God has been looking for repentance. It is worth some introspection, to see if repentance is still needed in our own lives.

Most are familiar with the account of Jacob being blessed by Isaac. Rebekah, commanding the obedience of her younger son in spite of his protests, engineered a reminder to Isaac of which son was to be blessed. 

In the comfort of our hindsight, we can tend to be kind of harsh in our assessment of Israel’s behavior following the Exodus from Egypt. 

Nothing ever goes smoothly, it seems. Or if something does it’s almost a shock. Our culture has a name for it:  Murphy’s Law. No point in going into all the ways it shows up in daily living.  But it might be worth thinking about it in a spiritual context.

You can count yourself blessed if you’ve never been asked by a health care professional to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10.  Many are all too familiar with the question. 

Paul exhorts us to examine ourselves, as often as we remember our Lord’s sacrifice and resurrection.

Ordinary sentences are simply inadequate to describe Jesus. A poet’s touch is needed, the skillful use of devices such as metaphor, which can pack far more meaning into a few words.

“Have I learned anything?  Have I grown?  Have I lost ground?” 

Paul confesses to a specific recurring weakness—covetousness. Realizing he might have had a particular problem in this area, we start noticing that it appears A LOT in his writings. 

“These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” (Rev 3:14).**

The New Testament frequently and emphatically reminds us that the Law of Moses was a foreshadowing of the work of Messiah. 

Today I was struck with a realization of how many people we encounter in scripture, of whom God asked a lot—way beyond what we might think of as a “standard” level of commitment.