Israel is about to go into exile. Fire and water lie ahead. And before any of it arrives, God makes three declarations. Together they are the reason a fourth thing becomes possible.

Paul gives the church a two-word phrase that holds the whole vision of Christian community together. Truth and love. But they're not two things to be balanced against each other. They're one thing, inseparable.

The psalm doesn't begin with theology. It begins with testimony. Something happened, and the happening produced a love for God that the psalmist then spends the whole psalm trying to respond to.

This verse is one of the most quoted in the Bible. And one of the most misunderstood. Paul is not writing about achievement. He is writing from prison. And he is writing about something else entirely.

The Hebrew behind "I waited patiently" is a doubled verb. Waiting, I waited. It suggests the waiting was not brief or easy. And then something happens that David spends the rest of the psalm describing.

It may be the shortest verse in John's first letter. But it answers a question that most people who try to love others eventually ask. Where is the love supposed to come from?

Moses writes this psalm having watched an entire generation die in the wilderness. He has seen the brevity of life up close. And the prayer it produces in him is not what you might expect.

Paul describes the human condition before grace in three brutal lines. Dead. Following the world. By nature deserving of wrath. And then comes two of the most important words in the New Testament.

Paul spends eleven chapters on the theology of grace. And then chapter 12 opens with therefore. Everything that follows is the response to everything that came before. And what he asks for is not what you'd expect.

Jeremiah is in prison. The city is surrounded. Everything is falling apart. And in that moment God issues an invitation that the circumstances make almost inexplicable.