Daily Reflection with Aneel Aranha

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls. If you knew that something terrible was going to happen in the future, what would you do with the knowledge? If, for instance, you knew that a famine was imminent; or if you knew a typhoon of great magnitude was gonna hit your city; or if you knew that a tsunami was going to wash over your town; what would you do? Either stock up or sell off, r

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. Among the many scary things that Jesus said, what he said in the passage we are reflecting upon today must have been one of the mo

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”   Today’s story, where Jesus speaks of a widow tithing, is quite extraordinary for the lessons it teaches. See, widows were not required to tithe — on the contrary, they were to be provided for. God has a soft corner in his heart for widows and orphans, and the psalmist puts it beautifully when he says, “A father to the fatherless, and a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling” (Psalms 68:5). He warns people against taking “advantage of the widow or the fatherless” (Exodus 22:22), and he constantly exhorts people to provide for them along with the poor (see Deuteronomy 14:28-29).    The woman that Jesus saw putting her coins into the treasury was not only a

  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord a

Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.” E very day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” On first reading it might seem like Jesus is targeting commercial enterprise done in the name of religion, but it is a little more than that. Both statements are from the Old Testament. The first statement about the temple being “a house of prayer” is from Isaiah 56:7 where God promises to bring all those who seek him to salvation. This is what the verse says. “These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifi

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”   There are three times that Scripture says that Jesus wept. We find one reference in John 11:35; another in Luke 19:41, the passage we just read; and a third in Hebrews 5:7. John 11:35 simply says, “Jesus wept.” That, for those of you who like trivia, is the shortest verse in Scripture. On that occasion, Jesus wept when he met Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, who were mourning the death of their brother. He wasn’t weeping because Lazarus had died—Jesus knew he would bring him ba