Wine and anger are dangerous things. You don’t play with them. You don’t take them lightly. You don’t provoke them. It’s necessary to have them under control if you want to avoid serious problems.

Wine has a sneaky way of weakening our inhibitions: those of restraint, respect and of being in control of ourselves. Take away those inhibitions and all sorts of things can happen: mockery, immorality, loss of respect, all sorts of excess, words we later regret, unacceptable behaviour – and the list goes on.

Everyone has a life story. It is interesting that at the end of David’s life story we read the people were happy and they celebrated at the altar of God. Every life story includes the passing of time as it did with David but it is not the years that matter as much as what happened in those years. David, despite his failures, lived a life which was a tribute to the faithfulness of God and his service and obedience to God. If he could have put his own title on his life story, I wonder what it might have been?

Do you know anyone whose life hasn’t started yet? Maybe they justify their atrocious spending habits on the fact they’re young. Or put in a half-hearted attempt at work because they’re underemployed. But they say that once they’re older, married, a parent, have more time, or have landed a “real” job, then they’re really going to get their financial life in order.

In Luke 16, Jesus says two important things about how we manage the things that we have.

Recently, I received a letter from a rather worried teenage girl. She told me that she was trying very hard to tell her non-Christian friends about Christ. But, her friends had still not become Christians. She asked me, what she was doing wrong. What if her friends ended up in hell because of her?

This parable warns us against placing all of the responsibility for someone else’s salvation onto the shoulders of the messenger.

This passage can be a challenging one for those of us who struggle with issues of self-esteem and self-worth. I just came from talking to a close friend whose life is crumbling. She has never felt like she was good enough. She has never truly believed that she was loveable to anyone – especially God. So she’s tempted to skip over teachings like this, because to her they read like yet another rebuke.

But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was going for here.

The stories of those from Samaria is an interesting little thread through the Gospel narrative. The Samaritans and the Jewish people had some pretty significant theological differences. Which is why it would have shocked Jesus’ disciples that he chose a “good” Samaritan as the hero of one of his most famous parables.

Leprosy wasn’t just a chronic and debilitating disease.

Here we are in victory lane.

David, while not having the victory yet, is anticipating being in victory lane because he is asking for God’s help to claim the victory he seeks. Sure we are sometimes in distress and fearful of failure. Of course we face stresses in our lives that look like they will overwhelm us. But what matters is who we turn to first when those troubles arise.