Human beings are exceedingly creative and resourceful when it comes to finding loopholes. Finding ways of evading or twisting the intent of a law or rule or contract, usually based on some technicality.

How long has it been since you stopped to marvel at this? But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-6)

We live in an era of very short attention spans. At least that’s true in North America where I live. In-depth explanation of anything is unlikely to be read or listened to. If the message can’t be reduced to a sound bite, little attention will be paid to it by many.

The “three little words” that mean so much: “I love you”. Interestingly, they don’t occur all that often in the Bible—even though it plainly states that “God is love,” and the two great commandments to us are to love. (1 John 4:8, 16; Matthew 22:36-39)

A study group I’m part of recently looked at Acts chapter 12. The incident that opens the chapter is the murder of the apostle James by Herod. This was part of a broad wave of persecution: “About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword.” (Acts 12:1-2)

Most Bible students will be quite familiar with this verse from the letter to the Hebrews: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

There are folks who delight in cleaning – their home, their car, their workspace, themselves. The shine, the tidiness, the renewal are their own reward. I get it, I do enjoy the result, but I’m not really one of those folks. For me cleaning is a chore.

Hate is ugly. It motivates human beings to do ugly things, it makes those humans ugly themselves. This is the picture painted in scripture, in hundreds of passages that use some form of the word. This command in the Law says it:

You may be familiar with the concept of “failing forward”, which has become almost a cliché in the business world due to the success of the book by John C Maxwell. The premise in a nutshell: Failure means not achieving an objective we were striving for, but even when we fail it’s possible to make some progress toward a goal, or at least learn something that improves our chance for success next time. One of the key ideas is that there will be a next attempt, we don’t give up.

A few days ago we had one of our grandsons over to help us with some yard work. The main job was removing a large number of suckers that had come up around the base of our crabapple trees. (For the non-gardeners, suckers are woody shoots that spring up around the base of a tree.)

In Matthew 11 Jesus spontaneously breaks into a prayer of thanksgiving. What is he so thankful for? “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” (Matt 11:25) Does this bother you? Is he saying only fools and the unintelligent will buy what he’s preaching?

I’ve reached a point in life where it’s clear that time is running out. Oh, nothing imminent, but there are inescapable indications in body and in mind.

Outside my window, the trees and bushes are thrashing around. Looks like they’re being violently shaken by an unseen hand. It’s the wind, of course. It reminds me of what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, but we’ll leave that for another day.

How often do you ever encounter the word “gnashing” in ordinary conversation? Hardly ever. It’s a word we associate almost exclusively with the parables of Jesus. About a third of Jesus’s parables are about judgment: reward given to the faithful and condemnation of the unfaithful. The reward is glorious. The condemnation is horrific.