my careless contagion

I was at the YMCA when the inspiration for this post landed in my lap. Literally. In the form of a ping pong ball. My son finished soccer camp that day and had swimming lessons that night. And the Y was having a bash of sorts. There was a guy in a jackalope suit (or something like that) and lots of college kids milling about. Free food! My son had the largest hot dog I've ever seen, and I had the pulled pork (which seemed to upset my stomach, but everything does these days). We were chilling out, eating, when the kids playing ping pong started to catch my eye. The boy was dressed in his baseball uniform and was hitting the ball way too hard, sending it across the room several times (and many times where we sat). The girl was having a ball and was so pretty with her big smile and even bigger curly hair. And then he hit her in the face with the ball. She was silent (the unfortunate among us know that silence) and then she threw down her paddle and grabbed the ball and threw it at him...

  The story of Jesus, Mary, and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) has long interested me. It is a short story that says many things. I pasted it below from the KJV. Let's get started. *** 38  Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 39  And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. 40  But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. 41  And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42  But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. *** The story is something many of us can relate to. While we are busy doing our service, others are, seemingly, loafing. As we saw in the story ...

The story of Jesus and the rich man is a goldmine of truth, of which I can only scratch the surface. The Bible is a multilayered book that can be studied a lifetime and still so much is left un-gleaned. And, yes, I’m going to be doing a little bit of preaching (but when am I not?) on this post.  The story of Jesus and the rich man is related three times in the New Testament (Matthew 19:16–30, Mark 10:17–31, and Luke 18:18–30 (Where were you, John?)), and three is a very important number of completeness. If you find the number three coming into play, pay attention. A good example of the use of three is how Jesus was dead for three days and after that was resurrected. In Jewish tradition at the time, if someone rose from the dead after only one or two days, they were not really dead. So because Jesus was dead for three days and came back to life, he was truly dead and defeated death for all of us by rising from the dead. As a side note, when Lazarus was raised from the dead, he ...