Pick and Choose.

I feel very convicted often about my terrible habit of extracting tidbits of Scripture while ignoring whole other chunks.

We Christians do this all the time. We can all quote verses that prove our viewpoint on X hot-button issue, or Y moral stance. But how many of us put our primary focus on the topics Jesus actually spent the most time discussing? How many of us can answer this question with confidence: What single topic did Jesus spent the most time (as reflected in number of verses) discussing? The answer is money. I was shocked when I learned that recently.

Then last night I read this article titled "Are Single Moms the New Widows?"

Then I run across these verses in a newsletter this morning:

"He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done" says Proverbs 19:17.

"If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness... the Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs" says Isaiah 58:10-11.

Do not become weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9), but continue to excel in the grace of giving (2 Cor 8:7).

Then later this morning I watch the new NOOMA video, "Corner", about how God's instructions through Moses for his people included the command to leave behind some crops as you harvest your field so that the widow and the alien might come behind and eat. The "why" behind this instruction wasn't merely "humanitarianism", but so that Israel would remember that it was once enslaved in Egypt, but was now freed.

How do I implement this idea in my world? Is paying taxes that support common welfare the same as leaving a corner of my field unharvested? Is giving a tithe the same?

If single moms are the new widows, are illegal immigrants the new aliens?

And then, later, the news gets to me - a sorority sister was killed this morning in a car accident. She's 21. Just going to school.

No more questions for today.