Jeremiah 51:1-53, Titus 2:1-15, Psalms 99:1-9, Proverbs 26:17
Today is the 27th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today. And we’ve come. We’ve come for the same thing that we come for every day, the next step forward in the Scriptures around the Global Campfire as we continue our journey. And wow! We are approaching the end of another month and at this point there’s not too many more of those left. But I don’t want to think about that right now. I want to be here where we are taking the next step forward, moving together deeper into the Scriptures. So, today we will move back into the book of Jeremiah, where we’ve been camping out. We are going to finish the book of Jeremiah in tomorrow’s reading. But today is today. So, Jeremiah chapter 51 verses 1 through 53.
Commentary:
Okay. When we come to this proverb in chapter 26, “like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears”, that always perks me up because we have dogs and it it’s like imagery that we can truly relate to quickly. “Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel, not their own.” And as the years go by and I read this proverb I think it’s more about the Internet than dogs. But let’s look at it. If you have a dog, then you kinda know how dogs are. We’ve…we’re dog lovers. We love our dogs. We have a couple of dogs, one big and one small. And Lucy’s our big dog and she is the sweetest dog…sweetest dog I’ve ever been around to be honest, and she actually likes her ears scratched. She loves that love, but I know that if I were to sneak up on her while she’s asleep and grab her by the ears she would freak out. I don’t if she would bite me or not. It just depends on how surprised she was. Our little dog Maggie would for sure freak out and snap. But the proverb’s talking about a stray dog, sneaking up and grabbing a stray dog who doesn’t know you by the ears. That’s probably not a good idea. What the proverb is telling us that what also is not a good idea is rushing into a quarrel that is not yours. And I don’t know, to that sounds like social media because that kind of behavior is going on 24 hours a day seven days a week. We may not always be experiencing it, but it’s always going on and a lot of the time we’re adding to the noise for no real redeeming reason other than our insatiable need to be seen. But typically we don’t like it aimed at us, right? If you have a friendship with somebody and that person, like you sit down to have lunch once a week once a month, I don’t know, whenever you get together and what they want to talk about is their opinions about everything and then they insert their opinions and everything about what you’re sharing as well and…and they dive into every…every conflict that they can because they have an opinion about it. I saw some clip from a comedian a couple months ago. It was simply begging the question, is it…is it actually necessary that everybody express their opinion about everything that happens in their life. And it was funny, but the question was, ultimately, can anybody not express their opinion for one hour about anything? And I guess in this Internet age if you…if you just start perusing the Internet, you’ll find that it doesn’t seem like it’s possible. Everybody’s got something to say about everything. People are constantly inserting themselves into places that they were not invited and do not belong into conflicts that are not their own, which usually just perpetuates more conflict, right? If you’ve got somebody inserting themselves into your life uninvited with an opinion about something, they’re inserting themselves into a conflict that you’re having but you haven’t invited them and they habitually do this, probably eventually, no matter how long-suffering you are…you’re gonna snap and you’re gonna snap at them like a stray dog whose ears have been grabbed by a stranger, unannounced, uninvited. So, I think we get the meaning here of what wisdom is speaking into our lives today. With wisdom, I guess it’s a matter of whether or not were listening. And, so, the first thing we should do is just examine ourselves, inviting God into it. Are we…do we insert ourselves into places that we don’t belong way more often than we should? And why? Why? Why are we doing that? But if we can identify that we do…that we do do that and it’s probably not healthy and…and we kind of sort through maybe some of the whys we should also examine just how much energy it’s taking to be involved in these things. I mean seriously, because when we think about how much energy it’s taking then we start thinking about how much time it’s taking. And when we start thinking about how much time it’s taking, we’re talking about our very lives, how much of our very lives it’s taking to participate in this kind of behavior that very rarely ever ends well. I suppose it’s possible that you could grab a stray dog by the ear, unannounced, uninvited and surprise that dog and it doesn’t freak out but that is certainly not the norm. And, so, why do we insert ourselves and spend our lives, at least a portion of our…the gift of life on this planet in ways that aren’t going to work or end well and we already know it? And what if we took all that energy and applied it to something that would work out well in some facet of our lives? Imagine the energy we could reclaim by just staying out of things we don’t belong in and not having opinions about things that don’t have anything to do with us? It’s at least food for thought.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the Scriptures. Thank you for the advice from the lips of wisdom today directly aimed at us from thousands of years ago but landing squarely because it applies to us. This is timeless wisdom, and we live in a time where we need to consider what wisdom is saying. So, help us Holy Spirit to examine ourselves. Are we offering endless opinions about nearly everything? How much of our lives are we wasting doing that? Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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