Month: December 2025

Honey Drop 55 — The Path That Brightens

eejoseph,

“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until full day.” Proverbs 4:18

The scene

A traveler steps onto a narrow footpath carved by generations of steady feet. The first light of dawn brushes the stones, revealing just enough to keep moving. Behind him, a wide, unmarked road fades into shadow — a route that leads somewhere, though no one can say where. Ahead, the path brightens with every step.

Bright and brighter

The sage chooses his nouns with precision: the righteous walk an ’orach — a cultivated path, shaped by intention, discipline, and repeated steps. It brightens because it has been formed to receive light. But just beyond this verse lies the derekh of the wicked — a road without shape, a direction taken by drift rather than choice. One path grows clearer; the other grows darker. The comfort is this: every step you take on the crafted path invites more dawn.

Lexical Note Proverbs contrasts orach (a cultivated, intentional path) with derekh (a general road or direction). The righteous walk a path formed by wisdom; the wicked drift down a road formed by neglect.

The drop

Walk the path you shape, and the light will shape you.

Poetic Flash Choose the path that meets the dawn, and the dawn will meet your steps.

No confusion here: gospel saves

eejoseph,

You may have noticed that the Bible itself describes the gospel in over a dozen ways, including the simple adjective “different”. If you are unaware of the wide range of gospel properties you may be in considerable danger of being led down the garden path instead of heading for a mountaintop experience when you read your Bible. The Bible has been reliably translated into the everyday languages of  thousands of earth’s inhabitants. The main confusion arises from Islamic competition: placing the main attraction, the Word of God, in the category of prophets. I would not be able to say that had I not surveyed every reference to the word gospel. 

What prophet?

Yeshua of Nazareth is not a guy who escaped crucifixion. He was not married and swept up in polygamy and the fables of his people. He was the One who said I came to give life to all. This means all are dead. Do not even try to ask a Muslim or a Jew about this topic unless you are willing to ignore all that the prophets have said about David’s house, David’s descendant, and David’s dynasty. If you want to ignore what the Lord said about the solution to human rebellion, then go right ahead, listen to the windy prophets. In one sense or another, they’re all thieves and robbers, who had the distinct honour of speaking for the divine Majesty for a brief moment in their own time, and with lasting effect as corroborating witnesses to the people living in the last days. There is no confusion about the light brought by Yeshua to Jewish life, and its finality is established by the uprooting of people and the demolition of the temple. The prophet that fails to call out his people’s pagan and corrupt practices is no prophet of the divine Majesty.

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. (Jer 7:11 ESV2011)

These words on the lips of the Word of God – taken directly from the ancient prophet are abundantly clear. They need no commentary to clarify their meaning.

He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” (Matt 21:13 [SV2011)

It takes more than a prophet to dispel the darkness into which humans were plunged when they were first seduced into flirting with a phony divinity. What prophet will people invent that can outshine John the Baptist? People who want to be called prophet will flee when they learn of the devotion of John to his Master. People who want to call up a prophet to massage their tribal vanities will pull a 180 when they figure out that prophets typically die like bits of rubbish, given over to the powers of darkness. John died as a gift to a dancing girl who asked for his head. Prophets who died in their cushy residences, enjoying the comforts of this life, surrounded by adoring fans are nothing at all. Call Yeshua a prophet and say he is nothing more, will they?

The phrase that tripped up the antichrist: Word of God

and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (1John 4:3 ESV2011)

The [w]ord of God did not merely come to the ancients. The phrase identifies more than words and meaning; the phrase describes an encounter with God. The word happened to the prophets (Genesis 15:1, 2 Samuel 7:4, 2 Samuel 24:11, Isaiah 38:4, Jeremiah 1:4, Ezekiel 1:3, Hosea 1:1, Zechariah 1:1)

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2John 1:7 ESV2011)

One Muslim was heard affirming – and I think they all say this – that “Allah sent down his word”, and followed that with “Allah’s word did not exist before he was sent down. When Christ was here in Palestine his contemporaries said “A man cannot be God”, but their own Bible said that God called their ancestors “gods”.

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. (1John 2:22 ESV2011)

Deny Deny. That is what dead people do until they are quickened.

Yeshua is God’s Word – and let us not get bogged down in speculations about spoken, written and unuttered words. Not one prophet has saved people from their homicidal and covetous penchant. So let us hear it for the Word that came to save. What is a Word from God if he not born without the usual human contribution? What is a Word from God when he does not give sight to the blind? What is a Word from God if he does not elevate the downtrodden and liberate captive women? Should our children never become adults authorized to make a decision about whom they worship? Or should we just shove our religious tradition and culture down their throats? Please, do not ask a Muslim or a Jew!

Most people want parents, politician, priests, rabbis, gurus, imams and shamans who can free them from the useless round of ritual and sensual bondage. No Word from God means hope of salvation. A word from God that is merely a prophet is not news; not good news, not bad news. A word that keeps cultural conventions alive is not salvation. Some people can be fooled sometimes, but lots of us have escaped the corruption that passes for religion. We have a gospel that saves us by the renewal of our minds, helps us with a dramatic change of mind, and it is not something that I care to explain. I dare you to try it

 Honey Drop 54 — From Thirst to Flow

eejoseph,

“The Lord will guide you continually, satisfy your soul in parched places, strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose waters do not fail.” Isaiah 58:11

The scene

A traveler crosses a cracked plain, the earth split like old pottery. His throat tightens with thirst, his steps slow under the weight of heat. Then, in the distance, a patch of green interrupts the monotony — a tended garden, alive against all odds. Beyond it, the sound of water rising from a hidden spring.

The comfort – the tension

The verse moves through the human condition with the honesty of a desert map: a soul that hungers, parched places that drain, bones that weaken. But God answers each noun with a transformation: the soul is fed, the parched place becomes bearable, the bones regain strength. And the movement doesn’t stop there — you become a garden tended by His care, then a spring whose waters do not fail. What begins in thirst ends in flow.

Lexical Note: The nouns form a progression: soul → parched places → bones → garden → spring — a movement from inner need to outward flourishing, from scarcity to self-renewing abundance.


FLASH! He feeds your soul, firms your bones, and makes your life water someone else’s drought.

The drop

God meets your hunger, strengthens your frame, and turns your dryness into a source.


 Honey Drop 53 — Kept, Then Covered

eejoseph,

“The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.” Psalm 121:5

The scene

A pilgrim walks the long ascent toward Jerusalem, the sun hammering the back of his neck. The road winds upward with no shelter in sight. Every stone reflects heat, every breath tastes of dust. Then, as he crests a ridge, a lone terebinth tree spreads its branches — a sudden, unexpected refuge. He steps beneath it, and the world cools.

The comfort – the tension

Life exposes us — to heat, to glare, to forces stronger than our strength. We can shield ourselves only so long. But the verse moves with a promise: first a Keeper who acts, then a Shade who becomes. God’s protection is not only an event; it is a condition. Not only something God does — something God is. And in that shift, the heat that once drained you becomes a place where His presence cools you.

Lexical Note The shift from the participle shomer (“keeping”) to the substantive tsel (“shade”) marks the movement from divine action to divine atmosphere; from what God does to what God becomes around you.

Poetic Flash: His keeping meets you on the road; His shade becomes the road around you.

The drop

You are guarded by His vigilance and cooled by His presence. Kept, then covered.

 Honey Drop 52 — The Eye That Knows the Way

eejoseph,

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; let me guide, my eye’s on you.” Psalm 32:8

honey in the petals

The scene

A young disciple sits beneath an acacia tree, tracing lines in the dust. The path ahead is blurred by heat, the horizon wavering like a question. He squints, trying to read the land, but the world offers only fragments; a broken trail here, a faint footprint there. Then a presence settles beside him, not loud, not forceful, but steady as shade in the noonday sun.

Eyes left – eyes right – eyes 360

We strain to see what lies ahead, but our vision is always partial — angles, guesses, shadows. Yet the One who speaks does not guess. He guides with intention — a cohortative resolve — and His eye fills the gaps our eyes cannot. Where we see pieces, He sees the whole. Where we see risk, He sees purpose. Where we see only the next step, He sees the road’s end and its meaning.

Lexical Note: The verb counsel carries the cohortative force — not merely “I will counsel you,” but “Let me counsel you; I am committed to this.” And the phrase “my eye upon you” signals protective attention, the kind of guidance given not from a distance but from a presence close enough to see what you cannot.

Our partial sight is safe in His perfect seeing.

The drop

You do not walk by your sight alone. You walk by the gaze that never loses you.

Yearning for a home in a desolate place

eejoseph,

Oh that I had in the wilderness a travelers’ lodging; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous people. (Jeremiah 9:2)

These words come from one of Yahweh’s prophets, a man wholly unlike those who call themselves prophets and peculiar ambassadors for God in the modern era. In fact, this expression – wanting a barebones shack in the desert – follows the prophet’s wish that his head was full of water and his eyes a fountain so he could weep to the max day and night.

Wishing for an exemplary life may appear as something other

Was Jeremiah’s all-day weeping wish a sign of his despair? Was he just associating his abhorrence of the pollution of his people with God’s? Was he exaggerating anguish at Israel’s evil and treachery? Some may see a suicidal resignation. Jeremiah is not alone in having a vision of himself living in a desert. Perhaps he is a man like John the Baptist, who in answer to the divine call, departed from his father’s house to live in the Judean desert. John’s leap of faith was massive: he left behind a calling in the priesthood to be Messiah’s herald.

Make my head a reservoir and my eyes a fountain

Prophetic people have been thought to be those versed in the unravelling of predictions, but surely prophetic life has to distinguish itself by a life in the here and now than it has to do with talking about what’s next. The ascetic life has tremendous appeal because it brings to light the difference between the married and profligate life of some people called patriarch, king, and prophet and the holiness on the other hand of the Sender of the prophets. I call to witness the Lord Yeshua spending nights alone in prayer and perfecting hs mission all alone on the tree. So let us not deny the sentiment: the wish to weep to the max and settle for a shack in the desert, even when we are surrounded by and know how to enjoy the company and support of sinful others.

 Honey Drop 51 — The Voice at Your Back

eejoseph,

“And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Isaiah 30:21

The scene

A traveler moves along a dusty path, the kind carved by generations of feet and hope. The sun is high, the air shimmering with heat. At a crossroads with no signposts, he pauses. The land is quiet — too quiet — until a whisper rises behind him, soft as a hand on the shoulder.

The certain – the unclear

There is the uncertainty of standing between paths, the fear of choosing wrong, the ache of silence when guidance feels overdue. Yet there is also the promise that God’s direction is not lost in the wind. He guides in intense privacy, resulting in ultimate confidence — the voice does not shout from the distance; it leans close enough to breathe clarity into confusion.

Lexical Note: The phrase “a word behind you” carries the sense of a voice that follows, not to chase but to steady. The speaker has been where you are. Also, the Hebrew verb for “walk” (לֵךְ, lekh) is imperative — not a suggestion but a commissioning. God doesn’t merely point; God sends.

lightning flash


A whisper at your back can turn a crossroads into a calling.

The drop

When you cannot see the way forward, listen behind you. God’s guidance often arrives like memory. gentle, persistent, and unmistakably near.