On my mind...

I have had a couple of things on my mind and I thought I'd just share... Triggered both by reading through the Bible in a year & just observation/consideration of my life and the lives of those around me.

1) Integrity. While there are a number of verses we could list to endorse (highly) the idea of integrity, I've been thinking a lot about how David could say to God (who knows and sees all) along the lines of "You know how I have lived with integrity... How I have turned from evil... How I have lived blamelessly...." When we forget to search our hearts or choose to ignore sin, we can't just say this before God. He's not fooled or impressed with our cleverness. It's a moment by moment thing, and that's the crazy part! The next thing I'm tempted to say is that I'm doing mostly good things.... only a few bad things. No! This is still unacceptable without the forgiveness of God!

2) Sacrifice. Yep, that's right! Reading through Leviticus. I asked myself, now, "Why would God keep these long descriptive passages in the Bible? Things that we don't even need to do today?" It occurred to me that most of us ask the question, "what can I do to please God?" This was His answer! Laid out explicitly. And secondly, passages list livestock as an indication of one's wealth, and yet, while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they were asked to make these sacrifices... as an act of faith. It took faith that God would be appeased by this offering. Faith that God would continue to supply my needs. Faith that God would answer my prayers.

3) Scripture. Another passage that has been rolling around in my mind is I Corinthians 4:7, "For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?"

Tata!