On these hang all the law and the prophets
So I was thinking about Psalms 100:4 the other day.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name.
Pretty simple, right? Before we come to God, we should have an attitude of than an attitude of thankfulness, and praise Him. Can’t argue with that. Seems like a wonderful instruction for the psalmist to remind us.
I’m a nerd. I’m analytical. I weigh options. I draw conclusions and parallels. I separate concepts that don’t belong together and combine those that do. I figure things out and make them work.
Those skills all help me with my day job as a software consultant, and I’m actually pretty good at what I do. But I often find myself carrying those same traits over into other aspects of my life. Eventually, I start to realize that those same things that are “skills” for work have become “obstacles” in other areas of my life.
Six months before Jesus was born, another baby boy was born. John was a cousin of Jesus. He was a miracle baby, born to Elizabeth, who was old and barren.
In my version of how things might have happened, I imagine that Jesus and John played together as children. Maybe they saw each other all the time, or maybe they only saw each other at the festivals and holidays, but I believe they were friends growing up.
Imagine you were in a dark room with no windows or doors, with only a dim, tiny bulb for light. Feeling around, you discover that parts of the wall are solid brick, parts are thin wood paneling, and other parts are made of paper. You break through the paper to find more walls behind. You bloody your knuckles trying to break through some paneling. More walls.
A couple weeks ago, my daily reading was in the book of Haggai. It’s a really short book, with only two chapters. Before then, I hadn’t remembered much from Haggai, but it really stuck with me this time.
As you might know, Kelly and I own a new software consulting business. I’ve been a good consultant for many years, but this is the first time I’ve been responsible for the entire business, and frankly, it’s way outside my area of expertise, not to mention being 2,000 miles away from all of the connections I had made before we moved. I had been working on completing a project that I started before we left Wisconsin. It was getting close to the end, and I still hadn’t found a new project to take its place. No project means no income.