from whence he came. What to do? June said right before we went to bed 24 hours after the incident and the decision had been made, “I have decided not to let this get me down.” Ten minutes later I was reading about Jesuit leadership principles in Heroic Leadership by Chris Downey and this story was on the first page of that night’s reading:

A colleague once asked [Ignatius] Loyola [founder of the Jesuits] how long he would need to recover if the pope was ever to disband the Jesuits. Loyola’s response surely shocked his questioner, and it quickly found its way into Jesuit lore: “If I recollected myself in prayer for a quarter of an hour, I would be happy, and even happier than before.”

Perhaps there was a smidgen of posturing in his answer. Loyola had built what was rapidly becoming the world’s most influential and successful religious organization. Could he see it dismantled and then stroll away whistling after a mere fifteen minutes in prayer?

Posturing or not, Loyola was sending an unambiguous message grounded in the lessons of the [Ignatian Spiritual] Exercises. Jesuits achieved what we today would call ingenuity—a mix of adaptability, daring, speed, and good judgment—only by first cultivating the attitude he called “indifference.” – Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership, pages 117, 118.

If Ignatius of Loyola could give up his ministry and be happy, surely I could give up a dog! June and I are cultivating an attitude of indifference. We are allowing ourselves to be “unattached” to whether Benji stayed or left. I’m not quite sure all that’s involved, but when it comes to a dog, there are positives…

• Dogs in general are good companions, and Benji was no exception. He took naps with me. He sat with me when I worked (often while writing a blog!). He slept with us.
• Dogs express “emotion:” great joy when you come home after an absence, for example. Benji would run all over the house after grabbing Giraffe, his favorite toy. When June came home, he would hear the garage door (I wouldn’t) and bark excitedly until I opened the door to the garage, and he would greet her at the car’s door.
• Dogs can travel with you and take delight in new surroundings.

…and negatives:

• Dogs are a lot of trouble. They can’t be left unattended for long periods. They have to be walked periodically, regardless of weather.
• Benji barked at the slightest noise. He got better, but he could still disturb the peace with no notice.
• Benji hated other dogs, so I couldn’t visit with neighbors who were also walking their dogs.
• Benji didn’t like children (and we have eight grandchildren, three of whom are younger than 10).
• Benji didn’t like visitors or houseguests. It always took time for him to adjust.

So indifference in this case is really easy: there are positives and negatives. It would have been nice if he could have stayed, but it’s liberating that he’s gone. And we take joy in being liberated!

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. – Job, recorded in Job 1.21, ESV

I have written recently that Luke’s objective in his Gospel is “an orderly account” of real history. Dave Wyrtzen in his December 16 “Daily Devo,” writes that there are some who doubt Luke’s accuracy. Here is Dave’s take. (This sort of thing is way out of my wheelhouse. I just take the scripture as it comes. But I’m thankful for folks who can engage the naysayers.) I share without comment:

Before we move to the angelic announcement to the shepherds, we need to address what is considered by some critical scholars as the biggest, historical blunder in Luke’s Gospel. Luke claims Jesus was born before the death of Herod the Great, and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Joseph had to travel  there in response to an Empire wide decree by Caesar Augustus. To destroy historical reliability, Luke links this decree with the governorship of Quirinius and Roman history says he initiated a census in A.D. 6. 

If a young student is taking an Introduction to the New Testament class in his or her first year of university, a religion professor may begin to try and “correct’ naïve Sunday school beliefs about the reliability of the Bible. The argument can be summarized like this:

·      Nothing is known from other sources of a general-empire wide census in the time of Augustus.

·      A Roman census would not have required Joseph to go to Bethlehem but would have taxed him based on his residency.

·      Josephus  knows of a Quirinian census in A.D. 6 but nothing before. (Josephus, Antiquities)

·      The Roman records are complete for this period near the end of Herod’s death and in 4.5 BC and there is no record that Quirinius was governor in Syria or that he carried out a registration. (Tacitus, Annals; Josephus, Antiquities)

Therefore, Luke and the Bible get the history wrong.

Before the student throws away Dr. Luke’s historical accuracy and his or her childhood faith they should consider:

·      We do know that Augustus initiated three other registrations in Syria, Gaul, and Spain in Luke’s time frame; therefore, it is probable that he could have initiated one for Palestine. 

·      Romans could be sensitive to local customs explaining why the Jewish pattern of family land ownership, not residency, was followed for the registration. 

·      Our Roman records of what happened in 4/5 BC and Quirinius’ governorship are not complete. We do know that he was recognized by Augustus as a powerful general. Quirinius won great victories in Galatia in the final years of Herod, and    Augustus could have viewed his general in the East as the more powerful authority in the area.

In his introduction Luke stressed that he would be accurate. Why do scholars accept so readily what Tacitus or Josephus write and then so quickly reject the accuracy of the biblical writer? It’s wiser to give an author the benefit of the doubt. Do we know more about this history than Luke who actually lived in this time and told us he was interacting with eyewitnesses of these events (Luke 1:1-4)?

I want to encourage college students to raise their hand and in humility and respect ask, “I thought that we needed to be open to the views of others and respect them. Why are we so quick to think Luke is not telling us the truth in this case when he made truth-telling one of his major purposes? Are the sources we are using to contradict him as accurate as he is? How do we know?” Try it! You might find out that your World Religion prof is a believer and will relish the opportunity that you opened for them to discuss reasons for their own faith in the text and in Jesus.

LORD, thanks that we can do careful research and know that when all the facts are in, truth will be on the side of your revealed Word. Use this devotional to protect students who might be in danger of losing confidence in the Bible. Help them to not just accept what is the accepted line but instead to do fair, honest scholarship, and most importantly to read your Word carefully  themselves. I pray that your Spirit will grab their hearts. 

As always, we have beliefs and doubts, and like Billy Graham, we need to believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts rather than the other way around.

For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? (Romans 3.3, NKJV)