Changing the world for God can sound easier than loving the people close enough to frustrate us. Exodus 20:12 brings that struggle home: “Honor your father and your mother.” If following Jesus takes practice, why does God begin our training in love with the first neighbors most of us ever know?
We've grown so busy we've forgotten why we gather, and our culture whispers that rest is laziness—but Exodus 20:8 calls us to remember the Sabbath as a gift, not a rule, a weekly sign that we belong to the God who rescues us and knows what we actually need.
As we come an election and contemplate how much those around us drive us crazy, God calls us to a different path as the church than what the world says we ought to do. We turn to 1 Timothy 2 for insights into the Lord’s plan for us in a partisan world.
Most of us would never shrug off a slur against someone we love—yet we've grown comfortable around casual, empty uses of the name of the God we say we follow. The Third Commandment cuts there: Exodus 20:7 warns that the Lord will not hold guiltless those who take his name in vain, which raises an uncomfortable question about how seriously we actually take it.
