Month: February 2018

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19:18 In Alcoholics Anonymous, I learned that an addict or alcoholic can have sobriety without recovery. This means that I can avoid active addiction to a drug without ever addressing any of the defects that led to addiction in the first place. In this condition, I may…
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Please show me your glory. Exodus 33:18 You will not be surprised to learn that, as a child, I loved the local Chinese food buffet. When I say that I loved Chinese food though, I am not saying that I wanted to know more about the Chinese culture or who made my food. When I…
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I said to them, “Let any who have gold take it off.” So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf. Exodus 32:24 When confronted with my toxic behavior, I have a couple of methods I employ to avoid liability. I either deflect responsibility, blaming some force…
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Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Exodus 32:19 Though I consider myself not to be an angry person, it is not unusual to find myself thinking or saying ridiculous things in my anger. When my kids are yelling at…
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The Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. Exodus 32:14 In my addiction, I found some comfort in blaming destiny, God, or anything beyond my control. I prayed for change, but I remained addicted. I certainly felt like my choices were not my own and frankly, it was…
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He received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. Exodus 32:4 When in medical school, I spent a month at a hospital in Haiti after which I felt my view of material possessions had changed forever. I returned home with the intention to live on…
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You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. Exodus 23:19 I knew that writing through the Old Testament was going to be a challenge as, frankly, it contains a lot of weird commands. What rules do we keep and what rules do we ignore? Are we being hypocritical by dismissing the commands…
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You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. Exodus 23:9 I recently met a young man who struggles in ways that are foreign to me. Though I could sympathize in general with the idea of destructive appetites, as I had no…
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You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3 In the hospital, on my first real world experience in medical school, I followed my doctor around like a puppy. I had no idea where to go or what I was doing. At least I knew that I knew nothing. In my condition, I relied…
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