In the sermon on the mount, Jesus tells his followers (and all of us) that they (we) are the salt of the earth. Looking at all the things that salt does and the essential nature of this, Jesus was telling us something rather important.

People are complicated, wonderful, mean, beautiful, ugly, loving, angry, and sweet things all at different times. We all have backgrounds that no other human could ever fully understand. We all experience life in so many different ways, one story, or one victory, or one mistake I made could not come close to explaining who I am. We need to remember that when we look at others.

It is easy to think of practice as something we do for only certain skills in life. We practice playing musical instruments, we practice athletic team sports, we practice when we learn how to play a new game. Practice should be much more than that, we just don't usually use that word in other areas of life. Working to change or improve is practice, or it should be.

The Lord has asked us to act differently and forgive. He has asked us not to fight back. The Lord is telling us to leave the justice and the anger and the blame to him. We should forgive, always.

The crooked paths we all have or may strayed on will be made straight as we repent and find our way back.  The rough parts of our personalities or the rough parts we cause though sinning will be made smooth.

“It’s time to liberate our dusty ideas about what friendship is and who it’s for. We’ve gotten so used to the idea of moving through life with just our family and a tight circle of friends that we’ve lost our ability to imagine a wider web of connection encompassing a gorgeous mess of layers and levels of closeness. What if neighbor is just another word for friend?” - Shannan Martin

Whether it is media, food, people we spend time with, or any activity, we need to watch the type of things we consumed, how much we consumed, and for what reason we consumed it. Is it real and filling our soul, or is it temporary and “like a dream” that has no good effect on us.

I never knew my grandfather on my father’s side. He passed away 11 months before I was born. I don’t remember my father, or anyone for that matter, talking about him unless it was a more formal conversation about family history. I don’t ever remember my grandmother talking about him at all. I really do not know anything about him. I’ve been trying to learn more recently.

We all want to do businesses with companies that share our core values. In some cases that is not always possible, but the more we allow others to see our core values in action, the more we have potential for growth.

We sometimes look at getting our voice heard as a way to combat the others around us who we see as being wrong, or full of wrath themselves, when we should be looking for a way to not stir up wrath inside our own minds. “Turneth away wrath,” is just as much an internal struggle as it is a struggle with those around us.

What Christ presented in the sermon on the mount is that we must do much more than just follow that law. He gave us a much higher law. A law that is written on our hearts.

In our modern culture most of the wheat or grains we interact with are in sliced bread we bought in a plastic bag from the grocery store or more recently had delivered directly to our house. Our interactions with wheat are in the form of toast or a sandwich. We no longer have much context in how the harvesting or threshing works. The people in Christ’s time did, so those listening to John the Baptist speak here would have all understood.

Most people have no idea about what may be the most important part of the Cola Story. Someone needs to make a movie out of the facts I’ll share with you below. This is a good vs. evil story.

The bible or scriptures Jesus was referring in John 5 were what we would now call the Old Testament, or at least something close to it. When Jesus was speaking, Paul had not yet been converted. Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew were still learning, they had not written any of this down yet. None of the letters, or epistles, we now study in our New Testament had been written. As a matter of fact, the churches the letters were written too did not even exist yet.

The man Jesus healed on that sabbath day in the book of John had been there at this pool for 38 years. Waiting and trying for 38 years. He must have become very bitter, tired, and angry at the world and at God in the process.

They are the future leaders, bishops, stake presidents, and teachers of the church. The are the future teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and leaders in all aspects of our world. There is so much to distract them, and the time goes by so fast.

Planning is not going to give me one more minute of time. Being more productive just gives me more to do and I miss the weeks ticking by.

We will never figure it all out. We will never find a place where we agree with everything inside some organization, or some faith, or some group of people. We will never know it all in some subject, or with some skill, or in a profession. You’ll never fully understand your partner or your children. You can never read all the books and learn all the skills. You will never feel like you have arrived.

He called them to be “fishers of men.” I do not know, and it is not recorded, but I’m sure the conversation was at least a little more than just 3 words.

Good things happen to evil people. Tragedies and small troubles happen to the best of people.