Building on the Foundation

Marriage is many things, but unlike the way it is practiced today, it is not a legal contract between two parties that can be nullified on a whim simply by filing the right piece of paperwork. In fact, marriage as practiced in the Bible really has no paperwork at all.  If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably heard it said many times that marriage is a covenant and perhaps assumed that covenant is simply the Biblical word for an agreement or a contract of some type.  A covenant is a little more than that, however, when you consider that, for a covenant you are putting something forward to guarantee the fulfillment of the contract.  You have to put up collateral, and the collateral of a covenant is your own life.   In a covenant, one party offers the covenant, and they can either offer terms with the covenant, or, as God did with Abraham, the offering party can leave all of the requirements on their own end to perform.  The accepting party either agrees to the...

  B.O. What do you smell like to other people? Do you smell bad? We wear deodorant, perfume, cologne, and all kinds of other things to avoid the occurrence where someone might accidentally smell a bad odor emanating from our person. We want to smell good to others, especially in a world where the natural odor of the body is all but forgotten.  Just like animals, humans emit pheromones, and those natural odors contain information about us that other humans can interpret. Specific odors carry information about our physical health, our sexual readiness, and even about whether we are male or female.  We wear deodorant, perfume, and cologne to cover natural body odors—because in today’s world, even our God-designed scent is considered unpleasant.  But what if that effort to cover up applies not just physically, but spiritually?  What if, without realizing it, we are masking our spiritual scent in order to blend into the world? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful fo...