For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
The godly use their words to provide healing and help others make their lives better. The wicked use their words to conceal their intentions and to distract people from their violent actions. How do you and I use our words?
The second part of this proverb gives us a good tool to analyze our actions. If you find yourself arguing and quarreling all of the time, it is a safe bet that you are not acting in love. Rather, you are allowing hate to control your life. Those who are acting in love let offenses pass. As I wrote this I realized it tells us a lot about some people in society today. Those who are easily offended by what others do and say are allowing hatred to rule their lives.
This is another one of those psalms which I see as expressing my thoughts about God so well. First it tells what I have experienced:
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
Then a little later it sums up so well what I hope will happen:
They will put their trust in the Lord.
Oh, how I hope that is true. I have friends who are in my prayers for whom my dearest wish is that they put their trust in the Lord. Finally, the psalmist writes what I strive to make true:
I have talked about your faithfulness and saving power.
I will make it my goal to do so even more than I have in the past.
I do not think that I ever noticed before that Jesus lead the disciples off to a secluded place right after the Twelve returned from their ministry tour. This suggests that the preaching of the Twelve had increased the interest in what Jesus had to say. Reading this today it made me reconsider my thoughts about mega-churches. I have never been a fan of such congregations. I feel that we should be part of a group where we can recognize that someone is a newcomer. However, it is clear that Jesus attracted huge crowds, which tells me that there is a place for such things.
When the disciples asked Jesus to send the crowd away so that they could go get something to eat (did they perhaps say this because they themselves wanted to eat and did not have enough to share with everyone?), He told them to feed the crowd themselves. The disciples response was that they could not afford to do so. Not only did they not have enough money to do so, but they would have to work for months to earn enough money to do so. The lesson of this story is that where there is a need, we should share what we have and count on God to provide.
It is worth noting that Jesus did not do this in a quiet way. First, He had the whole crowd sit down in groups. Then in front of the entire crowd He took the five loaves and two fish, blessed them, then broke them and distributed them to the disciples to give to the crowd. Everyone saw what He was doing, and how little food He started with.
The passage tells us that the disciples were amazed when Jesus walked on water and stilled the winds because they did not understand the significance of the feeding of the five thousand. I think that we struggle with the significance of the feeding of the five thousand today. Certainly, part of the significance is in the title of today’s blog: “Share what you have, God will provide.” There is more to it than the way we normally interpret that. God will provide in ways which defy our understanding of the laws of nature.
I am still struggling with these passages in Leviticus. I really believe that there are things here that make them worth reading over and over, but I am having trouble seeing it right now. The one thing I saw in this was that we should express our gratefulness to God when we are healed from illness. Not just in a minor, personal way, but publicly and in an expressive manner.