Ezekiel 2:4-3:3
So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. Ezekiel 3:3
God commanded Ezekiel to swallow a bitter pill - a scroll containing words of lament and woe. He was "to fill (his) stomach with it" and share the words with the people of Israel, whom God considered "obstinate and stubborn ". One would expect a scroll filled with correction to taste like a bitter pill. Yet Ezekiel describes it being "as sweet as honey " in his mouth.
Ezekiel seems to have acquired a taste for God's correction. Instead of viewing His rebuke as something to avoid, Ezekiel recognized that what is good for the soul is "sweet ". God instructs and corrects us with loving kindness, helping us live in a way that honours and pleases Him.
Some truths are bitter pills to swallow while others taste sweet. If we remember how much God loves us, His truth will taste more like honey. His words are given to us for our good, providing wisdom and strength to forgive others, refrain from gossip, and bear up under mistreatment. Help us, God, to recognize Your wisdom as the sweet counsel it truly is.
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for...
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