July 13, 2024

Hebrews 13:1-6 (HCSB)
Final Exhortations
13 Let brotherly love continue. 2 Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it.3 Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily. 4 Marriage must be respected by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge immoral people and adulterers. 5 Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you, 6 Therefore, we may boldly say: The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

Michael Jackson
Do this. Don’t do that. Why does the Bible pick on me? And you? Isn’t living hard enough to figure out without the Bible throwing these lists of do’s and don’t at us? I don’t like everybody I know. I tried but it just doesn’t work all the time. I’m afraid of going to prisons to talk to people I don’t know. When I am mistreated I get pretty mad and don’t feel at all like being kind in return. Why does the Bible keep telling me to do things I don’t want to do and to not do things I want to do? Seems like the Bible is trying to tell us something about God Himself. The Bible says a lot about who we are and should be, but it says much more about who God is and who He already is. The Bible is most definitely an instruction manual for being a good human, but it’s also God’s letter to each of us on a very personal level. He loves us. He wants good for us. He knows how we are built because He built us. He knows how being a human works because He created humans, patterned in large part on His own image. What does that mean exactly? I don’t know. Ask a preacher or someone who has studied up on all that stuff. What it means to me is that God gives me bits of wisdom and if I use them I operate better as a person and as His child. I like to think the part about His image that He put into me is the way He thinks and is. And I can kinda imagine that He is very happy when I try to think like He does toward others and toward myself. Hillbilly philosophy? Maybe. But I read all this stuff in the Bible and I talked with God this morning and He said I’m on the right track in my thinking. Good enough for me.