Kindness

I once bought a solar-powered, motion-sensing owl decoy to keep squirrels away from a bird feeder. When I bought the fake owl, I thought I was a genius. But after I saw the squirrels chatting with it as they ate the seeds, I realized I'd wasted my money.

When I think about the people I love the most, this is the Bible study I want to write the least. How does honoring God help us love everyone?

Biosphere 2 is the largest man-made, completely sealed ecosystem ever built. The designers placed rainforest, ocean, and desert terrain under three acres, like an industrial-sized aquarium designed for complete self-sufficiency. In the first mission, the crew divided into two groups that hated each other. Vandalism, lawsuits, and financial problems ended the second mission. We can engineer for self-sufficiency but haven't figured out how to end self-sabotage.

Every year, Judge Mark Ciavarella visited every school in the district to warn students of the county's zero-tolerance policy. He followed it up by sentencing thousands of them to serve time in for-profit youth detention centers. But then the truth came to light. He'd taken nearly a million dollars from the man who built the detention centers. So, the state Supreme Court vacated the sentences for the convictions he had handed down. Then, Judge Edwin Kosik sentenced him to 28 years in prison. Mark Ciavarella had no excuse.

In The Lord of the Rings, a hobbit named Sméagol kills his friend Déagol to get the One Ring from him. But after he gets his treasure, he becomes fixated on it. Even as the ring twists him into the creature Gollum, and lures him into darker and darker evil, he cannot escape its power. Even though he is a murderer, when we see how his own life has become thin and empty, we pity him.