Repentance Is Not About Behavior

"You've turned your backs, not your faces, to me" (Jeremiah 27c GWT). This is what God says to His people through Jeremiah. It's a recurring theme in God's messages through Jeremiah to Judah (the southern kingdom of Israel). Judah had abandoned the living God for lifeless idols. It wasn't just misplaced worship or foolish religion, it was accompanied with gross immorality and perversion of justice. The behavior of the leaders and people was atrocious. But this wasn't God's main issue.

Contentment and a Wandering Heart

Public Market–Chaing Mai (© tkbeyond)

American culture is a funny thing—it's ironic. We have unparalleled liberty and prosperity, yet generally lack contentment as a people. Based on this, advertisers and public media have reaped multi-billion dollar revenues. We have so much and still want so much more. A good portion of the world's population wants what we have. When they can't have it they hate us for it, or want to destroy it. Who can blame them, really?

Take the current protests aimed at Wall Street. Our US Constitution guarantees freedom of rights (the 1st Amendment in Bill of Rights). Of course, a segment of our population wants to shut them up, and another group wants to ride the wave of their sentiment. But, so far, what they want isn't clear except some form of access to greater wealth—envy and discontent (greed) protests greed.

An American Icon and an African Story

The death of an American icon, Steve Jobs, captured the headlines and induced reminiscence by many last week. He was a creative and marketing genius, no doubt, and I appreciate the products he introduced into American life. For a while, his death took center stage in the midst of a growing protest of Wall Street's excesses. But my heart has been captured by a young South African girl named Chanda.
(BTW, the girls in this photo are from Ethiopia © tkbeyond)

MOTROW

© tkbeyond

MOTROW— no, not Motrin, nor is this some phony, phonetic attempt at saying Montreal with a peculiar accent. It's an acronym, a set of letters that stand for something, but more on that in a bit. I use acronyms, but don't always like them. Acronyms are big in special fields of study and institutions, like government for example. They're great shortcuts, especially when writing, so you don't have to waste time and effort writing all those words. The problem is understanding what they mean. Unless there's some familiarity with the acronym, it may look like a jumble of letters or something written in code—actually, it is code, it's symbolic.

Words, Daydreams and the Fear of God

Words, daydreams and the fear of God—these are notes from my study notebook while reading through Chapter 5 of Ecclesiastes. It's actually the gist of verse 7 [http://goo.gl/O3KSC]. Solomon says daydreaming comes from worrying too much, and a multitude of words produces careless speech. But in the end (as at the end of the book–Eccl 12:13), the important thing is fearing God. He alone holds every life in His hands. Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon weaves bits of wisdom and insight between large batches of cynical observations made over a lifetime. There is a point to it all.

Lighthouse at Key Biscayne, FL

King Solomon was considered the wisest man in the world, not by his account, but the Scriptures and many contemporaries testified of this, including the Queen of Sheba (Ethiopia). He was well-educated, accomplished, a man of the world, a powerful world leader, yet coming to the end of his life he questioned it's value—"Everything is pointless" (Eccl 1:2)

Although he had amazing wisdom, he didn't seem to use it with women. He had hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines, and he admitted this had ruined his life. Though he had amassed incredible riches and enjoyed every aspect of life he could imagine, he felt empty. He had fallen into a dark cynicism eclipsing all his success. Something, everything, was missing.