For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Laughter may cover grief for a time, but it will not make it go away. Sooner or later, you will need to face your grief and deal with it.
This psalm does such a great job describing how God calls us to live.
- Live a life of integrity, not just in public but even in the privacy of our own home
- Refuse to look at anything vile or vulgar, let alone offer it approval
- Hate the actions of those who abandon their faith, have no part in such actions
- Reject perverse ideas, have nothing to do with what is evil
- Do not tolerate those who slander others, reject conceit and pride
- Seek out faithful people to associate with
And the most important
Where John used “the Word”, I think we might today use “the Ideal”, although that does not quite have the right connotation. The Greek word John used had connotations of logic and rationality. To a degree it implied objective truth. Our society has a problem with the thought that there is objective truth. What people forget is that so did the society in which John wrote.
Related to John’s use of “the Word” is his imagery of light. Evil is not a thing any more than dark is a thing. Both are defined by what they are not. The point John is making here is that just as introducing a small amount of light into a dark room completely transforms the darkness, so too does introducing a small amount of good transforms our evil world.
The story of Jephthah represents an interesting contrast to the story of Abimelech. Both men ruled part of Israel for a time and the story of both men surrounded themselves with scoundrels. However, this is where their stories diverge. Abimelech surrounded himself with scoundrels in order to seize power by killing his half brothers. Jephthah attracted a band of scoundrels after his half brothers drove him out of his father’s lands. Jephthah did not seek power, rather the leaders sent for him to command their forces when an enemy began attacking them. These two stories tell us that we need to look deeper than the surface to know who would make a good leader.