If your desired candidate for president of this country wins in the 2024 election, how do you think you will feel?

Do you think you will feel elated? Satisfied? Pleased? Justified? Validated? Secure?

Last week, I celebrated my 40th birthday. One look at me and you might think I am someone who repeatedly celebrates 39th birthdays. No, I was celebrating the day 40 years ago when I was, in Jesus’ words, born again.

One of his own betrayed him.

Thursday evening, Jesus had finished the Passover meal with his disciples and had gone to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. While praying, Judas (the treasurer of the group) arrived with soldiers, greeted Jesus with the traditional kiss from a disciple to his rabbi, and Jesus was arrested.

I read something recently regarding sheep. It said that if you were leading a herd of sheep, then stopped and held a long pole horizontally in front of the lead sheep, the lead sheep will jump over it. The next sheep in line would do the same, and the next one. Then, at some point, you could remove the pole, and the sheep would continue to jump over a pole that is no longer there.

The note addressed to my wife was curt and accusatory, castigating her for an oversight that was unimaginable in its ramifications – it appeared that we had run out of peanut butter. The judge was my oldest brother; he and his wife were visiting us from Venezuela. “No Bannon household should ever be without peanut butter,” he chided. It was a Sunday morning; my wife and I had left early for a morning full of ministry responsibilities at church. My brother and his wife were having a late breakfast and had promised to join us for the last worship service of the morning. His breakfast plan? Toast with peanut butter, but after searching every shelf in the pantry and every cupboard in the kitchen, there was no peanut butter in sight. It was in the refrigerator.

Do you ever wonder if someone giving his or her life over to Christ, that is, becoming a Christian, actually makes a difference in their life? I mean, I have observed some people who have had a mountaintop experience, give their lives over to Jesus, and change their ways. But for some, the emotional experience lasts for a while, and over time they return to their previous ways.

In Genesis 27:30-45 Jacob swindled from Isaac the birthright rightfully belonging to Esau. Jacob used guile and dishonesty, urged on by his mother, to attain what was not his to have.

Lie – “an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive; something that misleads or deceives.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

In Genesis 27:30-45 Jacob swindled from Isaac the birthright rightfully belonging to Esau. Jacob used guile and dishonesty, urged on by his mother, to attain what was not his to have.

Isaac was skeptical that the person before him was his eldest son. But Jacob sounded so convincing that Isaac made his decision to give the inheritance to whom he thought was Esau.

I am forever losing things – keys, wallets, shoes – you name it, I can lose it. So prone am I to losing things that one year for Christmas, my wife bought me a chip that attached to my key fob that would show the location of my keys on a map on my smartphone. Great idea, but I lose things at home and the mapping feature was not that precise.