Stranded! (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

At the summit, the temperature on Mount Everest never rises above freezing.  

 

Most ascents are in May to take advantage of relatively gentler conditions. Wind speeds then are 20-35 miles per hour, temps range from 0° to -2° Fahrenheit, and the precipitation at base camp is rain instead of the usual snow. 

 

David Breashears wanted to ascend Everest in May 1996 to make an IMAX film. But long before they assembled the team, long before the film crew was selected, long before the sherpas were hired, and long before they climbed to the top: 

 

David Breashears made a plan.

 

When the time came to climb the mountain, he had what Jim Collins (of Good to Great fame) calls a "SMaC recipe" (a plan that is Specific, Methodical, and Consistent). It’s purpose was to impose certainty on every aspect of the climb, to have assurance that every safety precaution was taken, to inspire confidence that they were going to make a great film about a great adventure, to ensure that absolutely nothing was left to chance. The plan was filled with very practical steps, but none of them were optional. So, in practice, they were rules. For example:

 

Step 3: Thread the camera with bare hands, no matter how cold, to ensure a perfect shot every time.

 

Step 8: Always bring backups for critical gear and supplies: extra oxygen, extra crampons, extra mittens, and extra supplies. Be prepared to stay longer than planned. 

 

The other steps were just as meaningful. Consider Step 7: In selecting teammates, choose people to get stranded with.

 

The SMaC steps were specific to the Everest climb and making the film. But Step 7 is also universal. It can be applied anywhere. We don’t have to be mountain climbers to appreciate the wisdom in carefully choosing our companions, no matter what adventures we share. 

 

This week's Philippians passage goes hand-in-glove with Step 7. The apostle Paul writes that he wants believers to be a community, to agree with each other, to put each other first, to truly love each other. Then he ratchets up the stakes with this example: Jesus choosing to give up his place in heaven so He could put us first. 

 

Paul wants us to be willing to let everything go—if that’s what it takes—to help each other, to be selfless, obedient, and sacrificial. Paul's encouragements underscore why we should carefully choose our spiritual journey teammates. Are they people we’re willing to be stranded with? Because until Jesus returns, that’s exactly where we are: stranded. 

 

So, yes, activate Step 7 on your spiritual journey. It’s important to choose people you want to be stranded with. But, equally important, be the teammate they want to be stranded with. 

 

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PHOTO from the Official website of the IMAX film Everest:

https://everestfilm.com/

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We have a great time Friday mornings at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast! Join us at 8:00 on Zoom** and in Waco at Our Breakfast Place for an hour like no other. We read scripture, discuss, laugh.

We will finish breakfast before climbing up to base camp. 

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=17134&z=p&d=77

 

Print them from here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper21.pdf

 

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Psalm 25:1-9

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

Proper 21 (26) (September 27, 2026)

 

 

Don’t Make Me Go! (a Steve Orr Bible reflection)

I love a good time-travel story. In most of them, characters use technology or some kind of power to intentionally travel through time. 

My favorites are the unintentional time travelers, the reluctant ones. They have no control over when they vanish from their present life, none over where and when they travel, none over how long they are gone, and none over when (or if) they ever return to their original time. Also, and this is key: They don’t want to go. 

Maybe you know some of my fictional friends: Claire Randall in Outlander, Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler’s Wife.

 

And then there’s journalist Dan Vasser in the short-lived (but much praised and much missed) TV show Journeyman. Dan might be sitting at his desk, or even at home with his toddler when, with almost no warning, he is swept into the past. Plus, upon his return to the present—also beyond his control—he cannot provide a credible excuse for his absence. His relationships suffer. The disorientation, alone, would be reason enough to not want the experience. No matter what, he has to go. He has no option. 

The main way we differ from Dan? We almost always have a choice. We can say “No.” 

 

You might think the prophet Jonah was more like Dan Vasser than us, but that would be wrong. Jonah had free will. In this week’s scriptures, we read the final part of Jonah’s story. You may recall he had been told to go and preach in Nineveh, a very wicked mega-city similar to Babylon. Jonah resisted. God insisted. Jonah strongly objected to what God instructed him to do—so strongly, he actually went in the opposite direction!

 

You know the story. When Jonah fled aboard a ship, God prepared a "great fish" to swallow him. Eventually, he prayed and (somewhat) repented. Upon his release from the fish, he went to Nineveh and preached what God had instructed him to preach in the first place—but he was not happy about it. In this week’s passage, God attempts to reason with Jonah, to help him understand why he was sent to Nineveh.

 

Jonah’s tale is not really about Nineveh, nor about the sailors on the ship, and certainly not about the fish. 

It’s about Jonah's relationship with God. 

Don't think for a minute God had to send Jonah to Nineveh. God could have sent anyone. God chose Jonah for a reason. Jonah needed some lessons: about obedience, about God's priorities, about grace, about second chances.

 

And a lesson about God's sovereignty. 

 

Our reluctant time-travelers have no choice: They must go. Jonah had—and exercised—free will. He had a choice, and he chose to disobey God. Why? Because he didn't agree with God's willingness to redeem some wicked people. Like the vineyard owner in this week’s Matthew passage, God could have asked Jonah: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

 

God is sovereign. He can do as He wants. And what God wants is to be generous, to forgive people their sins. If we're saying “No” to that, what are we choosing instead?

 

 

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IMAGE (Hanging Gardens of . . . Nineveh?”): 

https://www.reddit.com/r/assyrian/comments/15csr9r/hanging_gardens_of_nineveh/?share_id=UyTBKw7gM3k5Z8_GmpNe_&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

 

More about Nineveh:

https://thegardenhistory.blog/2021/01/09/the-hanging-gardens-of-nineveh/

 

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DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast meets Friday mornings at 8:00am. Please join us for scripture, discussion, prayer—and laughter. We gather on Zoom* and in Waco 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

 

Find them here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=17134&z=p&d=76

 

Print them from here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper20.pdf

 

Exodus 16:2-15

Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Psalm 145:1-8

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

Proper 20 (25) (September 20, 2026)

 

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Fellow Travelers (a Steve Orr Bible Reflection)

I don't know how long I lay there, eyes fixed on the starry skies above. Even as a five-year-old, I was a free-range kid. So, it was a while before anyone came looking for me that night.

Did I see Sputnik (Russian for "fellow traveler"), the Earth’s first artificial satellite? 

I did see something arcing across the night sky—blinking, blinking. But really, who knows? There is some controversy over whether the satellite was actually visible to the naked eye. And, on top of that, Sputnik II had launched just one month later. Even if I did see something, it might not have been the very first one.

That said, I vividly recall lying on my back in our backyard on a chilly winter night. Sputnik was all anyone had talked about for weeks. I had gotten it into my head that I would be able to see it pass overhead that night. So there I was, bundled up against the cold, a light frost barely visible along the tips of the grass blades. 

 

In October 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the world was electrified. Sputnik not only explosively kicked off the "space race" between the USA and the USSR, it changed the trajectories of millions of lives. Whole career categories appeared that had only ever existed in science fiction. One example: In his great memoir Rocket Boys, Homer Hickam grew from a coal miner’s son to a NASA engineer. 

 

Sputnik not only changed the mid-century world, it created the world in which we now live.

 

The impact of that wintry night's vigil, and the events surrounding it, stayed with me for a long, long time. Years later, I recall getting the thought that we—Sputnik, the moon, and me—were all three speeding through space that night, circling the sun together.

 

In a very real sense, we were all Sputniks in the fall of 1957, "fellow travelers" moving along a celestial path. Ideally, we would all still be traveling together. But Earth was too big, Sputnik too close. After three short months, the relative enormity of Earth, with our strong gravitational field, pulled Sputnik from its course and eventually to its destruction.

 

In a spiritual sense, the apostle Paul raises a similar concern in this week's Romans passage. His focus is on the then-current dispute of whether followers of Jesus could eat meat sacrificed to idols. But make no mistake, "to eat or not to eat" is not the point. He makes it clear that neither those who eat such meat, nor those who refuse to do so, has the authority to judge the other.

God reserves to Himself the power of judgment. It is not our purview. 

 

But there's another message in the passage, a more subtle one: "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves." In this, Paul makes an excellent case for us to view each other as "fellow travelers" on individual spiritual journeys—separate beings, but God as our common destination. Like Sputnik and all those satellites that followed, we can be pulled off course, if you will, our focus pulled away by disputable matters. Or, perhaps worse, we may be the larger body, overwhelming the smaller ones with our insistence they must act as we think they should. 

 

We are not to think ourselves so important (or so in-the-right) that we pass judgment on those who oppose us on disputable matters. 

 

We are to love our fellow travelers more than we love our opinion.

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PHOTO and “Sputnik’s Legacy”:

https://physicsworld.com/a/sputniks-legacy/

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Join us Friday morning for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. You can find us at 8:00 on Zoom* and in Waco at Our Breakfast Place. We meet in the function room (outside entrance, near the back). They food is quite tasty, the Bible discussion quite lively, and the folk quite lovely ... fellow travelers all.

 

Satellites and free-range children must be checked at the door.

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=17134&z=p&d=75

 

Print them from here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper19.pdf

 

Exodus 14:19-31

Psalm 114 or Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21

Genesis 50:15-21

Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Proper 19 (24) (September 13, 2026)