For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
The connotation of this proverb is that even if they do catch game, they cannot be bothered to put out the effort to cook it. On the other hand, those who are successful make use of everything they can from the game they catch and the plants they harvest. This proverb teaches us to make productive use of all the resources which come our way. This proverb is a challenge to find productive uses to put what is otherwise waste.
This psalm gives us an example of how we should pray when we face difficult times. The psalmist calls on God for rescue, but he acknowledges that in order to be rescued by God people need to turn to God. I love this phrasing from the NLT:
Turn us again to yourself, O God.
Make your face shine down upon us.
Only then will we be saved.
He repeats it three times, each time exalting God even more…”O God”, “O God of Heaven’s Armies”, and “O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies”. Let us beg God to turn us again to Him, acknowledging His power and glory.
Jesus gives us warning against seeking honour for ourselves. Jesus warns us against assuming positions of high honour for ourselves because it will be incredibly embarrassing if we have to yield them to someone more deserving. Instead, we should assume positions of low prestige. If we do the latter, we will be even more honoured when the host of the event pulls us out to put us in a position of prestige. This advice is not just about events regarding this world. It is of even greater import in heavenly matters, where the host is God Himself.
Accompanying that advice, Jesus advises us not to throw feasts for those who can reciprocate. Instead of inviting our family and rich neighbours to our parties, we should invite the poor, the blind, the lame, and the crippled, those who will be unable to repay us by inviting us to their parties. When He gives this advice, Jesus tells us that God will repay us for doing this. However, I think He was also making a point about how we invite the better off as a subtle way of holding ourselves up to be admired, “Look at all the A-list people who come to my parties.”
It is easy to overlook the significance of the memorial which Joshua had the Israelites set up after they crossed the Jordan. After all what is the big deal about a stack of twelve rocks? The thing we forget is that these were large rocks, not huge, but large. And they were all water polished. Water polished rocks have distinctive characteristics and looks. Geologists use those characteristics to identify places where there used to be streams and rivers. The memorial the Israelites built would have been a testimony to the fact that they walked through the Jordan on dry ground.