One day, Moses happened upon two fierce street fighters and intervened on the side of his brother, the Jewish slave. He believed that he was on the side of God and good, fulfilling a divine mission. By the next day, he could hardly take another open walk along the same streets. They had become unsafe. He had tried to intervene in another street fight between two brothers and had been rudely put away by the aggressor, with a veiled threat that referenced his yesterday.
Month: November 2025
Of Priests and High Priests (Part 3 of 3)
7. Ananias
In the life of Paul, we find a similar priest, Ananias, whom God specifically sent to ordain him; the first person to lay hands on him, even before the Church at Antioch had commissioned him (Acts 9:10-12; 13:1-3). Before his meeting with Paul, we had heard nothing of Ananias. After laying hands on Paul and having him filled with the Holy Ghost, he disappears back into his high priestly quiver, until the Lord would choose to shoot him out again on another ‘special mission’ (Isaiah 49:2).
Of Priests and High Priests (Part 2 of 3)
4. The Pattern of Gethsemane
I remember Gethsemane: all the disciples (priests) entered with Jesus the High Priest into that garden of Passover prayers, but none went with Him beyond their sleeping points to the “yonder” holiest place of sweat and blood, where the ‘covering cherub’ over the ark of that location appeared to Him “from heaven, strengthening him” for the coming day (Luke 22:43-46; Matthew 26:36). While as High Priest Jesus groaned through the night in that holiest place of intense prayers, all the priests who had entered with Him, at their outer-court station, slept off.
Of Priests and High Priests (Part 1 of 3)
1. Frequency and Value
Is value commensurate with frequency of use? Can we determine the worth of something based on how often it is used? Sometimes, in our minds, that is how it works. If a kitchen knife is used more often than a butcher’s knife, it must be more important; since the AK-47 is handier, more popular, and its voice is heard more often on the battlefield than the dumb atomic bomb, it must be superior to the less deployed. In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, I find a model that might suitably address this mystery of the relationship between service and value, between quantity and quality, between frequency of activities and divine significance.
