Tenderness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  So, the priest existed to open for sinners the way back to God – as long as they wanted to come back. (2) Priests must be at one with others. They must have gone through the same experiences and must be in full sympathy with others. At this point, the writer to the Hebrews stops to point out – he will later show that this is one of the ways in which Jesus Christ is superior to any earthly priest – that earthly priests are so at one with other people that they have an obligation to offer sacrifice for their own sin before they offer sacrifice for the sins of others. Priests must be bound up with other men and women in all that life brings. In connection with this, the writer used a wonderful word – metriopathein. We have translated it as to feel gently; but it is really untranslatable. The Greeks defined a virtue as the mid-point between two extremes. On either hand, there was an extreme into which people might fall; in between, there was the right way. So, the Greeks defined metriopatheia (the corresponding noun) as the mid-point between extravagant grief and utter indifference. It was feeling about others in the right way. W. M. Macgregor, Principal of Trinity College, Glasgow, defined it as ‘the mid-course between explosions of anger and lazy indulgence’. The Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch spoke of that patience which was the child of metriopatheia. He spoke of it as that sympathetic feeling which enabled people to lift up and to save, to spare and to hear. Another Greek blames a man for having no metriopatheia and for therefore refusing to be reconciled with someone who had differed from him. It is a wonderful word. It means the ability to put up with people without getting irritated; it means the ability not to lose one’s temper with people when they are foolish and will not learn and do the same thing over and over again. It describes the attitude which does not get angry at the faults of others and which does not condone them, but which to the end of the day devotes itself to offering gentle yet powerful sympathy which by its very patience directs people back to the right way. We can never deal with others unless we have this strong and patient, God-given metriopatheia. (3) The third essential characteristic of a priest is this: people do not appoint themselves to the priesthood; their appointment is from God. The priesthood is not an office which is taken; it is a privilege and a glory to which people are called. The ministry of God is neither a job nor a career but a calling.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The picture of Jesus is also threefold. (1) Jesus is the great shepherd of his sheep. The picture of Jesus as the good shepherd is very precious to us; but, strangely enough, it is one that Paul never uses and that the writer to the Hebrews uses only here. There is a lovely legend of Moses which tells of something he did when he had fled from Egypt and was keeping the flocks of Jethro in the desert. A kid wandered far away from the flock. Moses patiently followed it and found it drinking at a mountain stream. He came up to it and put it on his shoulder. ‘So it was because you were thirsty that you wandered away,’ said Moses gently; and, without any anger at the toil the young goat had caused him, he carried it home. When God saw it, he said: ‘If Moses is so compassionate to a straying kid, he is the very man I want to be the leader of my people.’ A shepherd is one who is ready to give his life for his sheep; he puts up with their foolishness and never stops loving them. That is what Jesus does for us. (2) Jesus is the one who established the new covenant and made possible the new relationship between God and all people. It was he who took away the terror and showed us the love of God. (3) Jesus is the one who died. To show us what God is like and to open the way to him, it cost the life of Jesus. Our new relationship to God cost his blood. The letter finishes with some personal greetings. The writer to the Hebrews half-apologises for its length. If he had dealt with these vast topics, the letter would never have ended at all. It is short – James Moffatt points out that you can read it aloud in less than an hour – in comparison with the greatness of the eternal truths with which it deals. What the reference to Timothy means, no one knows; but it sounds as if he, too, had been in prison because of Jesus Christ. And so the letter closes with a blessing. All through, it has been telling of the grace of Christ which opens the way to God; and it comes to an end with a prayer that that wondrous grace may rest upon its readers.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  He is thinking of them not as a crowd but as individual men and women. Dr Paul Tournier in A Doctor’s Casebook has a paragraph on what he calls the personalism of the Bible. ‘God says to Moses, “ I know you by name” (Exodus 33:17). He says to Cyrus, “It is I , the Lord, who call you by your name” (Isaiah 45:3). One is struck, on reading the Bible, by the importance in it of personal names. Whole chapters are devoted to long genealogies. When I was young I used to think that they could well have been dropped from the Biblical Canon. But I have since realized that these series of proper names bear witness to the fact that, in the biblical perspective, man is neither a thing nor an abstraction, not a fraction of the mass, as the Marxists see him, but a person.’ When the writer to the Hebrews wrote with sternness, he was not rebuking a church; he was yearning over individual men and women, as God himself does. There are two interesting things implicit in this passage. (1) We learn that, even if these people to whom he is writing have failed to grow up in Christian faith and knowledge, and even if they have been falling away from their first enthusiasm, they have never given up their practical service to their fellow Christians. There is a great practical truth here. Sometimes, in the Christian life, we come to times which are arid; the church services have nothing to say to us, the teaching that we do in Sunday School or the singing that we do in the choir or the service we give on a committee becomes a labour without joy. At such a time, there are two alternatives. We can give up our worship and our service; but, if we do, we are lost. Or we can go determinedly on with them, and the strange thing is that the light and the attractiveness and the joy will in time come back again. In the arid times, the best thing to do is to go on with the habits of the Christian life and of the Church. If we do, we can be sure that the sun will shine again. (2) He tells his people to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherited the promise. What he is saying to them is: ‘You are not the first to launch out on the glories and the perils of the Christian faith. Others braved the dangers and endured the tribulations before you and won through.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Get up there! Stop kicking them boards!’ And the groom hurried off to attend to the chestnut. Collins, who had spat out his two lumps of sugar, was now busy indulging his morbid passion. His sides were swollen well-nigh to bursting—blown out like an air balloon was old Collins from the evil and dyspeptic effects of the straw, plus his own woeful lack of molars. He stared at Stephen with whitish-blue eyes that saw nothing, and when she touched him he grunted—a discourteous sound which meant: ‘Leave me alone!’ So after a mild reproof she left him to his sins and his indigestion. Last but not least, she strolled down to the home of the two-legged creature who had once reigned supreme in those princely but now depleted stables. And the lamplight streamed out through uncurtained windows to meet her, so that she walked on lamplight. A slim streak of gold led right up to the porch of old Williams’ comfortable cottage. She found him sitting with the Bible on his knees, peering crossly down at the Scriptures through his glasses. He had taken to reading the Scriptures aloud to himself—a melancholy occupation. He was at this now. As Stephen entered she could hear him mumbling from Revelation: ‘And the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.’ He looked up, and hastily twitched off his glasses: ‘Miss Stephen!’ ‘Sit still—stop where you are, Williams.’ But Williams had the arrogance of the humble. He was proud of the stern traditions of his service, and his pride forbade him to sit in her presence, in spite of their long and kind years of friendship. Yet when he spoke he must grumble a little, as though she were still the very small child who had swaggered round the stables rubbing her chin, imitating his every expression and gesture. ‘You didn’t ought to have no ’orses, Miss Stephen, the way you runs off and leaves them;’ he grumbled, ‘Raftery’s been off ’is feed these last days. I’ve been talkin’ to that Jim what you sets such store by! Impudent young blight, ’e answered me back like as though I’d no right to express me opinion. But I says to ’im: “You just wait, lad,” I says, “You wait until I gets ’old of Miss Stephen!” ’ For Williams could never keep clear of the stables, and could never refrain from nagging when he got there. Deposed he might be, but not yet defeated even by old age, as grooms knew to their cost. The tap of his heavy oak stick in the yard was enough to send Jim and his underling flying to hide curry-combs and brushes out of sight. Williams needed no glasses when it came to disorder. ‘Be this place ’ere a stable or be it a pigsty, I wonder?’ was now his habitual greeting.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  However, a Welsh village is no field for endeavour, and thus nothing had happened until by a fluke she had suddenly heard of the Breakspeare Unit via the local parson, an old friend of its founder—he himself had written to recommend Mary. And so, straight from the quiet seclusion of Wales, this girl had managed the complicated journey that had finally got her over to France, then across a war-ravaged, dislocated country. Mary was neither so frail nor so timid as Mrs. Breakspeare had thought her. Stephen had felt rather bored just at first at the prospect of teaching the new member her duties, but after a while it came to pass that she missed the girl when she was not with her. And after a while she would find herself observing the way Mary’s hair grew, low on the forehead, the wide setting of her slightly oblique grey eyes, the abrupt sweep back of their heavy lashes; and these things would move Stephen, so that she must touch the girl’s hair for a moment with her fingers. Fate was throwing them continually together, in moments of rest as in moments of danger; they could not have escaped this even had they wished to, and indeed they did not wish to escape it. They were pawns in the ruthless and complicated game of existence, moved hither and thither on the board by an unseen hand, yet moved side by side, so that they grew to expect each other. ‘Mary, are you there?’ A superfluous question—the reply would be always the same. ‘I’m here, Stephen.’ Sometimes Mary would talk of her plans for the future while Stephen listened, smiling as she did so. ‘I’ll go into an office, I want to be free.’ ‘You’re so little, you’d get mislaid in an office.’ ‘I’m five foot five!’ ‘Are you really, Mary? You feel little, somehow.’ ‘That’s because you’re so tall. I do wish I could grow a bit!’ ‘No, don’t wish that, you’re all right as you are—it’s you, Mary.’ Mary would want to be told about Morton, she was never tired of hearing about Morton. She would make Stephen get out the photographs of her father, of her mother whom Mary thought lovely, of Puddle, and above all of Raftery. Then Stephen must tell her of the life in London, and afterwards of the new house in Paris; must talk of her own career and ambitions, though Mary had not read either of her novels—there had never been a library subscription. But at moments Stephen’s face would grow clouded because of the things that she could not tell her; because of the little untruths and evasions that must fill up the gaps in her strange life-history.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  And make straight the paths of your feet so that the bones of the lame may not be completely dislocated but rather may be cured. Make peace your aim – and do it all together – and aim at that holiness without which no one can see the Lord. Watch that no one misses the grace of God. Watch that no pernicious influence grows up to involve you in troubles. And watch that the main body of your people are not soiled by any such thing. Watch that no one falls into sexual impurity or turns to an unhallowed life, as Esau did, Esau who, for a single meal, gave away his birthright. For you are well aware of how when he afterwards wanted to claim the blessing he ought to have inherited, he was rejected – for he had no opportunity to change his mind – although he sought that blessing with tears. W ITH this passage, the writer to the Hebrews comes to the problems of everyday Christian life and living. He knew that sometimes it is given to us to rise up with inspiration as if we had the wings of eagles; he knew that sometimes we are able to run and not grow weary in the pursuit of some great moment of endeavour; but he also knew that, of all things, it is hardest to continue to walk day after day and not to faint. Here, he is thinking of the daily struggle of the Christian way. (1) He begins by reminding them of their duties . In every congregation and in every Christian society, there are those who are weaker and more likely to go astray and to abandon the struggle. It is the duty of those who are stronger to put fresh vigour into listless hands and fresh strength into failing feet. The phrase used for slack hands is the same as is used to describe the children of Israel in the days when they wanted to abandon the harsh demands of the journey across the wilderness and to return to the ease and the fleshpots of Egypt. The Odes of Solomon (6:14ff.) have a description of the work of those who are true servants and ministers: They have refreshed the dry lips, And have raised up the will that was paralysed … And limbs that were fallen They have straightened and raised up. One of life’s greatest glories is to be an encourager of those who are near to despair and a strengthener of those whose strength is failing.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Baptism, the original form of which was immersion, cleanses from original sin and incorporates into the body of Christ. Children of Jews and infidels are not to be baptized without the consent of their parents.1525 Ordination is indispensable to the existence of the Church. In the Lord’s Supper the glorified body of the Redeemer is wholly present essentially, but not quantitatively. The words of Christ, "This is my body" are susceptible of only one interpretation—the change of the elements into the veritable body and blood of Christ. The substance of the bread undergoes change. The dimensions of the bread, and its other accidents, remain. The whole body is in the bread, as the whole body is also in the wine.1526 Penance is efficacious to the removing of guilt incurred after baptism. Indulgences have efficacy for the dead as well as the living. Their dispensation belongs primarily to the pope, as the head of the Church. The fund of merit is the product chiefly of the superabounding merit of Christ, but also of the supererogatory works of the saints.1527 In regard to the Last Things, the fire of hell will be physical. The blessed will be able to contemplate the woes of the lost without sorrow, and are led, as Albertus had said, by the sight of these woes to praise God supremely for their own redemption. Their beatitude is not increased by this vision. The body of the resurrection will be the same, even to the bowels.1528 In his consideration of ethics, Thomas Aquinas rises far above the other mediaeval writers, and marks an epoch in the treatment of the subject. He devotes to it nearly two hundred questions, or one-third of his entire system of theology. Here his references to the "philosopher" are very frequent.1529 It is Thomas’ merit that he proceeds into details in analyzing the conduct of daily life.1530 To give an example, he discusses the question of drunkenness, and, with Aristotle, decides that it is no excuse for crime.1531 Thomas, however, also allows himself to be led into useless discussions where sophistry has free play, as when he answers the questions, whether a "man should love his child more than his father," or "his mother more than his father." Thomas opens his ethical treatment with a discussion of the highest good, that is, blessedness,—beatitudo,—which does not consist in riches, honor, fame, power, or pleasure.1532 Riches only minister to the body, and the more we have of them, the more are they despised, on account of their insufficiency to meet human needs; as our Lord said of the waters of the world, that whoever drinks of them shall thirst again, John 4:13. Blessedness consists in nothing else than the vision of God as He is in Himself.1533 Satisfaction is a necessary concomitant of blessedness, as warmth is a concomitant of fire.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Inns were filthy and ruinously expensive, and had a bad reputation. The Greeks always had a dislike of hospitality given for money; innkeeping seemed to them an unnatural business. In The Frogs by Aristophanes, Dionysus asks Heracles, when they are discussing finding a lodging, if he knows where there are fewest fleas. Plato in The Laws speaks of the innkeeper holding travellers to ransom. It is not without significance that Josephus says that Rahab, the prostitute who sheltered Joshua’s scouts in Jericho, kept an inn. When Theophrastus wrote his character sketch of the reckless man, he said that he was fit to keep an inn or run a brothel; he put both occupations on the same level. In the ancient world, there was a rather wonderful system of what were called ‘guest friendships’. Throughout the years, families, even when they had lost active touch with each other, had an arrangement that, whenever it was needed, they would make accommodation available for each other. This hospitality was even more necessary among Christians. Slaves had no home of their own to go to. Wandering preachers and prophets were always on the roads. In the ordinary business of life, Christians had journeys to make. Both their price and their moral atmosphere made the public inns impossible. In those days, there must have been many isolated Christians fighting a lonely battle for the faith. Christianity was, and still should be, the religion of the open door. The writer to the Hebrews says that those who have given hospitality to strangers have sometimes, without knowing it, entertained the angels of God. He is thinking of the time when the angel came to Abraham and Sarah to tell them of the coming of a son (Genesis 18:1ff.) and of the day when the angel came to Manoah to tell him that he would have a son (Judges 13:3ff.). (3) There is sympathy for those in trouble. It is here we see the early Christian Church at its loveliest. It often happened that Christians ended up in prison and worse. It might be for their faith; it might be for debt, for the Christians were poor; it might be that they were captured by pirates or by bandits. It was then that the Church went into action.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Every high priest who is chosen from among men is appointed on men’s behalf to deal with the things which concern God. His task is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, in that he himself is able to feel gently to the ignorant and to the wandering because he himself wears the garment of human weakness. By reason of this very weakness it is incumbent upon him, just as he makes sacrifice for the people, so to make sacrifice for sins on his own behalf also. No one takes this honourable position to himself, but he is called by God to it, just as Aaron was. So it was not Christ who gave himself the glory of becoming high priest; but it was God who said to him: ‘You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.’ Just so, he says also in another passage: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ In the days when he lived this human life of ours, he offered prayers and entreaties to him who was able to bring him safely through death with strong crying and with tears. And when he had been heard because of his reverence, although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the sufferings through which he passed. When he had been made fully fit for his appointed task, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, for he had been designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. The second passage which deals with this idea is the whole of Hebrews 7. So, first, let us set it down as a whole, remembering that the last verse of Hebrews 6 has already said that Jesus had become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Now this Melchizedek was King of Salem and priest of the most high God. He met Abraham when he was returning from the smiting of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham set apart for him a tenth part of the spoils. In the first place, the interpretation of his own name means King of Righteousness and, in the second place, King of Salem means King of Peace. His father is never mentioned nor his mother; nor is there any record of his descent; there is no mention of the beginning of his days nor any of the end of his life; he is exactly like the Son of God; and he remains a priest forever.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  And there is no part of human experience of which God cannot say: ‘I have been there.’ When we have a sad and sorry tale to tell, when life has drenched us with tears, we do not go to a God who is incapable of understanding what has happened; we go to a God who has been there. That is why – if we may put it in this way – God finds it easy to forgive. (c) It makes God able to help . He knows our problems because he has come through them. The best person to give you advice and help on a journey is someone who has already travelled that way. God can help because he knows it all. Jesus is the perfect high priest because he is perfectly God, and perfectly one with us. Because he has known our life, he can give us sympathy, mercy and power. He brought God to men and women, and he can bring them to God. AT HOME WITH THE WORLD AND WITH GOD Hebrews 5:1–10 Every high priest who is chosen from among men is appointed on men’s behalf to deal with the things which concern God. His task is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, in that he himself is able to feel gently to the ignorant and to the wandering because he himself wears the garment of human weakness. By reason of this very weakness it is incumbent upon him, just as he makes sacrifice for the people, so to make sacrifice for sins on his own behalf also. No one takes this honourable position to himself, but he is called by God to it, just as Aaron was. So it was not Christ who gave himself the glory of becoming high priest; but it was God who said to him: ‘You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.’ Just so, he says also in another passage: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ In the days when he lived this human life of ours, he offered prayers and entreaties to him who was able to bring him safely through death with strong crying and with tears. And when he had been heard because of his reverence, although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the sufferings through which he passed. When he had been made fully fit for his appointed task, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, for he had been designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. N OW , Hebrews comes to work out the doctrine which is its special contribution to Christian thought – the doctrine of the high priesthood of Jesus Christ. This passage sets out three essential qualifications of the priest in any age and in any generation . (1) Priests are appointed on behalf of others to deal with the things concerning God. Professor A. J.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  On abstinence: Paul was a permanent ascetic celibate—like those other Jewish celibates we know of from the desert south of Alexandria or west of the Dead Sea. (Indeed, those deserts are where that tradition passed eventually from Judaism into Christianity.) But Paul insists that temporary celibacy within marriage must be “by agreement for a set time” (7:5), and it involved husband/wife and wife/husband (7:3), wife/husband and husband/wife (7:4). Notice the even duality. On divorce: Paul gives the following as his own advice rather than a command—and it is beautifully and humanely wise: If any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. (7:12–14) Notice, again, the even balance of wife/husband and husband/wife. Also notice the evenhandedness of “if she consents” and “if he consents.” On virginity: Paul applies virginity as an option for both men and women. There is no double standard, as if virginity were only for women: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin” (7:27–28). On abstinence: Paul again advocates celibate asceticism instead of marriage for men (7:32) and women (7:34). Celibate asceticism is not a witness that sex, marriage, and family are evil but that normalcy is not inevitability, neither for sex nor for violence. It is a major witness (like martyrdom) that the normalcy of civilization is not the inevitability of human nature. Next, with regard to equality in the community, one of the strangest outbursts from the historical Paul occurs in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16. There is no scholarly consensus on what exactly is the problem to which Paul responds so powerfully and unpersuasively. I offer, therefore, only my own interpretation on both the problem and the solution. It clearly concerns head-covering for men and women, as each exercises leadership in the liturgical assembly. Notice, above and before all else, that Paul presumes that both sexes exercise communal leadership in prayer and prophecy: “Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved” (11:4–5). Still, what is the problem, and why so much sound and fury over head-covering? Here is my best guess. We know that there was a problem with temporary sexual abstinence within marriage at Corinth.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (1) It was through his sufferings that he was really identified with us. The writer to the Hebrews quotes three Old Testament texts as forecasts of this identity with men and women – Psalm 22:22; Isaiah 8:17, 8:18. If Jesus had come into this world in a form in which he could never have suffered, he would have been quite different from us and so no Saviour for us. As Jeremy Taylor, the seventeenth-century churchman, said: ‘When God would save men, he did it by way of a man.’ It is, in fact, this identification with us which is the essence of the Christian idea of God. When the Greeks thought of their gods, they thought of them as Tennyson pictures them in ‘The Song of the Lotos- Eaters’: For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. The basis of the Greek idea of God was detachment; the basis of the Christian idea is identity. Through his sufferings, Jesus Christ identified himself with us. (2) Through this identity, Jesus Christ sympathizes with us. He literally feels with us. It is almost impossible to understand another person’s sorrows and sufferings unless we have been through them. A person without a trace of nerves has no conception of the tortures of nervousness. A person who is perfectly physically fit has no conception of the weariness of the person who is easily tired or the suffering of the person who is never free from pain. A person who learns easily often cannot understand why someone who is slow finds things so difficult. A person who has never known sorrow cannot understand the pain at the heart of the person into whose life grief has come. A person who has never loved can never understand either the sudden glory or the aching loneliness in the lover’s heart. Before we can have sympathy, we must go through the same things that the other person has gone through – and that is precisely what Jesus did. (3) Because he sympathizes, Jesus can really help. He has met our sorrows; he has faced our temptations. As a result, he knows exactly what help we need; and he can give it.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  It is not without significance that Josephus says that Rahab, the prostitute who sheltered Joshua’s scouts in Jericho, kept an inn. When Theophrastus wrote his character sketch of the reckless man, he said that he was fit to keep an inn or run a brothel; he put both occupations on the same level. In the ancient world, there was a rather wonderful system of what were called ‘guest friendships’. Throughout the years, families, even when they had lost active touch with each other, had an arrangement that, whenever it was needed, they would make accommodation available for each other. This hospitality was even more necessary among Christians. Slaves had no home of their own to go to. Wandering preachers and prophets were always on the roads. In the ordinary business of life, Christians had journeys to make. Both their price and their moral atmosphere made the public inns impossible. In those days, there must have been many isolated Christians fighting a lonely battle for the faith. Christianity was, and still should be, the religion of the open door. The writer to the Hebrews says that those who have given hospitality to strangers have sometimes, without knowing it, entertained the angels of God. He is thinking of the time when the angel came to Abraham and Sarah to tell them of the coming of a son (Genesis 18:1ff.) and of the day when the angel came to Manoah to tell him that he would have a son (Judges 13:3ff.). (3) There is sympathy for those in trouble . It is here we see the early Christian Church at its loveliest. It often happened that Christians ended up in prison and worse. It might be for their faith; it might be for debt, for the Christians were poor; it might be that they were captured by pirates or by bandits. It was then that the Church went into action. Tertullian in The Apology writes: ‘If there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.’ Aristides the Athenian orator said of the Christians: ‘If they hear that any one of their number is imprisoned or in distress for the sake of their Christ’s name, they all render aid in his necessity and, if he can be redeemed, they set him free.’

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  You will not find the eternal life that you seek.” Next, he meets Siduri, or Sabatum, a divine tavern keeper who is also the Goddess of wine and wisdom. His first hope is to settle down with her and obtain vicarious immortality through that relationship: “Now that I have found you, alewife, may I not find the death I dread.” But the Goddess disabuses him of that hope immediately: “Gilgamesh, where do you roam? You will not find the eternal life you seek. When the Gods created mankind they appointed death for mankind, kept eternal life in their own hands.” That, however, is only her negative response. She continues with this even longer and very positive one: “So, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full. Day and night enjoy yourself in every way, every day arrange for pleasures. Day and night dance and play. Wear fresh clothes. Keep your head washed, bathe in water. Appreciate the child who holds your hand. Let your wife enjoy herself in your lap.” Notice two points about this injunction. First, the last two lines are deliberately reversed so that “child” precedes “wife,” progeny precedes marriage. And it is not marriage with an immortal Goddess, but with a mortal woman who produces the child who crowns the joy of life and is the only immortality possible to mortals. The second point conforms to this emphasis. This biblical parallel to that most humane advice is often cited: “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love” (Eccles. 9:7–9a). It is a very good parallel, but no child is mentioned, and that draws further attention to the child’s presence in the older Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. If human immortality is impossible, progeny at least may be a kind of mortality with benefits. It is very possible that this interchange ended some other version of the epic before it was absorbed into the later and longer one. As such, it would have formed an elegant diptych. It began with the originally wild man Enkidu lured into civilized life by sex with a prostitute. It would have ended with the newly wild man Gilgamesh lured back into civilized life by sex with a wife—and the birth of a child. (Would some Mesopotamians or only some moderns think of that as describing two steps into male maturity and masculine humanity?) I turn next to the later Babylonian version in which Siduri is of only minor and passing importance. In that version, Gilgamesh decides to go in search of Ziudsura, also named Utnapishtim, “the far-distant one,” the hero who had preserved animal and human life from extinction during the great flood. He had fulfilled his divine mandate: “Dismantle your house. Build a boat. Leave possessions, search out living things.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He looked like a little boy when he said that, scrunching up his nose and squinting. “Of what?” I laughed. “Are you scared of me? But you just had your face in my pussy.” “I have some imperfections,” he said. “I have—something is wrong with my body. I’m afraid for you to see.” “I think you’re beautiful,” I said. “You are a gorgeous creature. I would never judge you. Anything that could be different or weird about your body I would only see as even more special.” “You can’t tell anyone,” he said. “About what you see.” Now I wondered what it was that was wrong with him. Did he have a shrunken lower body? Was he missing a leg? Was it just a small dick? “I don’t like people,” I said. “I have no friends. I have no one to tell.” This was a lie. I would surely be telling Claire at some point about the pussy-eating in detail and, I figured, probably every inch of his body. As soon as she was better and ready to hear it. It would probably even cheer her up. “Okay,” he said. “But if you don’t like it, there is nothing I can do about it. If you feel frightened by it—by me—I can only go back into the water and swim away. I won’t be able to see you again.” “Come on,” I said. “Would you stop? I won’t not like it. There’s nothing that can scare me.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I believed it. It’s an art to believe your own lies. Some people think you have to actively convince yourself in order to believe your own lies, but in that moment, I just didn’t know any other reality than everything being okay—no matter what he showed me. I knew only that silence and the wanting him to come up on the rock with me. I didn’t think I could be scared of anything. I just wanted him to be with me. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He put his beautiful white arms on the rock and hoisted himself up, then flipped himself over so that he was sitting next to me. Around his pelvic region was a thick beige sash, like an oilcloth. Below it was the wet suit: scaly and coal black, covered in barnacles. At the bottom were what looked like a pair of fins or flippers, of the same color as the suit, connected to the rest of the black rubbery scales. He looked more like a scuba diver than a swimmer and more like a thick piece of cod than a scuba diver. The suit seemed old—like it had been soaking in the ocean for years—with all of the barnacles attached to it, bits of seaweed. It wasn’t sleek or shiny like I had seen on the surfers. It almost looked like the rocks we were seated on. Like he was part of the ocean landscape.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  They must have gone through the same experiences and must be in full sympathy with others. At this point, the writer to the Hebrews stops to point out – he will later show that this is one of the ways in which Jesus Christ is superior to any earthly priest – that earthly priests are so at one with other people that they have an obligation to offer sacrifice for their own sin before they offer sacrifice for the sins of others. Priests must be bound up with other men and women in all that life brings. In connection with this, the writer used a wonderful word – metriopathein . We have translated it as to feel gently ; but it is really untranslatable. The Greeks defined a virtue as the mid-point between two extremes. On either hand, there was an extreme into which people might fall; in between, there was the right way. So, the Greeks defined metriopatheia (the corresponding noun) as the mid-point between extravagant grief and utter indifference. It was feeling about others in the right way. W. M. Macgregor, Principal of Trinity College, Glasgow, defined it as ‘the mid-course between explosions of anger and lazy indulgence’. The Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch spoke of that patience which was the child of metriopatheia . He spoke of it as that sympathetic feeling which enabled people to lift up and to save, to spare and to hear. Another Greek blames a man for having no metriopatheia and for therefore refusing to be reconciled with someone who had differed from him. It is a wonderful word. It means the ability to put up with people without getting irritated; it means the ability not to lose one’s temper with people when they are foolish and will not learn and do the same thing over and over again. It describes the attitude which does not get angry at the faults of others and which does not condone them, but which to the end of the day devotes itself to offering gentle yet powerful sympathy which by its very patience directs people back to the right way. We can never deal with others unless we have this strong and patient, God-given metriopatheia . (3) The third essential characteristic of a priest is this: people do not appoint themselves to the priesthood; their appointment is from God. The priesthood is not an office which is taken; it is a privilege and a glory to which people are called. The ministry of God is neither a job nor a career but a calling. Those who are called to the priesthood ought to be able to look back and say not: ‘I chose this work’ but rather: ‘God chose me and gave me this work to do.’ The writer to the Hebrews goes on to show how Jesus Christ fulfils the great conditions of the priesthood.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Uncle Willie looked at me with an impatience I hadn't seen in his face even when he took thirty minutes to loop the laces over his high-topped shoes. “I … I thought I told you to go … go outside and play.” Before I left I saw him lean back on the shelves of Garret Snuff, Prince Albert and Spark Plug chewing tobacco. “No, ma'am … no ch-children and no wife.” He tried a laugh. “I have an old m-m-mother and my brother's t-two children to l-look after.” I didn't mind his using us to make himself look good. In fact, I would have pretended to be his daughter if he wanted me to. Not only did I not feel any loyalty to my own father, I figured that if I had been Uncle Willie's child I would have received much better treatment. The couple left after a few minutes, and from the back of the house I watched the red car scare chickens, raise dust and disappear toward Magnolia. Uncle Willie was making his way down the long shadowed aisle between the shelves and the counter—hand over hand, like a man climbing out of a dream. I stayed quiet and watched him lurch from one side, bumping to the other, until he reached the coal-oil tank. He put his hand behind that dark recess and took his cane in the strong fist and shifted his weight on the wooden support. He thought he had pulled it off. I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of a whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock. He must have tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high-topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them. I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since. During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love. Although I enjoyed and respected Kipling, Poe, Butler, Thackeray and Henley, I saved my young and loyal passion for Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois' “Litany at Atlanta.” But it was Shakespeare who said, “When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.” It was a state with which I felt myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn't matter to anyone any more.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Mr. Freeman was a foreman in the Southern Pacific yards and came home late sometimes, after Mother had gone out. He took his dinner off the stove where she had carefully covered it and which she had admonished us not to bother. He ate quietly in the kitchen while Bailey and I read separately and greedily our own Street and Smith pulp magazine. Now that we had spending money, we bought the illustrated paperbacks with their gaudy pictures. When Mother was away, we were put on an honor system. We had to finish our homework, eat dinner and wash the dishes before we could read or listen to The Lone Ranger, Crime Busters or The Shadow. Mr. Freeman moved gracefully, like a big brown bear, and seldom spoke to us. He simply waited for Mother and put his whole self into the waiting. He never read the paper or patted his foot to radio. He waited. That was all. If she came home before we went to bed, we saw the man come alive. He would start out of the big chair, like a man coming out of sleep, smiling. I would remember then that a few seconds before, I had heard a car door slam; then Mother's footsteps would signal from the concrete walk. When her key rattled the door, Mr. Freeman would have already asked his habitual question, “Hey, Bibbi, have a good time?” His query would hang in the air while she sprang over to peck him on the lips. Then she turned to Bailey and me with the lipstick kisses. “Haven't you finished your homework?” If we had and were just reading—“O.K., say your prayers and go to bed.” If we hadn't—“Then go to your room and finish … then say your prayers and go to bed.” Mr. Freeman's smile never grew, it stayed at the same intensity. Sometimes Mother would go over and sit on his lap and the grin on his face looked as if it would stay there forever. From our rooms we could hear the glasses clink and the radio turned up. I think she must have danced for him on the good nights, because he couldn't dance, but before I fell asleep I often heard feet shuffling to dance rhythms. I felt very sorry for Mr. Freeman. I felt as sorry for him as I had felt for a litter of helpless pigs born in our backyard sty in Arkansas. We fattened the pigs all year long for the slaughter on the first good frost, and even as I suffered for the cute little wiggly things, I knew how much I was going to enjoy the fresh sausage and hog's headcheese they could give me only with their deaths.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (3) God is the God who both shows us his will and equips us to do it. He never gives us a task without also giving us the power to accomplish it. When God sends us out, he sends us equipped with everything we need. The picture of Jesus is also threefold. (1) Jesus is the great shepherd of his sheep. The picture of Jesus as the good shepherd is very precious to us; but, strangely enough, it is one that Paul never uses and that the writer to the Hebrews uses only here. There is a lovely legend of Moses which tells of something he did when he had fled from Egypt and was keeping the flocks of Jethro in the desert. A kid wandered far away from the flock. Moses patiently followed it and found it drinking at a mountain stream. He came up to it and put it on his shoulder. ‘So it was because you were thirsty that you wandered away,’ said Moses gently; and, without any anger at the toil the young goat had caused him, he carried it home. When God saw it, he said: ‘If Moses is so compassionate to a straying kid, he is the very man I want to be the leader of my people.’ A shepherd is one who is ready to give his life for his sheep; he puts up with their foolishness and never stops loving them. That is what Jesus does for us. (2) Jesus is the one who established the new covenant and made possible the new relationship between God and all people. It was he who took away the terror and showed us the love of God. (3) Jesus is the one who died. To show us what God is like and to open the way to him, it cost the life of Jesus. Our new relationship to God cost his blood. The letter finishes with some personal greetings. The writer to the Hebrews half-apologises for its length. If he had dealt with these vast topics, the letter would never have ended at all. It is short – James Moffatt points out that you can read it aloud in less than an hour – in comparison with the greatness of the eternal truths with which it deals. What the reference to Timothy means, no one knows; but it sounds as if he, too, had been in prison because of Jesus Christ. And so the letter closes with a blessing. All through, it has been telling of the grace of Christ which opens the way to God; and it comes to an end with a prayer that that wondrous grace may rest upon its readers.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  For those who obey the will of God, there is no such thing as final disaster; even death itself is conquered. (3) God is the God who both shows us his will and equips us to do it. He never gives us a task without also giving us the power to accomplish it. When God sends us out, he sends us equipped with everything we need. The picture of Jesus is also threefold. (1) Jesus is the great shepherd of his sheep. The picture of Jesus as the good shepherd is very precious to us; but, strangely enough, it is one that Paul never uses and that the writer to the Hebrews uses only here. There is a lovely legend of Moses which tells of something he did when he had fled from Egypt and was keeping the flocks of Jethro in the desert. A kid wandered far away from the flock. Moses patiently followed it and found it drinking at a mountain stream. He came up to it and put it on his shoulder. ‘So it was because you were thirsty that you wandered away,’ said Moses gently; and, without any anger at the toil the young goat had caused him, he carried it home. When God saw it, he said: ‘If Moses is so compassionate to a straying kid, he is the very man I want to be the leader of my people.’ A shepherd is one who is ready to give his life for his sheep; he puts up with their foolishness and never stops loving them. That is what Jesus does for us. (2) Jesus is the one who established the new covenant and made possible the new relationship between God and all people. It was he who took away the terror and showed us the love of God. (3) Jesus is the one who died. To show us what God is like and to open the way to him, it cost the life of Jesus. Our new relationship to God cost his blood. The letter finishes with some personal greetings. The writer to the Hebrews half-apologises for its length. If he had dealt with these vast topics, the letter would never have ended at all. It is short – James Moffatt points out that you can read it aloud in less than an hour – in comparison with the greatness of the eternal truths with which it deals. What the reference to Timothy means, no one knows; but it sounds as if he, too, had been in prison because of Jesus Christ.