Two key ingredients I’ve learned over the years about Peter’s idea in 2 Peter 3:18 that we should “continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” are that I should pay attention to the godly people whose life paths have crossed mine, and that I should develop a love for and commitment to reading Scripture. All of it, not just my favorite parts.
Here is but an example or two of how that has played out in my life. My dad was a deeply spiritual man and a committed reader of Scripture. I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t amazed at how often I saw him reading from Scripture. He didn’t just read to meet a goal, but he reflected, remembered, and acted on what he read. When I became the preacher at First Christian Church in College Park, GA in 1983, I soon met an elderly gentleman named Mr. Cary Webb. He and his wife, Emma, were extraordinarily sweet people, even as shut-ins who couldn’t get out often. Every time any of our church staff went by to see them, you knew you would see two things by Mr. Webb’s chair: a well-used Bible, and some spiral notebooks where he journaled as he read.
The example of those two men, along with some others, convicted me that I needed to become a person who both loved Scripture and who was committed to reading it. My current practice in this discipline is to read four chapters a day, and while reading, find something that catches my attention and that I can think about for the day. I am currently reading through the Old Testament for the second time since the beginning of Advent 2023. I’m using a translation completed by a Hebrew scholar named Robert Alter. He is a widely recognized scholar in Hebrew and his translation is very readable. It has “translation notes” about why he makes some of the choices he makes. It is a wonderful way to read the Hebrew Bible.
Last week, I was in Hosea. If you know about Hosea, you know God isn’t very happy with Israel. In the middle of Chapter 8, a couple of words leapt off the page and embedded themselves in my brain. Here’s what Hosea says on behalf of God:
For they sow the wind
and harvest a storm.
Standing grain that has no sprouts,
it will not make flour.
If perhaps it should make some,
strangers shall swallow it up.
Israel has been swallowed,
now they become among the nations
like a vessel no one wants.
(Hebrews 8:7,8)
The words that especially caught my attention are “for they sow the wind and harvest a storm.” Was Paul thinking about that phrase when he said, in Galatians 6:7, “for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap”? Perhaps it is because, living in a swing state in the current presidential election, I have been inundated with “sowing into the wind” advertisements, text messages, social media posts, yard signs everywhere, and just about any other form of advertisement you can think of. Neither side seems to have the exclusive franchise on such nonsense.
Sowing seeds when it is windy is apparently an exercise in futility. As the rest of the verse suggests, even if some seed sprouts and grows and you can make a little flour, strangers will come a take the bread.
I’m writing this on the eve of the election, and you will be reading it the day after the election. Currently, no one knows what the results will be. All the news people and pollsters are saying “it is a dead heat.”
But here is what I do know: if my politics – and choices of people for whom to vote – are more important to me that my confession of faith that Jesus is the Son of God, my Lord and Savior, then I’ve spent the last several months “sowing the wind.” And that will mean “the storm is just around the corner.”
I’ve never failed to vote in a major election. But my love for and commitment to reading Scripture, born out of examples of people like my Dad and Mr. Webb, reminds me that my hope is not anchored in who is president-elect today, but in having made Jesus the Lord and Savior of my life. If that is true, I won’t be “harvesting a storm,” no matter who the new president might be.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving that we celebrate later this month, I can only say, “This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.”
Wye Huxford 