It is easy to fall into the trap of seeing the ordinary activities of life as somehow less “spiritual” and thus less important than those activities where we worship God, pray and study our Bibles. There is no hint of that in these verses from Paul’s letter to Timothy.

If you have been following theStory reflections regularly, you will notice that we have jumped from the last known letter that Paul wrote (to Timothy) to the last one that Peter wrote (to Christians scattered around Asia Minor).

If you and your companions were to come upon an emergency shelter after a long, cold and arduous winter hike in the mountains …

I can recall sitting in my high school Chemistry class and hearing the pleading voice of my teacher asking us as students to remember the basic principles of molecular Chemistry and to pay attention to the formulas that we had learned. And if I had done so with a little more diligence, I might have done better in the class.

Seldom in the 21st century do we encounter those who speak of real evil and sinister forces in the way that Peter does in this second chapter of his second letter. Like the short letter of Jude, which is thought to have been written about the same phenomena a few years later …

Peter hasn’t quite finished warning his readers about the sinister and evil people in their midst. In the first half of this chapter he cited the examples of angels and of the people in Noah and Lot’s day to illustrate how evil deeds and choices will lead to condemnation.

“Testimony” can be one of those “Christian words” that gets bandied about, as in “I shared my testimony with my friend.” Sounds holy, right? Or intimidating; after all, “testimony” is also what one gives in a courtroom. But put simply, a testimony is a story, a telling of what happened during a particular instance in your life.

Consider the implications of verse 15: “It’s a dangerous thing to guarantee payment for someone’s debts. Don’t do it.”

Guaranteeing payment would include practices such as co-signing a loan for someone else. If the person defaults on the loan, you are responsible for paying it off. It’s risky business.