Every person you ever meet will remember you by using a label. Could be Doctor or Firefighter or Tim's Dad or Cute Girl Who Works at the Gas Station or Woke Guy or Bigoted Lady. It may or may not be a flattering label, but it will be one they apply to you based on who or what your actions and words make you out to be. These are the names we bear, and the things we do will either honor or dishonor those names.

What label do you WANT to be known by? Why do you do to represent that label? If every thought and action are laid out, who or what do you represent? Because that's the only thing that matters.

Today: What does it mean to obey the Third Commandment?

While they are beautifully made and often colored a radiant gold-yellow, it is not appropriate to use a rubber chicken to represent the LORD your God. The LORD can't be contained or described by a rubber chicken.

Is it absurd to think that you would do that? Perhaps. But when you look at the whole of your life, how often do other things, people, or pastimes take the place of God? Perhaps not by eliminating what is holy from your life, but by edging it out until you're left holding onto the equivalent of a rubber chicken instead of the LORD who can set you free?

Today we talk about the Second of the Ten Commandments. And baseball. Really.

So many people believe that the Ten Commandments are an important part of life, but so few of them can tell you what they are. There are a lot of reasons for that, including the fact that there aren't ten commandments and the fact that different faith groups read the same scriptures and separate them in different ways, leading to disputes about which one is more important or whether some parts are one command or many. And when we strive to make a certain set in a certain order be the one that we want to go with, we are faced with the reality that the Bible lists them twice and the two don't match. Different order, different wording - does that change what they mean?

We're going to spend the next weeks breaking down and understanding these commands which have molded a significant part of our world for thousands of years. We'll start with the first commandment - as soon as we figure out what it is...