Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

One thing that has helped me a bit is to remind myself that I should not descend into worrying about other people's relationships with others. I'm not saying we shouldn't care. Certainly, if the opportunity is given to us to help a relationship between others we should do so. However, the relationships of others to others is ultimately between themselves and God. If I find myself getting a little too concerned about the relationship between two other people (neither of whom is myself), there is a simple reminder I give myself. It's this: "I'm not so perfect that I should worry about this person's relationship with that person." I add "Instead I need to focus on my relationship with God, and my relationships with others." This is a very good and very timely reminder. We each have our own relationship with God, and our own relationships with others to focus on. The time spent on those is infinitely more useful than any time spent worrying...

I'm now getting to the close of my 3rd time reading through the Bible. I got a lot out of it, but it took me much longer than a year, and I'd like to shorten that for the next time. I also had the problem of not making a consistent mix of Old Testament and New Testament, and wound up with lots of extra Old Testament left over at the end that I needed to read without the New Testament. There are many 1-year Bible reading plans. The problem is that many of these require a lot of hopping around in the Bible, necessitating always having plan handy, as well as possibly multiple bookmarks. Instead, I wanted something fairly simple. Previously I'd been doing a bit from the Old Testament and a bit from the New Testament each day, but without any prescribed amounts. This meant I was reading unevenly between the two, and wound up with a lot of Old Testament left over at the end. Reading x number of verses a day doesn't always help either, because some verses are so much lon...