The theme of Psalm 1 in one word is “happiness.” By happiness I mean blessedness. In the simplest terms, Psalm 1 prescribes the life that brings deep-seated joy. When we engage in surface conversation with each others, we often communicate that we wish happiness on them. We say things like, “Have a great day!” At the holiday time we say, “Merry Christmas.” That is, a happy, joy-filled Christmas to you and your family. Shortly after that, we tell people “Happy New Year.”

What if the parable on forgiveness had turned out differently? In Matthew 18, Jesus told a parable about a king who, while reconciling his accounts, discovered that one of his servants owed him ten thousand talents. That much money was well over 100,000 years of wages and, as one commentator points out, “probably represented more than all the actual coinage in circulation in most kingdoms at the time.”

Baseball has long been used as a metaphor for life. Through the seemingly infinite number of possibilities in a game, America’s pastime mirrors the countless possibilities in our own lives. The game will teach you, humble you, fill you with pride and joy, and sometimes break your heart. Baseball has lessons for all of us. What no one ever talks about are the life lessons found in the stands. Yet, there are just as many there as there are on the field.

The words of Scripture matter. In the passage where Jesus describes the model prayer, the disciples first asked Jesus to teach them about prayer. In asking, they didn’t say “teach us how to pray,” but instead “teach us to pray.” Like with the disciples, the biggest problem with the prayer life of most Christians is less that we don’t know how to pray; it’s more that we don’t pray.

Every time Dr. R. B. Ouellette has been at our church, he always asks my brothers and me the same question. Without fail, he asks, “Pastors’ kids are… what?” If we answer correctly, he gives each of us $20. Pastor Ouellette was a preacher’s kid himself, and he has been asking that same question for decades to the hundreds of pastors’ kids he has met.

“What is God’s will for my life?” We often put this question in the mouth of young people, like high school juniors or college freshmen. The question assumes that a person is on the front side of making major life decisions, and that as he matures he will learn to discern God’s will as he goes along. Here’s another question about God’s will, though, that you may have wondered, even if you have made those decisions already and are well underway into jobs, marriage, or parentin