I wish the peril was down the street or around the corner from our homes. Those days are long gone. Now, it is as close as the computer you are sitting at or the phone in your son’s or daughter’s pocket.

It is deeply disturbing to see the growing trend in our society.

I remember a story a former pastor of mine once told about a local department store prank. It seems that someone had broken into the store and, though they hadn’t stolen anything, had randomly gone throughout the store switching the price tags so that they no longer had any correlation between price and value. A generic baseball cap was priced at $999.99 while a luxury suit was priced at $4.99

As people living in a post-Christian world, whenever we read about healings in the Scriptures our thinking often goes to debates about Jesus’ divinity or evidences that Scripture is true. But, as important as these debates might have been, they can take our mind off what is most important in Scripture by diverting our attention to what is most important to us.

Did you notice the connection made between Jesus’ healing ministry and Isaiah’s servant bringing about justice?

The coming of the kingdom means an engaging with the powers. Jesus has come to redeem a fallen world and that involves doing battle – plundering the house of the enemy. Jesus’ healing of a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute strikes hope in the hearts of some and judgment in the hearts of others. Is he Son of David or only a servant of Beelzebul prince of demons?

It comes as a bit of a surprise that the scribes and Pharisees would ask for a sign. Surely healing the blind, raising the dead, and casting out of demons, should count for something. How can they miss what is going on through the words and works of Jesus? Well, perhaps through stubbornness, blindness and the wish to hang on to their own version of things rather than be disrupted by an alternative.

My wife was getting irked by my oft time failure to hear what she or others were saying. She urged me to talk to the doctor about it, so the next time I went in to see him I mentioned, “My wife thinks I’m hard of hearing.” He checked my ears and said, “Your hearing is fine. Tell them to speak up.”

Psalm 45 overflows with love language. Perhaps it was written for Solomon, or perhaps it was intended to be used for any of Israel’s kings. But the quotation from this Psalm in Hebrews 1:8 leaves no doubt that the early church took the Psalm to be Messianic. This double-entendre is captured in vv 6-7, where the distinction between the king and Christ is blurred. The psalm pulsates with life and points forward to the relationship between Christ, the groom, and the Church, his bride.