Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:20-21 (NIV)
Where the Words Started
Everybody who wants to help arrives with a sentence ready. The woman at the bulletin table says the first year is the worst. A man you barely know stops you at the door on the way out and says the thing to do is stay busy. Your brother sends a verse at 6:40 in the morning with his own paragraph underneath it, and on the screen the verse and the paragraph are set in the same font.
The people getting this letter were buried in the same thing, except the advice came to them in person. Peter starts with what he can vouch for. He was on the mountain himself, he heard the voice from heaven call Jesus his Son, and he says so plainly, a man reporting what reached his own ears.
Peter writes about prophets and about where their words began. No prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. The prophets were human, and their words started somewhere outside them. They were carried along, the way a boat is moved by weather it had no part in making.
I read the Bible for a long time the way I read everything else that came at me, as somebody’s best thinking, and it made the book lighter than it is. The words on the page in front of you were finished and waiting long before this week started, and they came from outside the men who wrote them down.
Peter answers the question of where the words started, and he uses carried along for the men who wrote it. When was the last time that was also a fair description of how you got through a day?
A Prayer to Remember
I’ve had a great deal of advice this year, God, and most of it was aimed at making me easier to be around. Give me one thing today that did not start with a person, and let me know it when it comes.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
