Above all else

I work in the financial industry, and spending time thinking about where to invest my savings is something of an occupational hazard.  Just the other evening, my wife and I were discussing whether we should put money in this investment or the other, reading up on the internet and weighing the pros and cons.  We narrowed it down to two possibilities and then we went to sleep. The next morning, we chatted about it a bit more, decided on one of the two, and then I went to do my daily devotions.  I happen to be going through a "Bible in a Year" plan with my daughter, and that day's reading was from the books of Ruth and Luke.  In a nutshell, Ruth's husband passes away, leaving her a widow, and she follows her mother-in-law Naomi (who is also widowed) back to Israel.  In those days, widows were in a pitiable condition, because they could not find work. But God's law is good.  Leviticus 23:22 says "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to th...

I love words.  I studied the sciences all through secondary school and junior college, for the purely pragmatic reason that (at least to me) they were the "easiest" to study for, since each question tended to have a definitive answer.  But my favourite subject, from primary school onwards, had always been English, especially composition, and later on, the General Paper.  So when it came to selecting my course of study at university, I chose to read law.  I would have been quite happy with my second choice, which was communication studies, with a view to one day being a print journalist.  In a different world, perhaps I would be writing this blog, not for fun, but for work! This week, I  heard this said, about words, by the 17th century scholar Robert Leighton: "Good words do more than hard speeches, as the sunbeams, without any noise, will make the traveler cast off his cloak, which all the blustering winds could not do, but only make him bind it cl...