Clothe yourself with Love Col. 3:14

Facing truth can suddenly be very alarming to us, especially when what we know we should do and what we do (head and action) don’t match. We fall into what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. So, to avoid its stress and anxiety, we begin making excuses to explain away the contradiction. There is no end to which people will not go, to provide such excuses trying to maintain coherence. This happens to individuals as well as nations. The same is true in Genesis: When God asked Adam: " What have you done ?" Adam replied to God: “ The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit to eat and I ate .” These excuses serve as a lollipop to soothe ourselves from the dissonance. Jesus knew this problem. That’s why He showed us the profile of a true disciple because, a disciple is a person who keeps learning to face truth with courage, to acknowledge personal flaws and failures and still heed Jesus’ teachings. Jesus’ description of a disciple is such that, it becomes unmista...

Jesus gives a lesson in humility. I discovered here that there is no shortage of slippery slopes in life. We all have had opportunities to commit faux pas, or we have tripped on a slippery slope and fallen in front of people and embarrass ourselves beyond words. Not always in the physical sense, because we say: “Gee, I put my foot in my mouth on that one.” Well, many of us have done it! For me, living in another culture, I have quite a few stories which I won’t share. It appears that Jesus was speaking about a situation that most likely would bring us to a slippery slope. The expected outcome is embarrassment, which could be severe than that. You see, He cares about our steps in life and He brings a light ahead of us so that we can see and avoid slippery slopes. One thing I nearly missed was, the fact that Jesus was invited to dinner at the house of a Pharisee leader. This is huge! How many of us can honestly say, they invited to dinner those they don’t see eye to eye? A risk that thi...