1John 3:16-20

Some consider the Oxford English Dictionary to be the authority on the English language.  There have been only two editions, each taking decades to complete.  The second edition, published in 1989, consists of 20 volumes plus 3 supplemental volumes.  The third edition in the works was started in the late 1990′s and isn’t expected to be completed till 2037.  It has as one of its stated purposes to provide “all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology” of words.

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1John 3:13-15

A lot of people hate surprise parties; at least that is what they say.  They happily walk into a situation that they think will be simple, quiet, or otherwise different from what really happens.  Sometimes the person walking in is so surprised their reaction is quite unexpected as well, including to themselves.  They don’t know how to react, what to say, or what to do.

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1John 3:11-12

Have you found yourself saying, “How many times must I tell you this?”  Sometimes it feels like something we are trying to teach to another is just not getting through.  We want to scream, “This is so obvious!  Why don’t you get it?”  Yet we also can all too often find others saying the same to us.

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1John 3:7-10

On a recent vacation we started to use a GPS device.  Overall we were quite pleased with the directions it gave.  But there was a catch; it had to know where we really wanted to go.  At one point we decided to go to a different destination.  Until we reprogrammed it to go to the new destination it kept trying to take us on the wrong route.  It was trying to lead us astray.  The human navigator says, “turn right” while the computer voice says, “turn left.”

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1John 3:4-6

Many advances in technology regarding earthquakes have taken place over the past 20 years.  One effective method, especially for tall buildings is the tuned mass damper.  As a building sways during an earthquake, the tuned mass damper absorbs some of the movement.  This slows and stops the building from swaying much sooner than if there was no damper.  The more in tune the damper is with the building the more effective it is.  But the longer the earthquake, the less effect the damper can have because it can only dampen so much shaking.

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1John 3:1-3

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”, is the well known 3rd law of Newtonian physics.  This law also exemplifies truths that go beyond science.  Some call it the Consequence Engine, “there are no uncaused effects”.  This idea is also seen in chaos theory in what is called the butterfly effect.  One simple action leads to another which leads to another and so on.

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1John 2

John cracks open two huge cans of worms in chapter two.  The first is sin, an issue common to all of us, regardless of whom we are, where or when we live.  The second, related issue is that of antichrist, which seems to me to be a bigger issue for us today than for John and his audience in the early church.  Both are founded in our ‘confession’, the reality of who we think Jesus really is and what He has done and how that confession works itself out in the real world as we relate to the people around us.  Take a moment now to read through 1John 2, jotting down what it is that you see, questions that may come to mind and anything else that strikes you as you read.  Look for the structure of the chapter, verses where John may be moving from one subject to another and identify the verses that seem to you to hang together as groups.

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