Notes from my Knapsack 4-17-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 4-17-2025

Jeff Gill

Children services serve us all
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It is very hard to believe it has been ten years since Licking County had to approve our primary levy for Children Services, and it's up again for vote May 6th.

Ohio revised code calls on counties to put these sorts of limited levies before the voters on a recurrent basis; ten years is about the longest these go. School districts, boards of developmental disabilities, libraries are all the kinds of public entities which are subject to this kind of electoral review.

Yes, I was involved in this the last time, as campaign treasurer and working with the Citizens for Children Services, a kind of political action committee specifically for asking support of our levy.

Children Services is one part of the larger Licking County Job & Family Services office, which has a variety of funding streams, state and federal, for the work they do, but Children Services is largely funded directly by county property owners.

It's been long discussed in Ohio that when it comes to the amount of state support for local Children Services, on foster care and kinship care, adoption, and assisting with abused and neglected children, we are at or near the very bottom. By most nationwide measures, Ohio is 50th out of 50 states, and if the state were to double the amount they contribute to Children Services, we would . . . still be in 50th place.

It should really sting that in 49th place? Is Michigan. Yeah, they're at the bottom, too, but above us.

There's a long history as to why this is so. I can't fix long standing systemic problems (though I've tried to be engaged and proactive these last ten years since I first learned these data points), so the reality in Ohio is the state expects county property owners to cover what they won't. And we have to do it again, because the law says these levies are limited.

This time, we're asking for a replacement of the existing levy. The millage stays the same, but we get basically the smallest possible increase by way of allowing the value of the housing to be updated. It's not an increase in the millage, but because of the mysteries of rollback provisions in state law, as housing values are assessed, the levy recipients continue collecting on where we were.

We need a replacement levy passed simply because while we are successfully helping see to it fewer kids are entering the care of the county, the costs have increased beyond the reduction of total cases. Specialized foster care and residential care costs more, and the county staff has their hands full finding placement as it is. We decided well before the last renewal of this levy in 2015 that we were committed to keeping Ohio kids in Ohio, and not using out of state placements, even when those might have cost us less. That's still our program. To implement it, we need the dollars to cover in state placement.

So on May 6, or as you vote early, in Licking County we are asking you to vote "yes" to replace the Children Services levy. I am here to tell you the money is carefully managed, spent wisely, and with an eye to reducing the need to have state care intervene in a child's life in the first place. But when it has to happen, we want to keep kids safe, close to home, and where they can thrive.

I hope you will join me in voting "yes" for Children Services this May 6.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's worked on a few Children Services levies and programs before. Tell him how you want to see children grow and thrive at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 4-11-2025 & 4-18-2025

Editors: it seemed prudent to get you the next two columns at once here, in advance of Easter week...

Faith Works 4-11-2025
Jeff Gill

Reading the Gospels for Holy Week
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We are in the home stretch of Lent, going into the final week, also called Holy Week by many Christians.

April 13 this year is Palm Sunday, and April 20 Easter; the historic method of setting Easter for Western Christendom is to put it on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox. This is meant to echo the lunar Hebrew calendar, and the date of Passover which comes up in the Holy Week narrative in many ways, and Passover begins for our Jewish friends tomorrow night, the evening of April 12.

I've been encouraging people to look into the Bible this spring, first outlining the general structure of the 39 books of the Old Testament (as most Protestants count them). That set of categories for the library of texts which make up the Bible as a whole is echoed in the organization of the 27 books of the New Testament.

We saw the Torah, the opening books of the law, in the Hebrew scriptures; in the Christian testament we open with the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Four accounts, with varying degrees of overlap and complementarity, of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And these accounts focus on the last week of Jesus's earthly ministry, what's sometimes called "Passion Week," from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem we mark with Palm Sunday, through the Last Supper, the arrest and trial of Jesus before Pilate, and his crucifixion on what Christians call Good Friday.

In terms of total content, the Gospels focus a third of their attention on this one week. Mark's account is 25% about Passion Week; John's is over 40% just about those fateful days. These events are clearly the primary reason for recounting this sacred history by those witnesses and later evangelists. Why did Jesus die, how did this happen, and what does it mean?

Just as the Torah is reflected in the Gospels, in terms of placement and significance, the history books of the Old Testament are summarized in New Testament terms in the book of Acts. A narrative, with an interpretive role for the lives both of the early apostles out into the world, and how their story empowered by the Holy Spirit is a model for our lives in faith, wherever we are.

Following the Hebrew history books, we find what's called wisdom literature, from Job and Psalms and Proverbs through Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. The Greek New Testament matches that section with the Epistles, or sometimes called the apostolic writings: Romans, two letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, and so on.

In this collection of letters (which is what an epistle is, a fancy term for a letter), we hear from Paul, James, Peter, John, Jude, and perhaps others, as they share wisdom about the life of faith, for individuals, and for the newly established and often struggling assemblies of believers in Jesus as the Christ.

An amazing 13 of the 27 New Testament books are attributed to Paul, though scholars have their interpretations about just how many of those are directly from him, and what letters are compilations from his students and successors. Paul's books are in general shorter, as befits letters, which in almost every case appear to be actual missives sent to specific recipients, but often with the awareness that many more would ultimately read or more likely hear read the contents.

Given that difference in length, in fact Paul even at maximum attribution writes about 25% of the New Testament, with Luke's gospel and also his book of Acts giving him another 25%. Their contributions are about equal in quantity.

Next week, appropriately, we will end with: the Book of Revelation!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he reads the Bible often, but most often at this time of year. Tell him your reading habits at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

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Faith Works 4-18-2025
Jeff Gill

The end of the Bible, and of all things
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Section by section, we've moved this Lent and into Easter week through the Bible.

I've pointed out the parallels, the echoes between the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek testament, often called the Old & New Testaments.

What I'd left unreferenced last week from the Hebrew language collections is the last seventeen books of the Old Testament's 39, the prophets.

Traditionally there are five major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations (attributed to Jeremiah), Ezekiel, and Daniel. They are major not because they're more important, exactly, but because they're longer. Jeremiah is the longest book in the entire Bible however you organize it, if you simply count words (Genesis, Psalms, Ezekiel, and Exodus are the next four, with Isaiah at sixth longest).

The twelve minor prophets are simply shorter, from Hosea through Malachi, some so short you have to check closely as you turn pages lest you miss the delights of books like Obadiah, Jonah, or Micah.

In fact, the original synagogue reading of these would have been from a scroll; each major prophet would have had their own or possibly two scrolls, while the minor prophets all would have fit on one together.

Isaiah and Jeremiah are pre-exilic for the most part, set in Jerusalem, and warning the nation of judgment to come. As they end, death and destruction and defeat do arrive — hence the Lamentations — and the population is taken off into the Babylonian Exile of some 70 years. It's during this period of disruption and renewal we get Ezekiel and Daniel which take place mostly in Babylon, even if with much memory of Jerusalem (to which we get an account of the return in Ezra and Nehemiah at the end of the history books).

The minor prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are post-exilic, roughly contemporary with Ezra and Nehemiah, in the return and rebuilding of Jerusalem around 450 years before the birth of Jesus. This brings us to the end of the Old Testament.

At the end of the New Testament, both in placement, and also in most scholarship in terms of the last written, is the Book of Revelation.

Let me note, on behalf of Bible teachers everywhere, it's Revelation. There's a natural tendency to slide it into "Revelations" but the book is an apocalypse, an "unveiling" (which is what the word apocalypse means) or in more common, say King James's English, a revelation.

What is revealed to us in Revelation? There have been perhaps as many books written on that question as on anything this side of the Gospels. I don't have a great deal to add, certainly not in this limited space, except to sum up as well as I can: the book of Revelation is there to tell us that God is in control. Period.

I know, I know, lots of people want to find in Revelation details about how God's providential care for us all will work out, year by year or at least dispensation by dispensation, on the way to the last trumpet call of the End of Days, et cetera et cetera. I don't know about that.

What I do know is that Revelation, like the prophets, aren't there so much to predict the future — the meaning we tend to associate with the words prophet and prophecy — but to assure us of the nature of reality, and God's intention for us all. Are you a prophet if you say letting go of a wrench at waist height will result in it hitting the garage floor with a clang? In a sense, yes.

The prophets, major and minor, and the John who speaks for God in the book of Revelation, are telling us about a variety of tools hitting the ground when poorly handled, and how God will give us time to work, but in the end, the project will be completed, and it will be glorious. Accept that promise, or doubt it, but God's purposes will be fulfilled. That's the prophecy in both Old Testament and New. God is in control; rest in that knowledge as the world turns and churns.

A good prophetic word to keep in mind this Easter.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows God is in control, but can get impatient. Tell him to calm down & be patient at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.