Shining Like the Sun (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

Stephen King's publisher lobbied long and hard for King to not even write The Shining, worried he would get typed as a horror writer. The book went on to be King's first hardcover bestseller. 

There's some irony for you.

Then came the movie. The Stanley Kubrick film, generally considered one of the greatest horror films of all time, diverged significantly from King's novel. The author was quite vocal about his disappointment. The irony here is that the popularity of the movie drove book sales through the roof.  

People were puzzled about the title—even after reading the book or seeing the movie. Where did King get the idea to call it The Shining? He wouldn’t say. In fact, it wasn't until 11 years after its publication that King finally explained. The title came from John Lennon’s song, “Instant Karma!” In it, Lennon suggests that, “like the moon and the stars and the sun,” we "all shine on."

It seems "shining" has often been pretty controversial. It’s the kind of situation that might cause you to take a step back—maybe more than one step. 

Shining is a big part of this week’s scriptures. In the Exodus passage, when Moses came down from his mountaintop meeting with God, his face was positively glowing—really glowing. Moses was so bright, the people were afraid. He had to keep his face covered with a veil until the glow faded away. If we saw someone like that today, no doubt we would be frightened, too. 

In the Luke passage, Jesus took his inner circle up the mountain where He was transfigured. He too was left glowing after encountering God there. I wonder how long that glow lasted? Scripture doesn't tell us. We know one thing, though—they didn't come down from the mountain until the next day.

Both "shinings" show up in the Corinthians passage. Paul compares the two and tells us we can let go of that old, fading shine of the Law of Moses. He wants us to know that, since Jesus has “removed the veil,” we no longer need some intermediary to trek up the mountain on our behalf. We can now meet God face to face. But you need to be aware, it’s likely to leave a glow, a shining you do not want to avoid. You want people to see you with that shine. It's God's light pouring through you.

Shine on. 

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PHOTO: “Lakeside Sunrise” by Steve Orr

Curious? Here’s John Lennon singing “Instant Karma!” It’s not for everyone. Maybe just John Lennon fans. Still, Stephen King liked it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqgTSk9Aq50

Just for fun, here’s Colbie Caillat singing “Brighter Than the Sun”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYkudx096Pg

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Not all of us are morning people, bright and shining when we first face the day. That's what breakfast is for. And coffee. Join us for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast on Friday morning at 8:00. We gather for a great hour of relaxed fellowship and scripture on Zoom** and in-person at Our Breakfast Place. 

Blessings,

Steve

 

**Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK

Read them here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=e&d=23

Print them here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Cx_TransfigurationSunday.pdf

Exodus 34:29-35

Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)

Transfiguration Sunday (March 2, 2025)

Famous Cat Isn’t Dead—or Is It? (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

The cat is in a sealed opaque box. With it is a vial of poison and a mechanism to spill it. The mechanism will start only if a certain event occurs, and that event is unpredictable. If that poison spills, the cat will die.

This cat is the central figure in the famous experiment of physicist Erwin Schrödinger.  The experiment was purely theoretical: There was never a real cat, any poison, or a box to put them in. It was just a mental exercise. So, no actual cats were harmed in the making of this reflection.

Schrödinger‘s thought experiment served to illustrate a point: Until we open the box—and see with our own eyes—we cannot know whether the cat is alive or dead. From a physics standpoint, nothing has actually occurred—yet. The cat is constantly either alive or dead. Until we open the box and find out for certain, the cat is in a continuous state of possibility. 

Have I lost you? Hang on. We're done with the science-y stuff. What it means, in everyday terms, is this: We cannot know what we cannot know.

In other words: Anything is possible.

That “not knowing” brings me to this week’s Genesis passage about Joseph. There are many treasures to be mined from the story of Joseph—the limits of prophecy, fractured families, the power of forgiveness, even agronomics. But for me, it's this “not knowing” that keeps me coming back to Joseph. It’s in this that we are like him. 

When it comes to what to do and say when things go wrong, Joseph is a great model for us. Throughout his life, Joseph had many awful experiences. At each critical moment, Joseph—not knowing the future God had planned for him—could have chosen either way. Just like us. At each challenge point, he chose to behave in a way that was pleasing to God. He did this even though there were no Ten Commandments to guide his behavior. Joseph lived long before God gave the Law to Moses. 

His life—and his choices—underscore this truth: Anyone can know right from wrong.

We, like Joseph, remain in a continuous state of possibility. That state only changes when we "open the box," so to speak. Until we choose a course of action—in that nanosecond before our thoughts settle into our choice—we can go either way. And like Joseph, none of us can actually know our future.  

But God can.  

God sees all our possibilities. God always knew Joseph would someday lead Egypt. God can see into “the box," if you will. So, if we will allow ourselves to trust God as Joseph did, God will guide us into the best path—and, perhaps, to achievements undreamed.

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PHOTO: “Black Box” by Steve Orr

"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees." 

—Erwin Schrödinger

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DaySpring’s Friday Lectionary Breakfast is a great way to start the weekend. Join us at 8:00am on Zoom** or in person at Our Breakfast Place for food, fellowship, scripture, and hijinks (is that still a word?). 

Blessings,

Steve

 

**Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414

 

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK

Read them here: 

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=e&d=20

Print them here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Cx_SeventhSundayafterEpiphany.pdf

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

Luke 6:27-38

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (February 23, 2025)

White Gold from Salt Ground (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

Paradise was on full display for our island tour. A scenic road, dotted with wild donkeys and wild horses, circled the tiny island. Single-story houses boasted large yards with low walls to keep the donkeys out of the flower beds. Tall, stately palms capped with wide, green leaves framed stunning ocean views on all sides. There were windmills and a beautiful lighthouse. 

It was on this tour of Grand Turk that we first learned about White Gold. Beginning in the 1660s, the economic mainstay of the Turks and Caicos Islands, particularly Grand Turk and Salt Cay, was the production of what came to be called “White Gold.”

Or, as we say it: salt. 

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Turks and Caicos were the greatest producers of salt in the Americas—salt created by sun and ocean water, and then raked up by humans. Today, little of those original processes remain. Some of the equipment and paraphernalia are in museums. The salt flats are still everywhere along the shore. But industrialization and modernization have changed the salt industry, irrevocably. Oh, you could still produce salt the natural way. But the economies of scale have eliminated it as an economic engine for the Turks and Caicos. 

The salt still appears, but it’s no longer golden. 

What’s left to sun and sea—the remnants of those old processes—are flat, salt-saturated patches, dead land where nothing grows. Only the ones that are replenished daily by ocean water have any plant growth. Otherwise, those island spots just don’t have the nutrients to sustain edible plants. 

Such salt-saturated lands appear in this week’s Jeremiah passage. Reflecting similar language in Psalm 1, Jeremiah urges his readers to place their trust in God. That way, they can be like “a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah contrasts this lovely situation with what befalls those who place their trust in anyone or anything other than God, declaring, “They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”

Now that I’ve seen such “salt land” with my own eyes, I can assure you, choosing to be the tree by the water is a much better option—even in an island paradise. 

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PHOTO: “Tree by the Water” by Steve Orr

A great little article from Smithsonian Magazine about the rise, and fall, of White Gold:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/white-gold-how-salt-made-and-unmade-the-turks-and-caicos-islands-161576195/

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Friday mornings are a high point! Join us for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast at 8:00. We still meet on Zoom** and at Our Breakfast Place restaurant. Food, fellowship, scripture, prayer, and some of the funniest stuff you’ve ever heard. It really is an hour like no other.

Blessings,

Steve

 

**Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414

 

 

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK 

Find them here: 

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=e&d=19

Print them here: 

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Cx_SixthSundayafterEpiphany.pdf

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Psalm 1

1 Corinthians 15:12-20

Luke 6:17-26

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 16, 2025)

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Bad News at the End? (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

Would you want the truth told at your funeral: the good, the bad—the ugly? Perhaps, if you could have the chance, you would prefer to do a bit of editing. I know I would. 

Most of us have nothing to fear, though. It’s typically a friend or family member who gives the eulogy, someone who actually knew us. We expect them to share wonderful, sometimes humorous, stories to celebrate our life and accomplishments.

But just imagine someone who tells the whole truth at funerals. That’s what happens in Orson Scott Card’s novel Speaker for the Dead. Andrew (“Ender”) Wiggin is no longer the little boy military genius of Card’s earlier novel, Ender’s Game. He is now an adult, and he travels around as a sort of professional eulogizer. He is hired to investigate the lives of deceased people, to try to fully understand them, and then speak about them. 

He has one challenge, however, that real-world eulogizers don’t face: Speakers for the Dead don’t just praise the deceased. They leave out nothing. Using honest—even blunt—terms, the Speaker for the Dead addresses all parts of a person’s life: the good, the bad, and, yes, the ugly. 

That can be painful. 

 

If this is beginning to sound a bit like an Old Testament prophet to you, give yourself a gold star. Those folks had to speak the truth—often bluntly—about the people of Israel, their community leaders, and their spiritual leaders. Sometimes there was good, and sometimes there was bad. And sometimes, yes, there was ugly.

 

This week’s selection from Isaiah holds some harsh truths that God told Isaiah to pass on to the people of Israel. The message? God is about to end them as a nation. God is going to send a conqueror to kill many of them, exile the few survivors to a foreign land, and even make the very soil of their homeland barren. 

 

No doubt about it, that’s harsh. But in God’s view, the people of Israel earned it because they mistreated those who were in need, denied justice to the powerless, and exploited the lowly. 

 

Isaiah was a Speaker for the Almost Dead. 

 

Unlike a modern eulogy, Isaiah was charged with speaking the whole truth to them. It was something they needed to hear. But because he spoke of future events, ahead of the nation’s demise, there was still time for people to repent. 

 

Praise God, we no longer live under the strictures of the Law of Moses. But even though we believers can depend on God’s assurance that “mercy triumphs over justice,” don’t think for a minute we can mistreat our poor and powerless without negative results. 

 

Our actions influence what is said about us. Because we understand this, we get some “say” in the words that are spoken. We don’t have to wait for our lives to be over to know what’s in our eulogy. We write it every day. 

 

Let’s give them something good to talk about.

 

 

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PHOTO CREDIT: Stroud Creek Cemetery, by Steve Orr

 

Read the lyrics while listening to Paula Cole sings I Don’t Want to Wait (for our lives to be over). Any Dawson Creek fans out there?: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQILETlwGu8

 

 

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Join us Friday morning at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We eat, we talk, we laugh. We meet at 8:00 on Zoom** and in person at Our Breakfast Place restaurant. 

 

Blessings,

Steve

 

**Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414

 

 

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK 

Find them here: 

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=e&d=18

 

Print them here: 

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Cx_FifthSundayafterEpiphany.pdf

 

Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13)

Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 9, 2025)