From the center of the surrendered heart of Joel, there wells up a prophet’s voice, which would resound hundreds of years later in Peter on Pentecost. The tension in Joel between judgment and salvation makes a trampoline-like energy that releases God’s Word from the prophet.

For those whose spirits are deaf, blunt and opaque to the presence of the Spirit, the outcome is one of harsh judgment. For those with Jesus in their hearts, there is the joy of salvation.

Take time to let the bottom of your soul spring upward with an energy that comes from knowing that you are a prophet in Jesus. Joel will loosen your heart from sluggishness and self-consciousness into a new freedom and spontaneity in the Lord.

Joel 1-3

Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.
In the seasons of Advent through Epiphany this year we read Isaiah 56 to 66..

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

A Scenic Overlook on a superhighway invites a choice to both stop and refresh the soul with the beauty of a landscape, or pass the moment by, urged by the need to drive on.

We are about to enter the Lenten movement to Easter. Rather than race right into the journey, Jesus invites us to take a scenic trip to a mountaintop, there to pause in prayer, enfolded by a sense of the wholeness of the journey from death to life. Join Peter, James, and John, the disciples who will be with Jesus in Gethsemane. Curiously, sleep sweeps its covering shadow over them in both places. Can it be that the stretch from glory to suffering catches them and us asleep on either end?

Pause, pray and let the Lord give you one more Epiphany of glory before the descent into the Lenten valley of the shadow of death.

Luke 9:28–36

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: Embracing the light within

Sundays are dedicated to the Gospels from the Revised Common Lectionary.
In year C, we generally read from the Gospel of Luke.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

We read about the construction of the Tent of Meeting (the Tabernacle) and the Ark of the Covenant. The area where the Ark rests is called “The Holy of Holies.” Here God dwells with the people. The Ark is a sacrament of the Lord’s presence.

The plans may be difficult to picture. I suggest that you take a sheet of graph paper and let each box be a cubit, which is half of a yard, or eighteen inches. As you read, you can map out for yourself these dimensions. Every two squares would be a yard. The list of the precious materials and the dimensions give a sense of the presence of the Lord. There is beauty, holiness, order, value, symbol, focus, purity, joy, peace.

All that your hands will hold and touch today can become holy, because in the Lord, you are holy.

Exodus 36:20—38:20

Learn about Bible Breaths Learn More…
Example: Colors expressing Your love

The Saturday passages follow the reading list that Jewish people use in their synagogue worship
throughout the world. They are taken from
“The Torah,” the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy
that are read each year beginning with autumn.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information