A quick overview of the Old Testament shows us how foolish it is to be an enemy of God. Time and time again, we see people try to thwart God. Sometimes it is common men, but even the greatest kings of the time would try to resist God. We see the folly of their attempts recorded for us. Pharoah’s nation was ravished. Nebuchadnezzar was turned into a beast of the field. Belshazzar had his kindgom taken from him. Over and over again, God shows the consequences are dire for those who would oppose Him. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I went over to my cousin’s house to play a game of Sorry. The whole concept of the game is for each person to go around the board and enter their home base. They do this by moving a specific amount of spaces directed by the cards they draw. If you land on a space that your opponent already occupies, you move them all the way back to the beginning. If you are really ornery you yell, “SORRY!” as you do this. Of course you do not mean it. This is particularly obvious with me since I giggle in glee as I knock their piece out of the way with considerable force. I really do not regret it at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Our lives do not happen in a vacuum. It easy for us to decieve ourselves and imagine that our actions only impact us. In doing so, we insulate ourselves from the true consequences of what we do. Many of us would feel terrible if we knew that are actions were hurting someone one else. It is much easier to think only in terms of ourself. Unfortunately such thinking is a misconception. When we sin, it impacts all those we come in contact with. Even when no one knows about it, our strained relationship with God causes us to not be as uplifting or righteous for those around us. Read the rest of this entry »

Last summer, soccer became an obsession of mine. I wanted to be a really good soccer player, so I trained and trained. I was working fifty hour weeks, but I still found time both to run and also to get touches on the soccer ball. I just loved the game of soccer. When I wasn’t working or training, I would watch soccer games on television or play video game soccer with friends. Every minute of spare time I could find was devoted to the game of soccer. Read the rest of this entry »

Our society is one of instant gratification. I get impatient when my meals take over a minute to cook in the microwave. Thirty second commercials are much too long, causing most people to flip channels to avoid a couple of minutes of possible boredom. Credit cards allow us to buy things right now without having earned the money yet. We need to lose more than five pounds a week in a diet in order to do it. Basically, we want everything we want, and we want it right now. Read the rest of this entry »

In this parable, Jesus is answering a question asked by one of his disciples on how often they should forgive someone who wrongs them. “Seven times?” they ask. Jesus tells them that they should forgive seven times seventy, and then offers this parable as the reason why. There was a master who was owed ten thousand talents. When he tried to collect the outstanding debt, his slave could not pay. He forgave him the debt. After seeking forgiveness, the slave finds someone who owes him a substantial amount less, a hundred denarii, and throws him in jail for not paying it. When the original master heard of this, he was outraged that the one shown forgiveness would not in turn do the same and he threw him in jail. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started attending the local college here for the second time, I had forgotten my original password from years ago. The tech people in charge of computers issued me a new password. They kept it easy to remember, and went with “changeme” as the password. Their intended purpose for the password was that I would quickly change it to something else. However, when I first entered the password, I stubbornly refused to actually change my password. My password could not tell me what to do. Out of pure spite I kept the password for a long period of time. As time went on, the spite left, but I never changed my password. Even though I was typing the password almost everyday, its message had been ignored for long enough that I no longer even payed attention to what it said. My password stayed that way for over a year, and only has been changed because it is now a public password. Read the rest of this entry »

At one time in my life, I tried an all liquid diet. On this diet the only food you consumed throughout the day is three drinks. These shakes give you high nutritional value with few calories. In essence you are fasting with liquid vitamins. They say that the first three or four days of the diet are the worst, as your body gets used to not having food. After that it becomes much easier. I use the phrase “they say” because I cannot speak from experience. After day two I succumbed to the overwhelming desire to eat. It was here that I understood the concept of hunger. My mouth was constantly salivating. My mind kept drifting towards visions of Mexican food. I craved it, and I felt the effects all through my body. Read the rest of this entry »

There once was a girl who owned a computer. For whatever reason, her computer was not working properly. She was concerned that she had a virus. Rather than take it to a specialist to fix it, she decided that she would handle it herself. In order to fix the problem, she started randomly deleting files that she didn’t recognize as important. This was very dangerous, because a lot of the files with weird names are the ones that are most important to the computer. This was obviously a bad idea. But she thought it was the most effective way to get rid of a virus. Read the rest of this entry »

James warns the rich that they must be careful about those who have worked underneath them. They might think because of their position they could mistreat them. People being cheated of their wages is nothing new. They would agree to do a job for a certain task, accomplish it, and then not be paid their due. It is even sadder when the one who withholds the wages could afford to pay, while the laborer now must find a way to scrape by. He has no more money, and just wasted a day of work. The Lord hears the laborers cry and will bring judgment upon their oppressors. Read the rest of this entry »