Before he met Jesus, Paul spent all of his time seeking to earn God’s favour (see Galatians 1:14, Philippians 3:6). Yet when he encountered the risen Christ on the Damascus road (Acts 9), he came to see that the Law could never make a person right with God (Rom 3:23).

In the 1960s middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was wrongly accused and convicted of a triple homicide and sentenced to life in prison. After serving 19 years for a crime he never committed, his lawyers launched a second appeal, and the court overturned the previous ruling. The appeals court judge set Carter free.

When I was a child my parents took me to visit their homeland of Jamaica. There I witnessed a way of life quite foreign to what I had been accustomed, growing up in Canada. Many impoverished people, some young, some old, walking around town carrying what looked to me like very heavy loads: large baskets of food and produce; huge canisters of water; big bundles of clothing.

Many things can separate us from experiencing the affection of our closest friends and family. There is distance. Geographical separation can keep us from having close, intimate contact with our loved ones. While technology has helped to narrow this gap, in the end, it’s still hard to hug a computer screen.

Have you ever sought God for something and he refused to give it to you? A job? A house? A spouse? When I sensed God calling me to full-time ministry, I went to seminary. After I graduated, a local church in my home town invited me to serve as a pastor. It was there that God gave me clarity to the nature of his call on my life: it was to teach in the Christian academy.

This is a great psalm! There’s a call to praise (vv 1-3), then four examples of how God helps and delivers his people (vv 4,10,17 and 23) and finally a beautiful summing-up (vv 33-43).

The lonely wanderers in vv 4-9 may look back to the wanderings of the people of Israel in the desert, after their escape from Egypt.

We all want our lives to be better. A better life comes through making wise decisions. Wise decisions, though, don’t come naturally. They are hard work.

This is the goal of the book of Proverbs.