The Chapter 30 Diner (1)

 

 

O how I love coming to Agur and his friends, Ithiel and Ucal, in Proverbs Chapter 30. This morning, as I read Proverbs 1, I know that at the end of the month I’ll be back with Agur in Chapter 30, and then Lemuel in 31:1 – 9, and then an unknown author (lowercase) in 31:10 – 31. Agur and friends have long held a particular fascination for me, as have Lemuel and his mom.

 

If you know what it is to live in Proverbs you know that it has three distinct voices to it, or movements, or sections. First we have chapters 1 – 9, then 10 – 29, and then 30 and 31. Of course, within 1 – 9 we have shifts as well, I’m thinking particularly of chapters 8 and 9; and within 10 – 29 we read in 25:1, “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, transcribed.” But the bird’s-eye view gives us three major sections and Agur and friends in Chapter 30 represent the beginning of the last, and briefest section.

 

This is like an over-the-road trucker, whose monthly haul consists of 31 stops, with Proverbs 30 being his penultimate stop. He pulls into the Chapter 30 Diner, taking a space in the parking lot labeled “Truck Parking,” exits his cab, walks into the diner, takes a seat at the counter, and shouts a hardy “Hi boys, how’ve y’all been?” Agur and Ithiel are behind the lunch counter and he can see Ucal in the kitchen through the pass-through.

 

Ucal shouts through the pass–through, “How was your trip this month?” And the friends play catch-up after the trucker orders coffee and the blue-plate special of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.

 

Rhythm is important to our lives, dancing with time keeps us healthy. We may read Ecclesiastes 3:1 at funerals, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven,” but we generally haven’t a clue about what we’re reading, for we don’t dance with the passage in daily life, its music isn’t in our souls, for most of us live herkie – jerky lives and our rhythms are more apt to be keyed to television shows or sporting events or the political cycle or the financial markets. Such is the cacophony of postmodernism that destroys equilibrium, harmony, and Biblical transcendence.

 

Consider Genesis 1:14-15, “Then God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on earth; and it was so.”

 

God wants us to live in rhythm and understanding and an awareness of where we are and where we are going, He wants us to have understanding of the movements of the stars and planets and heavenly things in our lives and our societies. But most of us seldom gaze into the heavens and ponder creation, we seldom give thought to this other book through which God speaks to humanity. Ponder Psalm 19 with its interplay of the Word in Creation and the Word in Writing, and consider Paul’s statement in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they [humanity] are without excuse.”

 

Can we see that Genesis Chapter 1 is about more than the creation that we can see, but that it is also about what lies behind and beyond the creation? Creation speaks to us of not only our God who is Creator, but also of the very same God who is our Redeemer.

 

“For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ,” (2 Cor. 4:6). Paul saw more than the Creatin story in Genesis, he also saw embedded in the Creation story the story of Redemption.

 

What do we see?

 

We’ll return to the Proverbs Chapter 30 Diner in our next post.