After one of my several eye surgeries, I was actually examined one day by two veterinarians.  Remember, I am one of the prime teaching tools at the University of Florida Medical School.  These young Dr Doolittle’s were doing research in pain.  Their patients cannot tell them how they feel, so they were visiting human post-op cases to ask how they felt after various types of surgery.  It was the only way to know how the animals were feeling.
            My doctor took them to three different patients, an easy case, a moderate case, and then me—the extreme.  I answered their questions with accompanying explanations by my physician, shook their hands, and on they went.  Maybe some child’s pet bunny rabbit will have an easier time of it because of a ten minute delay in my own case—and putting up with a few jokes afterward.
            Isn’t that what Jesus did for us?  Well, no, not exactly.  Instead of asking a few questions, he went through the surgery himself.  How else was Deity to understand temptation, fear, pain, anguish, sorrow, desperation, or even relatively petty things like hunger, thirst, and weariness?  He did it when he counted not being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, Phil 2:6.  He did it by being tempted in all points like we are, Heb 4:15.  It was really the only way.
            And now He knows.  Now He can tell His Father in words Deity can understand what it is like to be human.   Then He can turn around and tell us how to overcome, how to persevere, how to be faithful even to the point of death, Rev 2:10.
            Don’t make His sacrifice be for nothing.
 
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  This same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, John 1:1-3, 14.
 
Dene Ward

After these things he departed from Athens, and came to Corinth. And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome: and he came unto them; and because he was of the same trade, he abode with them, and they wrought; for by their trade they were tentmakers (Acts 18:1-3).
            Once again we have a few verses mentioning a particular woman and a boatload of lessons to be learned from her—Priscilla, the wife of Aquila.  And that is the first lesson.  Aquila and Priscilla were always a team.  They worked at a trade together, they taught together (Apollos), and they served together.  Even in a time when we know that the apostles often traveled with their wives (1 Cor 9:5), we read nothing of them, not even their names. But Priscilla was right there working next to her man, and everyone knows her name as a result.
            Next, she was a woman who had a trade—like Paul, she and her husband made tents.  I can imagine the three of them sitting in the agora working on their latest orders, perhaps in one of the very tents they had made.  But her work did not stop her from taking in a stranger—for it seems that Paul did not know them before he encountered them.  In fact, we do not know whether they were already Christians or he converted them when he met them.  If the second, then this new convert did exactly as Lydia did—she immediately began a life of service to others.  (See Part 1.)  She did not use her work as an excuse not to practice hospitality.  And Paul did not come into her home for just one meal; he lived with them for a year and a half.  Not only that, they welcomed the church Paul began there into their home (1 Cor 16:19).
            Aquila and Priscilla moved a lot.  They began life in Pontus, a region along the Black Sea.  When I mentioned this in class, one especially industrious lady checked the longitudes and latitudes and discovered that Pontus lay along the same latitudes as our state of Maine!  I am sure they saw snow in the winter, something we rarely associate with Bible lands.  Somehow they made it to Rome, but were expelled with all the other Jews by Claudius.  They then traveled to Corinth where Paul found them, but when he left 18 months later, they went with him to Ephesus.  He left them there as he continued his journey but came across them once again back in Rome sometime after the death of Claudius (AD 54).  Once again, the church is meeting in their home (Rom 16:3-5).  I knew a family who hosted the church in their home, twice on Sundays and once on Wednesday evenings week after week after week.  That meant keeping the house up constantly, no letdowns when times got busy and life distracting.  No one expected perfection, but there had to be ample places to sit in a configuration for teaching.  Eventually they even built a room on the back of their home at their own expense.  Aquila and Priscilla at work for the Lord's body in a different generation.
            And just like Lydia, Aquila and Priscilla sacrificed their security.  …Who for my life laid down their own necks…Rom 16:4.  We do not know exactly what they did for Paul, but he considered them life savers in such a way that they could have lost their own.  Priscilla did not hide behind her husband's robes.  Evidently, she put herself forward for Paul's sake every bit as much as he did, a truly brave woman.
            These early Christians we know so little about can easily put us to shame.  Here we are complaining about hot (or cold) auditoriums, hard pews, and boring preachers while they lived in so much less wealth and comfort and were willing to give up their things, their homes, their identities, even their lives for the cause of the Lord.
            And we have even more of them to study…
 
Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1John 3:16).
 
Dene Ward
 

The competition weekends I have often judged were always fun and uplifting.  It is wonderful to hear the future stars of the concert stage make two full days of beautiful music.  Which does not mean it was an easy weekend.  90% of the performances we heard were mechanically and technically perfect.  Memory lapses were rare and finger slips even rarer.  So how do you choose a winner?

Actually, at the end of each session when our panel of three compared notes, we had all picked out the same three or four that distinguished themselves above the others:  pianists who played with feeling; who made the melody sound like someone singing; who understood how to shape phrases, not just separate them; who had the musical ear and technical ability to voice their chords; students who played the non-melody hand so far in the background it was as if it were in another room; who knew the difference between a Mozart forte and a Beethoven forte; who understood that rubato meant a proportionate time-stretching like the lettering on an inflated balloon, not just a rush followed by a drag.  In short, the winners were those who played not only with perfect mechanics, but with artistry as well—they put their hearts into it.

God’s people seem to have had a problem with that for a long time.  The prophets were constantly reminding them that while God expected absolute obedience, form worship was not acceptable.  If perfect mechanics were all that mattered, he could have created a world full of robots to fill the bill.  I hate, I despise your feasts and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies, God told Israel.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and your meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts, Amos 5:21,22.  Why?  Because it was a mechanical following of ritual. All during their “worship” they were saying, When will the new moon be gone that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, dealing falsely with the balances of deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat, 8:5,6.  Their religion did not affect their hearts and certainly not their everyday lives.

Jesus dealt with their descendants, not only by blood, but in attitude.  Were the Pharisees right to require exact obedience to the Law?  Jesus said they were:  The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat.  All things whatsoever they bid you, these things do, Matt 23:2,3.  He even praised what we might consider petty exactitude:  you tithe mint, anise, and cumin…these things you ought to have done…Matt 23:23.  But like their ancestors, their heart was not in it.  Hear Jesus’ whole indictment:  Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint, anise, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith; but these things you ought to have done, and not left the other undone.

Correct mechanics are important.  A lot of folks in the Bible learned that the hard way.  But our hearts are more important, according to Jesus.  It is easier to just go down a list and do what we are told than it is to monitor our hearts and keep them in line—but God has never had much truck with laziness either.  I didn’t give out any prizes for mechanical playing those during those competition weekends.  What makes us think God will give them out for mechanical worship?
 
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?  Shall I come with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil?  Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?  He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:6-8
 
Dene Ward