Anxiety (2)

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, . .”  Matthew 6:25 ESV Anxious – Heidegger calls anxiety the manifestation of “homelessness.”  Anxiety is being afraid of things that are not real, things that might happen.  When I am afraid of what might happen, I feel a kind of persistent, “things are not right”…

Anxiety (1)

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, . .”  Matthew 6:25 ESV Anxious – “Please, don’t let anybody leave me.”  Jessica Lynch Most of us will never know the horrors that Jessica Lynch suffered at the hands of her captors.  But we immediately know the feeling expressed in her plea.   Out of her…

Liberation

Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter, the one that remains faithful. Isaiah 26:2  NASB Remains faithful – What is the character of a people (a nation) that remains faithful?  Isaiah’s word choice here (employing the verb šāmar and the derived adjective from ʾāman) tells us that this people, this gôy (nation), is a people…

Bite Your Tongue

to slander no one, not to be contentious, to be gentle, showing every consideration for all people.  Titus 3:2  NASB Consideration – You know, sometimes trying to get Paul’s ideas into English is just such a mess.  Here we have a translation that first says “gentle” (epieikḗs) which really should be something like “upright” (doing what is the right…

Resolving to Fail

When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice.  Deuteronomy 4:30 NASB All these things – The myth of eternal return is upon us.  In the Western world, we start again.  We finish the past cycle and hope for…

Prediction and Control

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  Matthew 6:33  NASB Seek first – We live in a world that relies on a magnificent lie.  That lie is fundamental to our way of life.  It gives us the illusion of control, the expectation of a better future, the hope…

The Hopelessness Rules

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.  Instead, you ought to…

Gasping for Control

“but only a few things are necessary, really only one; for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:42 NASB 1977 Only one – Martha will forever be remembered as the one who missed the point.   Mary chose to hear the teaching of Jesus. Martha concerned herself…

Rain Falls

“and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” Matthew 5:45 ESV Rain – I have a hard time understanding God’s battle plan. If I were running the cosmic war, I would make it as difficult as possible on my enemies and as wonderful as I could for my allies. I’d be sure that…