Tag: love
Cover to Cover Reading: 2 Samuel 18:1-20:3 Focus: 2 Samuel 19:1-8 Do you ever find yourself torn between the pull of those you love and the pull of the duty and responsibility you have elsewhere? In the most difficult circumstances, you desire one thing for those you love, yet duty and responsibility dictate another. There are times when the lines, the borders, are not so clear (or too clear) that the situation simply becomes overbearing and frustrating.
Cover to Cover Reading: 2 Samuel 1:1-3:21 Focus: 2 Samuel 1:26 Relationships are the central to life. Without community, without friendship, without relationship, without connecting with other people, life simply loses its meaning. It is the people in our lives which make life worth living. The greatest tragedies in life are loneliness, rejection, abandonment, and the like. What is life without the people around us?
Cover to Cover Reading: Ruth 1:1-4:22 Focus: Ruth 1:20-21; 4:13-17 The story of Ruth is a beautiful story of commitment and love. The story of Ruth follows the life of two women, Naomi and Ruth. Naomi, an Israelite, leaves her home during a period of famine. In her time away, her two sons marry the native women, one of whom is Ruth. In a sad series of events, Naomi’s husband and her sons pass away, leaving Naomi with her two daughter-in-laws. In her sorrow, Naomi decides to return home to Bethlehem and urges her daughter-in-laws to return to their paternal…
Cover to Cover Reading: Leviticus 26:1-27:34 Focus: Leviticus 26:1-46 When people ask you to describe a person, you generally gravitate to their pleasant and good characteristics, or if it’s someone you dislike, you generally gravitate to their more negative (in your opinion) characteristics. Rarely do people give a balanced perspective when they describe a person. The same goes for God, you often find that there are two extremes which people focus upon. The first, generally Christian, response focuses upon God’s grace and love; the second, generally non-Christian, response focuses upon God’s wrath and justice (injustice from most perspectives).
In my reading for my theology class, I came across one paragraph which has really stood out: The essence of sin does not lie in preferring ourselves to others, but in preferring some finite thing to the supreme value, God. Thus, even an unselfish preference of some other person rather than God is wrong. The first great commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27). The second command is to love our neighbor as ourselves. To put the second commandment in the place of the first is wrong and sinful. Erickson, M.…
