Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 21-23.

There is a saying which I heard from others when I grew up, “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” which many took as the rule to follow regarding things which were lost and later found by someone else.  For those who never heard it, its meaning was that if you found something which someone had lost, you could keep it, even if you knew who had lost it.  A more generous understanding was that if you found something and had no idea who had lost it, you could keep it.  Today’s passage disagrees with both of those understandings.  It says, if you find something that you know someone lost and you know who it belongs to, return it to them.  If you do not know who lost it, or the person lives far away, take it home and take care of it until they come looking for it, then give it back to them.  This rule applies to stray animals, cloaks, or any other item of value.   The following rule is related.  It tells us that if we see that someone’s beast of burden fallen, we should help them get it to its feet.  Here is the thing both of these have in common: if we see our neighbor struggling (and Jesus makes it clear that everyone we may interact with is our neighbor), we should not ignore their struggle.  We should do what we can to help.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.