The Good Samaritan

https://odb.org/2025/03/03/unexpected-neighbors

Luke 10:27–37 (NIV): 27 He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this, and you will live.” 29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” 30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

As we were growing up, we would have heard of the phrase “Good Samaritan” and, thus, the encouragement to be a good Samaritan. To be a good Samaritan is really to help someone else in need. Similar to the Boy Scout’s slogan, to do a good turn daily or to do a good deed a day. At that point, I didn’t know that the Good Samaritan actually originated from the bible in a parable taught by Jesus within the context of the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus narrated the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate the point on who your neighbour is and to stress the point that your neighbour could well be a stranger you meet who may have been robbed, beaten, and left on the road to die. If you love your neighbour, you will stop by and help him, and in the parable, the person who helped was a Samaritan, and the Samaritan did not only tended to his wounds but sent him to an inn for him to be cared for and guaranteeing his expenses there with a deposit and a promise to reimburse the inn later.

Pointedly in the parable, a priest and a Levite walked the other way when they saw the wounded man. The reason was that as the man was badly injured and bloodied, he could be close to dying. According to Jewish law, contact with a dead body would have rendered both the priest and the Levite unable to discharge their religious obligations. Jesus indirectly castigated Jewish society’s obsession with the law that they’ll rather leave an injured man to die to preserve their religious customary purity when human life should always take precedence. Either the religious law should provide an exemption, or they should attempt to save the man and be unclean. To add salt to the wound, in the parable, the person who helped was a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jews, or at least someone who is looked down on by them. Samaritans are actually descendants of Northern Jews left behind by the invading Assyrians and who intermarried with the Assyrians. As a religious sect, there are probably only 800-900 of them in the modern world, compared to more than 14 million Jews worldwide.

What’s our application for this parable? I think we tend to help people at our convenience, and it is justifiable since we are taking the trouble to help. In the real world, helping is not an obligation as people mind their own business. Thus, it is entirely voluntary, and we do it out of the goodness of our hearts. But as believers, our Lord has a higher calling for us. We should help even if it is troublesome for us. So long as we are not abeting a crime (for example, like help a criminal conceal his stolen goods), we should help whenever we see a need. How much we should help or how involved we should get? That’s based on the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I don’t think Jesus expects us to do as the Good Samaritan did as He teaches using extremes. But stopping and tending to his wounds is the least we could have done if we had met him on the infamous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Let the peace of God rule

https://odb.org/2025/02/28/common-ground-2

Colossians 3:12–17 (NIV):
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body, you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I just saw a short dashcam video of a Honda CRV trying to get ahead of a Perodua Myvi in busy crawling traffic because the Myvi had earlier overtaken it. At one point, the CRV driver even got down from the car. Fortunately, nothing untoward happened as he had to get back into his car when the traffic moved on. I’m sure we have seen before such theatrics being played out, or perhaps we ourselves could have been the perpetrators. Not so much of the faster time but more of the ego of sometimes not accepting that someone else has overtaken us and took a place ahead of us. Actually, so what if we are one car behind? The time difference to arrival at our destination is probably just 10 seconds! But still, we sometimes find it difficult to let it go. We want to get ahead nevertheless. We want to win.

But as believers, we are supposed to be peacemakers and not become an instigator of trouble or conflict or turmoil. Don’t become the troublemaker or the trouble itself! Instead, we are to be peaceful in any situation. Like Paul taught in Colossians 3:15, let the peace of God rule in our hearts since, as members of one body, we are called to peace. We are not to create discord, strife, or unrest. We are not to get into fights. Let the peace of God rule and take control. Because one thing may lead to another, and we may end up in a bad situation. There could be consequences which we could have avoided. I still remember a traffic skirmish led to a driver wielding a machete on an accountant who had a severed carotid artery and bled to death. As it turned out, the culprit was likely an underworld figure as he was using false plates and was never found.

Let the peace of God rule. We don’t need to win that argument. We don’t need to be ahead. Make our point and let it go. Not everyone will agree with us.

Have a good weekend, everyone! May we experience the peace of God that surpasses all understanding as we worship Him this Sunday, and may we be an instrument of the peace of God in all situations! Amen!

Hosea and Gomer

https://odb.org/2025/02/27/a-path-forward

Hosea 3:1–5 (NIV): 3 The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”
2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3 Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” 4 For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. 5 Afterward, the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

Hosea is a strange book as the LORD instructed His prophet Hosea to marry Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, a prostitute and she bore him three children. After that, she went back to her old ways and became a prostitute again. Despite her wavering and adulterous ways, the LORD instructed Hosea to reconcile with Gomer, and he redeemed her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethek (about half a homer) of barley, the homer costing also 15 shekels of silver. Thus, all in Hosea spent roughly 37.5 shekels of silver (about US$560 in today’s money) to redeem Gomer. We are not told the circumstances why Gomer went into prostitution in the first place or later.

In the spiritual sense, the LORD used Hosea’s love for Gomer to illustrate His love for Israel that despite their worship of other gods, He still loved and remembered them. He had never forsaken and abandoned them in spite of their insolence and idolatry. As history has shown, the LORD has always stood with and for Israel, even modern-day Israel. 

The application of the story of Hosea and Gomer is for us to love and reconcile with our loved ones and Christian friends even if they are not walking in godly ways right now. Gomer was a prostitute and thus adulterous, and yet God instructed Hosea to marry her, and when she went back to her old ways, the LORD instructed him to reconcile with her. We do not know why Gomer was who she was, and in a way, this implies that whatever may be the reason, we are still to love those who have gone astray. Jesus taught us that we are not to judge and are to love our neighbours, even our enemies. What more our loved ones and Christian friends who may have gone astray. Stand with them and for them, like God does with Israel. Why did Israel worship Baal and the Asherah poles? It doesn’t matter. God still loved Israel.

The joy of giving

https://odb.org/2025/02/26/the-joy-of-giving-2

Acts 9:36–43 (NIV): 36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!” 39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. 40 Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Pete, she sat up. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. 43 Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.

The natural tendency of us humans is self-preservation, and that includes keeping rather than giving. In terms of money, we save up to keep for the future. If we are young, we save up to pay for a large purchase like a home or to prepare for a wedding. If we are older, like at my stage of life near retirement, we save for our old age when we will no longer be earning. It is fortunate that in Malaysia, we have the Employees Provident Fund that forces us by law to save for our old age the moment we start working. We may not have much liability to carry when we reach 60, as hopefully we would have paid off our mortgages and settled our children’s education needs. But on top of the day to day living, there is the question of the delayed gratification of starting to see more of the world or travelling more for missions. Then we may also want to give a headstart to our children by helping them buy their first property or prepare for married life or start a family.

As much as we pay our tithes and offerings and help out people with cash gifts when prompted by the Holy Spirit, the point this morning is that giving is not only about money. Thus, when we retire and don’t earn as much anymore (some of us may have passive income), we could start using our time (no longer bound by office hours) to give by blessing others. Tabitha (or her name in Greek, Dorcas) used her tailoring skills to make clothes for others. So when she died as recorded in Acts 9, those who were previously blessed by her, the widows, were really grieved and asked Peter, who was nearby, to come and see her body. They showed him the robes and clothing made by her. The generosity and generous giving and helpful nature of Tabitha shone through, although the thrust of the passage was Peter’s first raising of someone from the dead. It was Lazarus reenacted! Only this time, it is Peter and not our Lord Jesus Christ!

Giving our money to someone in need as prompted by the Holy Spirit is indeed joyful and is an excellent way to use our earthly resources to store up our treasure in heaven. But the joy of giving is not limited to money only. Spending an hour with someone hearing about his struggles in life could be our way of giving. Or, like Tabitha, we could make things and bless people with the things we make. We could grow plants and give them away, or if we have fruit trees, we could give away the fruits to bless others.

I guess, most of the time, if we could, we want to catch up on our sleep, especially as we grow older. That’s true of me! 😀😀😀…. But I trust God will surely appreciate and be very happy with us if we resist the temptation to sleep and make the effort to go bless someone with something. That is the joy of giving!

The rainbow

https://odb.org/2025/02/24/rainbows-and-gods-promises

We had to wake up at 5.00 am, and start our journey back to Petaling Jaya from Seremban at slightly half past five yesterday morning. After breakfast, we arrived back at our condo at 7 plus, and because I had to be in office early, I didn’t have time to write yesterday’s devotional. But I like yesterday’s topic on the rainbow very much and will thus write about it today.

Genesis 9:8–17 (NIV): 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

As we can read from Genesis 9, the rainbow was put in place by God after the great flood that killed every living creature (except marine life and those animals in Noah’s ark and Noah and his family). The rainbow is the reminder to God of His covenant that He will never again destroy living creatures by flood waters. Thus, after Adam and his descendants and the living creatures created by God since creation, the human race and air breathing living creatures restarted from Noah onwards. As much as all of us are descended from Adam and Eve since Noah also descended from them, our lineage could be more directly traced to Noah and his family as the last surviving humans after the great flood.

The rainbow 🌈 besides being God’s covenant not to destroy living creatures again by water, is also a depiction of the colours in life. We see colours because light reflects colours to us, but all colours we see are a combination of the colours of the rainbow. Colours represent the joy and vibrancy of life, for if we are only black and white or shades of grey, life will be much more boring! Even if we were to look at the forest with its different tones of green, it is the colour of the flowers and fruits that bring life and beauty to the forest.

But most importantly, although we only see the rainbow as an arch due to the horizon and we being on the ground, in reality, a rainbow is actually a full circle. To capture the rainbow as a circle, we need to be up in the air, as can be seen in the photo above. You may read the scientific explanation of this below:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/rainbow-full-circle/

The full circle of the rainbow represents God’s love, which is forever and eternal. It is never ending. Like Lamentations 3:22-23 proclaims, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases as it is renewed every morning great is thy faithfulness. The day will come when Jesus returns, and He will rule the earth, and at the end of time, we will dwell with God in Eden recreated in the new heaven and new earth and the new Jerusalem. It will be for eternity like the full circle of the rainbow 🌈. It will be full of the vibrancy and joy of life like the colours of the rainbow!

Whenever we are down and sad, I pray that the Lord will show us His rainbow, and may we remember His everlasting love for us, His covenant with humanity and the living creatures on earth! May the beauty and the colours of the rainbow bring joy to us in our days of sorrow and tears.

Have a good week ahead, everyone!

The righteous fall but rise again

https://odb.org/2025/02/21/getting-back-up

Proverbs 24:15-16 NIV– 15 Do not lurk like a thief near the house of the righteous, do not plunder their dwelling place; 16 for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.

One of the wise sayings in Proverbs exalts the righteous for being able to rise again even if a thief were to plunder their home. In contrast, the wicked will stumble when calamity strikes. As mentioned before in these pages, the Old Testament Jews were much more focused on living this present life with afterlife a more obscure concept to them. Thus, being blessed by God is a sign of righteousness as they believe that God protects and blesses the righteous. Consequently, as stated by Proverbs 24:16, even if the righteous were to fall seven times, they will rise again. This is because God is with the righteous. He is the defender, the stronghold and salvation of the righteous. He will ensure that they are not defeated.

In this post-Jesus era of the New Covenant, this is still an important principle to grasp and apply in our lives as believers. If we were to fall, believe that we would rise again. If some calamity were to befall us, have faith that we will rise again victoriously. Why? Because the Lord loves and cares for us. Because God is with us! Because of the blood of Jesus shed on the cross of Calvary, we now have the added knowledge that we have eternal life. Thus, even if we were to face hardship coping with life, we look forward to our inheritance in the saints and the riches in heaven we have stored throughout our walk in the faith. We also look forward to the room that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare for us in our Heavenly Father’s mansion of many rooms. We look forward to the new heaven and new earth at the end of time when God will dwell amongst His people.

For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again! Rise again, pick ourselves up when we fall like an ice skater or roller skater would! Never give up, but strive forward always! Keep up the good fight, my dear brothers and sisters! Keep on walking on the road of righteousness that leads to eternal life! Amen!

The simple truth

https://odb.org/2025/02/20/the-simple-truth

Romans 10:9–11 (NIV): 9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

The context of Romans 10:9-11 is the contention then by the Jews that Gentiles need to convert to Judaism to become God’s people. Remember that Romans was a letter written by Paul to the believers in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles. To convert to Judaism means to follow the Mosaic law and the expanded rules developed by the Jewish religious authorities. Paul, however, asserted that believers just needed to declare that Jesus is the Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead. Romans 9:10 – For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

When I was younger and was seeking to become a genuine born-again Christian, I was also surprised by the simplicity of the mechanism to become a believer. We just needed to utter the sinner’s prayer. Of course, I was given something like a 10-week Navigators course on what it means to believe in Christ, to teach me on the fundamentals of the faith. But the final act was simple. We confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord and that He died for our sins as were sinners and in God resurrecting Him, He overcame both sin and death that we may have eternal life. Salvation is by faith in Christ and not by our good works.

Yet as we enter into God’s family of the church and learn more about the faith, we know that living the believers’ lives as disciples of Christ is not just the sinner’s prayer. It is much, much more than that. There is the transformation of our lives in the way we think, speak, and relate to others. There is the development of our character in Christ. We need to build up our relationship with Father God. We need to have a prayer life and a quiet time with the Lord. We also need to study His Word and serve Him to fulfil His plans and purposes for our lives and to live in the centre of His will. In the process, we will gain in our knowledge of God by relating to Him, serving Him, and loving Him.

The law of God as enumerated in the Old Testament is still relevant to guide us in our lives as believers since God is the same today as He was in the past. But we are longer under that law as the law is now written in our hearts. Thus, Christian life is all-encompassing. There is a morality aspect as well as character as a person. We live in the natural, yet we are essentially spiritual beings in communication with the Almighty God, an all-powerful and all-knowing spiritual being. We are in the world and not of this world. As much as we originated from the faith of the Jews, we are not part of that faith. As believers of Christ, we are not inferior to the Jews but have equal rights to our inheritance in Christ.

I pray for every one of us, including my own self, that we will continue to persevere on in this journey of faith. To strive forward heavenward towards the goal that Christ has set before us, forgetting what’s behind and despite what’s in the present. That we will look to the future for the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus, the rich inheritance of the saints! Amen!

The story of Leah

https://odb.org/2025/02/19/finding-love

Genesis 29:28–35 (NIV): 28 And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 Laban gave his servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her attendant. 30 Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years. 31 When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. 32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”
33 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon. 34 Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi. 35 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “This time, I will praise the LORD.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

We don’t really focus much on Leah, Jacob’s first wife. Partly because we may feel she was part of Laban’s deceit of Jacob, although in a way, we may also feel Jacob deserved the retribution after he himself having deceived Esau his birthright and their father’s blessings.

The story as we know in Genesis 29 is that after working 7 years for Laban, his uncle, to marry Rachel, Laban instead gave Jacob Leah as his wife on the wedding night, saying that the elder sister must be married first. Thus, he needed to work for Laban for another 7 years for Rachel. So he ended up with two wives that week and another 7 years to work for Laban. If you read on in Genesis, however, you will know that God blessed Jacob tremendously and made him a very rich man in the process.

The LORD also transformed Jacob from a cunning and conniving person to become Israel after he had that encounter where he wrestled with God (that’s the meaning of Israel). Thus, it is from Jacob that the twelve tribes of Israel came from – the 12 sons of both his wives, Leah and Rachel, and their maidservants. See chart below:

But Jacob loved Rachel and not Leah. God saw Leah’s plight in seeking after Jacob’s love and blessed her with children first. You can see this clearly in Genesis 29:31 – When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. In verse 33 – She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” It was only in the later years that Rachel gave birth to Joseph and Benjamin, who then became Jacob’s favourite sons.

It was this internal family rivalry that probably led to the sons of Leah later devising the plan to sell Joseph off to slave traders to Egypt. We know how God turned Joseph’s bad situation into one that saved and preserved Jacob’s clan (from the severe famine then) for 430 years in Egypt before God raised Moses to confront Pharoah and deliver the whole clan (now a nation) out of Egypt back into Canaan. Incidentally, it was from Judah’s line, Leah’s 4th son, that King David came from and thus our Lord Jesus Christ.

Like in the case of Haggar and Sarah of Abraham, the LORD did not overlook the one who was not loved. Instead, the LORD made sure the unloved is blessed. You can see this in Genesis 21:18, where the LORD promised to make Hagar’s son, Ishmael, into a great nation, and it is believed that the Arabs of today descended from Ishmael. He saw Leah’s situation and took care of her by blessing her with 4 sons in the early years when Rachel’s womb was closed.

The LORD would have remembered and cared for us even if we were not part of His Kingdom. What more when we are in His Kingdom and part of His heavenly family. Surely He will bless and protect us. He looked out and cared for Leah, the unloved wife of Jacob. He cared for Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah who bore Abraham, his first son before Isaac. Surely He will look out and care for us, the children redeemed and saved by the precious blood of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour! Be strong and of good courage, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go!

Fake ratings

https://odb.org/2025/02/18/no-fake-ratings

Ephesians 4:22–32 (NIV): 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body. 

This thing about false ratings is that it is very much a challenge of our contemporary living. I don’t think we had this issue more than 10 years ago. It’s a recent phenomenon due to the birth and growth of e-hailing like Uber (entered Malaysia in 2014) and Grab with the latter taking over the former for the Southeast Asian markets in 2018.

The Chinese have this belief that we should always give others a new road to walk on. Meaning to say, rather than destroy someone’s livelihood, we let them continue to make a living. In other words, the same way we treasure and protect over our own rice bowls, we don’t go around disturbing or destroying other people’s rice bowls. That probably explains why some people will still give a 5-star rating even for a terrible ride experience. We possibly sympathise with the driver’s predicament needing to drive Grab for a living, knowing very well that Grab actually provides people who are unemployed or laid off a lifeline to continue earning without resorting to crime.

Yet, as Christians, we are called to speak the truth and not perpetuate lies. We could argue that Ephesians 4:25 was written in the context of speaking falsehood to cause harm or, as per the Old Testament law of do not give false testimony against your neighbour. Perhaps it could be rationalised that way, but the Word of God nevertheless stated that we are to put off falsehood and lying, and not speaking the truth is falsehood.

I believe the practice of putting off falsehood is a good one as one lie may lead to another, and after some time, it becomes a habit to lie and may permeate our lives. We will eventually forget our own lies, and thus, in our inconsistency, we will come across as speaking with forked tongues. Surely, as children of God and a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ, we need to preserve and protect His name in our lives!

I think the solution to this predicament is to give a 5-star for a genuinely good experience and a 1-star, for a really bad experience or just don’t rate at all. Compliment when praise is due, but there is perhaps no need to praise (give a 5-star rating) when it is bad. Why lie and compromise our own standards to give an undeserved compliment? As believers, we try to be truthful as much as possible, but if the truth destroys, we should refrain unless speaking the truth is necessary to rebuild someone and make him or her a better person.

Restraint in speech and action

https://odb.org/2025/02/17/never-sent

Proverbs 29:20 (NIV): 20 Do you see someone who speaks in haste?
There is more hope for a fool than for them.

One of the things we learned at work is never to write or reply to an email when angry. Calm yourself down first. Take a walk. Go get a cup of coffee. Or even better, if the matter is not urgent, do it tomorrow. In today’s world, that includes writing or replying on WhatsApp.

The reason is simple, we are foolish when angry, and when foolish, we may write things that we will very much regret later. Like in the case of President Abraham Lincoln. His top general, George Meade, defied him when he did not attack the troops at the south as his men were as tired as those in the south. President Lincoln wrote a letter to his general that he was immeasurably distressed, but he sealed and didn’t send it. In the end, not sending that letter prevented President Lincoln from demoralizing his top general, helping him win a necessary war, and contributing to the healing of a nation.

The Bible is strewn with examples of how anger clouded judgement and led to lasting negative ramifications. Most infamous being Cain and Abel. If Cain had reined in his anger, he would not have killed Abel. If Moses had not allowed his rage to take control, he would not have killed the Egyptian, which led him fleeing to a far country in Midian to work as a shepherd for 40 years before God called him at the burning bush. Or if Moses had not allowed the grumbling of the Israelites to affect him, he might not have disobeyed the LORD and might have spoken to the rock instead of striking it with his staff. Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his disobedience. The psalmist said in Psalm 106:33 that they made Moses angry, and he spoke foolishly.

This is especially important for couples. While we are no aliens to querrels and verbal fights, it is much wiser to keep our mouths shut when provoked or angered. There is no need to try to win every argument. At work, what is the point of winning an argument with the boss if it ultimately results in us losing his favour or even our job?

The lesson this morning is to learn to restrain ourselves, especially when angry or when we want to be provocative or are attempting to win an argument. Godly wisdom advocates that we keep quiet or just let the situation slide. Peace and preservation of relationships and harmony are often more critical. Praying for a person in private may well be more effective than standing our ground in an ascending crescendo in a heated argument.

Have a good week ahead, everyone! I pray that we will all be blessed with divine wisdom and will exercise restraint in all that we encounter at work, in church, or at home!