Matthew 5-6

These two chapters tell a lot of what not to do. The beatitudes and commandments are here.

I think that when I pray, I "babble on like the pagans". The Lord's prayer is so simple, yet it really does cover all of the bases. My church rarely prays the Lord's prayer because it has become so rote for most people. We learned this prayer as a child, and can recite it in the middle of mass chaos without a second thought about it. I think I need to make it my goal to pray in a succinct yet meaningful way. Blake says our dinnertime prayer most of the time and he says the same thing every night, "Dear God, thank you for this food and for this drink. Thank you for us being together for dinner tonight, and thank you for everything else good that happened today. Amen." I think it has become rote to him. It has become rote to me... I typed that w/o even having to stop and think.

I also found the definition of adultery interesting. Although it says if a man looks at a woman... but I'm sure it would go both way. If I look at a man other than my husband with lustful thoughts, then I am committing adultery. I don't think that I do that... sure I look at other men and think how gorgeous they are, but I don't think about sleeping with them. (Well, other than Carter Oosterhouse and Ty Pennington... both of whom Michael said I can sleep with if they will do work on the house in return. LOL!!)

Our world is SO different from the world that Jesus walked in. I wonder how these commandments would be written today? It is not righteous to marry a divorced person... yet there are people married all the time to people who are divorced (it has happened in my own family). Matthew states that marrying a divorced woman is committing adultery.

This is something I would actually like to discuss with my pastor, or someone who knows the Bible much better than I do. Are we to take the commandments as they are written? Or is there freedom to skew them? And if there is freedom... then why aren't ALL of the commandments skewed? Thou shalt not kill.... this has pretty much stayed the same. It is wrong to kill. Although, I guess that is skewed too.... criminals who get the death penatly are killed legally. If you kill someone in self defense, the law doesn't consider it wrong. Of course... those are man's laws. Maybe if Jesus were here today, he'd be having fits for all of the skewing of the commandments.

Maybe if we start living the commandments as they are written, our world would be a better place.