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The Sabbath meant more than just taking a day of rest for the Israelites. Keeping Sabbath, according to Moses, meant keeping the tribal identity of the Israelites, which was at the core of bonding the chosen people of the living God.

At times, even when people realize and acknowledge the fact that their habits are destructive to their lives, they still strongly resist changing the habits, because change is perceived as giving up stability and comfort in their lives.

Unlike humans, our animal friends are often “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” meaning that their love almost never changes. In a way, our animal friends bring a glimpse of divine presence into our lives.

The Greek word for sin is hamartia, meaning “failing to hit the mark.” Hamartia could easily be translated as a mistake or failure. As we all know, both mistakes and failures are redemptive. In this context, Jesus proclaimed that “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

They claimed to believe in Jesus, they even claimed to experience his presence in their daily lives, and they further claimed to have met Jesus! Yet, the way they lived did not change at all.

“You can’t see the forest for the trees.” This often means that people fail to see the larger picture, because they are focused on a small and narrow spot. According to Emanuel Swedenborg, people are innately focused on the materialistic and physical way of living and being, and thus are not capable of perceiving the spiritual reality within which their true existence resides.

It seems that there is definitely something special about being Jesus’s disciples, because they were given the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, while others were not. The disciples symbolize the spiritual preparedness for the spiritual journey.

Jesus not only engages in conversation with the Samaritan woman, but also leads her to the teaching of spiritual truth about eternal life. But why her?

Being “born again,” which sounds impossible when taken literally, focuses on the transformation of human mentality (or spirituality), while being “born from above” focuses on the necessity of acknowledging the truth that life is from God, and we are just vessels that receive and contain the life from God.

Having faith in Jesus or in any religion is not about saying certain things because they are considered true and correct by others, but about actually knowing what one believes with experience and understanding. The reality of faith does not dwell in knowing the right things, but arises from living what is true to one’s heart.