It's probably not a good idea to speed-read the Bible. You might get the overall story and you might even improve your comprehension but you would be likely to miss the little details. And in our passage today from Matthew 9-10 the details are at least as important as the story of the events themselves -- and the details may be more interesting.

The story has to do with Jesus seeing all the people in need of God's blessings and commissioning the twelve disciples to do something about it. All the disciples are named and then Jesus gives them some initial instructions for their mission. In our impatience we may want to keep reading quickly through chapter 10 to see what happens. But nothing much happens! Instead, the focus is on Jesus' lengthy instructions and we never do hear what happened t…