Common sense can be intuitive or it can come from experience and pain. That’s why it’s so important in raising children to help them learn through a combination of both instruction and experience. When I was a young boy, it seemed that I often had to learn lessons the hard way.

Luke traces Jesus’ lineage through the paternal line (unlike Matthew, who traces it through the maternal line, with some startling surprises). Luke produces a pedigree of fathers and sons. The single dominant refrain of the entire passage: “he was the son of….”

Jesus faces hunger, thirst, loneliness, torment, and temptation as a sign of the Father’s love, as a result of the Spirit’s leading, as a consequence of his humble obedience to the Father’s will. The wilderness is God’s idea.

Verse 17: ‘From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

From that time on. I suggest everything Jesus does from here on in can be grouped under the category of preaching. This includes, as the passage indicates, calling disciples, proclaiming the Kingdom, casting out demons, healing the sick.

The devil has two favourite haunts, two places he likes to pay us a visit: gardens, and deserts.

Gardens are places of beauty and ease. There is abundant food, shade, birdsong. A garden is a taste of paradise. We are in a garden when our lives are pitch-perfect: great job, great marriage, close to God.

“Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus.”

That’s a good posture, looking straight at Jesus. Whatever we bring to that gaze—adoration, curiosity, puzzlement – the face of Christ is the world’s best focal point.

Psalm 120 is the first in a series of “Pilgrim Psalms.” On this first step of the journey we find the Psalmist in distress. He is a foreigner in a land known for warlike and barbarian acts. We sense the Psalmist’s frustration at his ill-attempts to make peace.