For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
It is interesting how the proverb writer contrasts the “house of the wicked” with the “tent of the godly”. The wicked may attempt to build permanent dwelling places, but what they build will not last. The godly are satisfied with temporary dwellings, yet their temporary homes will have a longer lasting impact than anything permanent put in place by the wicked.
This psalm is wonderful. It is short, so it doesn’t take long to read. Verse three stands out to me today:
He made us, and we are his.
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Although the joy expressed by the entire psalm resonates in my mind this morning.
The story of the two men walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus should resonate with all of us. They had seen God’s work, and they did not understand. They had enough of the facts to reach the correct conclusion, but they could not accept that some of their basic assumptions about the world were wrong. They knew Jesus was a great teacher who performed mighty miracles. They had believed He was the Messiah, but the chief priests had had Him crucified. Now He was dead. They did not know what to make of the claims that Jesus was alive. It was not until Jesus explained it all too them yet again that they began to understand. And even then it was only when Jesus broke bread and gave it to them that they recognized Him.
We are often like this. God shows us something through what happens in the world around us, but we just cannot get our minds around the idea that the world does not work the way we thought it did. Until the Holy Spirit shows us that we already knew that the world did not work that way. Some people learn to know Jesus on the “Road to Emmaus”, others require the “Road to Damascus.”
The story of Abimelech, his rise to power, and his relationship with the city of Shechem shows us what happens when people choose a leader for bad reasons. The people of Shechem supported Abimelech because they thought he would bring benefit to them at the expense of the rest of the Israelites. They gave him the support he needed to kill his brothers. They discovered that someone who would kill his own brothers to attain power would not treat anyone else any better.