Devotion
Toothpaste and Talking
David Jacobs
I remember my school principal proudly performing a demonstration on the destructive nature that words can have on one another. This example has been performed in the west for generations. It is very simple. The leader presents a crowd with a tube of toothpaste. He deliberately squeezes the tube clean, spewing forth striped minty foam into the hand of a willing participant. Once he is satisfied that everyone can see the volume of toothpaste on the participant's hand, he asks them to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It is impossible. The participant may successfully put some of the toothpaste back in, but certainly not all of it. It is a mess that takes a whole lot of work to clean up. This is to demonstrate how hard it is to take back something once we have said it. Perhaps we can take back some of it, but not all of it. It is messy and unpleasant.
'Watch your mouth!' is often something you may hear of one who speaks out of turn. Whilst this may arise in some heated argument, David here asks this of God himself, to stand guard at our mouths, which are like gateways to our hearts. We can injure or heal, spread joy or confusion with simple words. But what God seeks is clear communication with him, for we often lose our own selves in Him and become immersed rather in the message of the Lord.
Prayer
When we entrust the Lord with our lips, we think before we speak.
Devotion
Abraham is Father of All
Frances Taylor
There are questions in every age about the importance of the Old Testament for Christians. Abraham is considered to be the Father of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims. We forget that it was Abraham who believed in the doctrine of only one God. It is through him and his descendants that this tradition comes down to us. Another fact that we can overlook is that Jesus was Jewish. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died, rose and ascended into heaven as a Jew. Because we believe that he was the Messiah, the Christ, and we follow him, we are called Christian. Without the Old Testament, we wouldn't understand the promise of salvation; we wouldn't understand why it was important for Jesus to be of the family of King David. We would not understand his teaching either, because Jesus quoted from Scripture – the Old Testament – frequently. He told us that he came to fulfill the Scriptures, not to abolish them. In the same way, we can ...
