Looking Ahead to October: Seven Journeys, One Faith

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September has been a remarkable month here.

We have walked through Romans, followed the church beyond Pentecost, watched Joshua lead Israel into the land God had promised, listened to the poetry of great hymns, met women whose lives left their mark on church history, and finally brought John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress to its conclusion.

And now October is coming.

Rather than slowing down, we are opening several new doors.

The October schedule will continue the seven-day rhythm that has developed on the blog, but each day will take us somewhere different. Scripture, history, poetry, biography, narrative, and the experience of growing older will all have their place.

The subjects are different.

The God we are seeking to know is the same.

Sunday: From Romans to Ephesians

Our Sunday morning Bible study will bring Romans to its conclusion and then move forward into Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

Romans has taken us through some of the deepest territory in the New Testament—sin and grace, justification and faith, Israel and the Gentiles, the sovereignty of God, Christian liberty, and the practical outworking of the gospel.

Now we move from Rome to Ephesus.

My working dates place Romans around A.D. 57 and Ephesians around A.D. 60, following the chronology suggested by Acts.

That movement is significant.

Paul will write Ephesians from a very different setting, and yet the great themes of the gospel remain. In Ephesians we will encounter the church as the body of Christ, the mystery of God's purpose, the unity of believers, the new life that follows salvation, and the remarkable language of spiritual warfare.

We will not simply be studying another book of the Bible.

We will be watching the gospel move from one setting to another and asking what remains constant when circumstances change.

Monday: God at Work After Pentecost

Our church-history journey will continue.

We began with Pentecost and the first generation of Christian witnesses. But we deliberately do not want to spend the entire journey inside the familiar pages of Acts.

The story becomes especially interesting after the apostles begin to disappear from the scene.

Who carried the faith forward?
What happened when the first eyewitnesses were gone?
How did ordinary men and women preserve the teaching they had received?
How did congregations spread across the Roman world?
And how did Christianity survive pressure, persecution, internal disagreement, and the enormous challenge of living faithfully in a pagan culture?

October will take us into the period roughly from A.D. 100 to 200.

There are surprises waiting there.

Some of the names will be familiar. Others will not. Some of the stories have received far less attention than they deserve.

Most importantly, we will continue looking for flesh-and-blood people—not simply an abstract story in which "the church" somehow grows.

God was at work.

But He worked through people.

That is one of the great lessons of church history.

Tuesday: The Poetry of Hymns

Tuesday remains our day for slowing down and listening to the poetry of Christian worship.

We have already considered Holy, Holy, Holy, How Great Thou Art, It Is Well with My Soul, and Master, the Tempest Is Raging.

Now comes a hymn that has been treasured for generations:

"Be Thou My Vision."

There is something wonderfully different about this hymn.

It is not primarily asking God to change the circumstances around us. It asks Him to change what we see—to become the center through which everything else is understood.

And there is a fifth verse that is often overlooked in modern hymnals.

It deserves to be heard.

As October unfolds, we will continue asking the same question we have asked throughout this series:

What happens when poetry becomes prayer?

And before long we will also come to Isaac Watts and his magnificent "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," written in 1709.

These are not simply old songs.

They are theology set to poetry—and theology meant to be sung.

Wednesday: God at Work in History

Our journey through Joshua continues.

We have watched Israel enter the land, watched God fight for His people, remembered victories already won, and then encountered the remarkable Caleb in Joshua 14.

Caleb's words still ring in my ears:

"Give me this mountain."

He was eighty-five years old.

He was not asking for retirement.

He was asking for another assignment.

That is an especially appropriate place for us to pause and remember that the Bible does not treat old age as the end of usefulness.

There is still work to do.
There are still mountains to climb.
There is still faith to exercise.

So we will continue through Joshua, paying attention not only to the battles and victories but also to what the book teaches us about memory, inheritance, unfinished work, courage, and faithfulness.

The title of the series remains God at Work in History.

And Joshua continues to remind us that history is not merely a record of what happened.

It is a record of what God did—and of how people responded to Him.

Thursday: Women of Faith in Church History

Our Thursday series has also taken an important turn.

After Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, we considered where we should go next, and the answer became clear:

Phoebe Palmer.

Palmer is a fascinating figure because she forces us to think carefully about a word Christians use often but do not always define carefully:

holiness.
What does it mean to be holy?
What does it mean to be separated from the world and devoted to God?
How does holiness affect the way a Christian lives?
And what happens when a woman becomes one of the most influential voices in a major Christian movement?

Phoebe Palmer's story takes us into nineteenth-century Methodism, the holiness movement, women's ministry, the "shorter way" teaching associated with her, and the Five Points Mission in New York City.

But we will be careful not to reduce holiness to social activity.
Good works can flow from holiness.
They are not the definition of holiness.
The deeper question is always what has happened in the heart before God.

As this series continues, we will meet women who were neither flawless saints nor cardboard heroes. They were real people, with strengths and weaknesses, whom God used in particular times and places.

That makes their stories worth knowing.

Friday: From Bunyan to King Arthur

Friday may be the biggest change of all.

We have just completed our journey through John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress—a journey that has taken us through Christian's pilgrimage and then through Christiana's remarkable story.

I have loved having Bunyan's own voice so close to us during these weeks.

Now we turn from one great English storyteller to another kind of classic entirely.

We move to Howard Pyle's The Story of King Arthur and His Knights and the Arthurian world of Le Morte d'Arthur.

This is a very different landscape.

There will be knights and castles, swords and quests, kings and queens, loyalty and betrayal, courage and cowardice.

But beneath the adventure are questions that will sound surprisingly familiar:

What makes a man honorable?
What does loyalty cost?
What happens when courage fails?
What do we do with temptation?
Can greatness survive pride?
What becomes of a kingdom when its people lose their sense of what is right?
And, perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to live nobly in a world that is passing away?

I am especially pleased that we will be approaching these stories through Howard Pyle's telling.

For many of us, these are not merely books.

They are part of the landscape of childhood—and sometimes part of the landscape of family memory.

So Friday will become a long narrative again.

A new story.

A new world.

But many of the old questions remain.

Saturday: From Genesis to the Experience of Growing Old

Our Saturday journey through Genesis will continue into the next chapters of the biblical story.

We have been moving through Genesis' primeval history, from creation and the fall through Cain and Abel and the remarkable story of Enoch.

Genesis does something unusual.

It tells us not only how the world began, but how human beings lived in that world.
It tells us about work, family, sin, violence, death, faith, memory, and the passing of generations.
Eventually, our Genesis journey will lead us naturally into another subject that deserves more attention than it usually receives:

aging in the Bible.

That series will take a close look at the experience of growing older as Scripture actually presents it.

Isaac.
Jacob.
Moses.
David.
Caleb.
Barzillai.
Anna.
Paul.

And the great biblical reflections on age found in Psalms and elsewhere.

The Bible does not romanticize old age.

It acknowledges weakness.
Dependence.
Loss.
Memory.
Wisdom.
Decline.
Faithfulness.
And the strange mixture of gratitude and grief that can accompany the passing of years.
At eighty, I find that subject increasingly interesting.
Perhaps that is because the Bible does not tell older people to pretend they are young.

It tells them to remain faithful.

There is a difference.

Seven Days, One Story

So that is October.
Seven days.
Seven journeys.

But beneath them all is one continuing story.

On Sunday we will listen to Scripture.
On Monday we will watch the church grow through history.
On Tuesday we will hear theology expressed through poetry.
On Wednesday we will watch God work through the history of Israel.
On Thursday we will meet women whose lives affected the church.
On Friday we will enter the world of Arthurian legend and great narrative.
On Saturday we will return to Genesis and eventually explore what Scripture says about growing old.

These subjects may appear unrelated.

I don't think they are.

The Bible tells us that God is Lord of history.

He is Lord of the church.
He is Lord of our worship.
He is Lord of our families.
He is Lord of our stories.
And He is Lord of every season of life.

That is what I hope October will continue to remind us.

There is more to discover.

More Scripture to open.
More history to uncover.
More hymns to hear.
More lives to examine.
More stories to tell.
And, perhaps most importantly, more of God to know.

**October is coming.

Let's keep walking.**

**************************

On Sunday I am happy, on Monday full of joy,

On Tuesday I have peace within that nothing can destroy,

On Wednesday and on Thursday I’m walking in the light,

O Friday is a heav’n below, and Sat’rday’s always bright.

(Chorus)

O glory, glory, glory, O glory to the Lamb!

O hallelujah, I am safe, and I’m so glad I am!