Saul sees Saul and not David

 David was Saul's best solider and military leader. After killing Goliath and winning the war with the Philistines, David was cheered and loved by his people. This success caused Saul to become bitterly jealous. It seems like Saul projected his own faults onto David and could not accept that David was being used by God to bolster the kingdom (I Sam 18). Who do you secretly fear and envy?

Jesus and the family

 Jesus provides a startling revelation during a seemingly unimportant exchange. In Mark 3, Jesus is told that His family is looking for him, but rather than reuniting with his household, he tells those nearby that they are His family. When we think of the God's family, are we also limiting our scope to only those who seem most like us? Will we be surprised to find family members in unlikely places?

Trying to fit your faith into a religion is like...

When Jesus healed a person on the Sabbath day, the religious community was horrified and frustrated (Mark 2). It seemed like the religious people were more interested in the form of their worship than the person in front of them. Jesus was more interested in  helping those around him than in 'keeping the Law'. When have you sacrificed those around you in order to preserve a ceremony or practice?
 

When your belief is more important that your Lord

 Jesus's teachings were so radical that even the best teachers were left baffled. In John 3 Jesus seems to confound Nicodemus. We might wonder if part of the confusion came from the way Nicodemus understood scripture and his apparent inability to shift that thinking. What ideas or interpretations have you latched onto that have become more important than Jesus?

Memorial Day 2024

 As Christians we should hate war and the death it brings. We should also rejoice in the coming day when no such sacrifices will be made and the arbitrary divisions of national borders will be erased. Until that day, we honor those willing to give themselves to keep us safe (John 15:13) from those who would expand their power and influence by hurting others. May we repent of the times we have done so.

The valley of the reassembled

 

One of the strangest images in the Bible is decaying bones reassembling into living soldiers in Ezekiel 37. The image might remind us of the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), when God united believers from various backgrounds by His Spirit. Like the bones reassembling, the Church assembled from what once was a single group (Gen 11). Also like the bones, we find that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We want more

 While the book of Luke gives a lot of information about Jesus and His teachings, it also leaves us wondering what wasn't recorded. It might be tempting to over-examine the Bible looking for what's not there, instead of immersing ourselves in the stories that point to Jesus, His ministry and His mission. Can you see how Jesus is featured in every scripture? Luke 24:25-27