What is good sense depends on your worldview. Good sense to some may mean slight deception in advertising to acquire wealth and please the shareholders. To others it means honesty and integrity, even at the cost of potential sales.

When a rich young man boldly walked up to Jesus and asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus answered without hesitation. Jesus stated only God was good.

Jesus made the point of how we can do nothing to earn eternal life. Earning our way into heaven, like the rich young ruler was attempting to do, requires nothing less than perfection.

During the time of Jesus, work was not plentiful. Men would pass the time of day in the marketplace hoping that someone would hire them. No work meant hungry families. In the parable of the vineyard labourers, Jesus used this commonplace situation to demonstrate the extraordinary generosity and compassion of God.

When I am teaching my students I sometimes will ask them to predict what might happen next in a story. Young minds come up with some wonderfully imaginative scenarios. Predicting what might happen next keeps them attuned and attentive.

Do you have days when you would just love to let loose with a rant? Yell randomly about stuff that you don’t think anybody but you cares about? I do.

Most of the time I do it inside my head. Sometimes it’s the way that I pray.

The Israelites are instructed to take the blood of a perfect lamb, apply it to their doorposts, so that death would pass over them as it ravaged Egypt. The Lord required Israel’s participation in the final plague but not the others. They were not automatically exempt from the substitution of a life for a life. Obedience to God’s plan protected them and provided the escape from judgment

The Psalmist invites Israel to be happy and shout to God who makes them strong. In the first five verses he reminds them that worship is mandatory, a commandment given to Jacob’s descendants when God led them out from the land of Egypt.

His voice shifts in verse six.