It is Monday, January 2, 2017. A new year has begun. I am human, therefore, I feel compelled to do something different with this new year. Something to improve my life. Something to make a change in how I live and work and have my being. Yesterday, I preached a sermon that borrowed the text from Mark 12:28-34. It is Mark's account of the scribe asking Jesus which commandment is the greatest. The response - The Lord our God is one. You will love the Lord your God with all that you are. The second is that you will love your neighbor as yourself. I say that I borrowed that text because I used it to talk about how we can improve ourselves using Jesus' description of self - heart, soul, mind, and body. In order to connect with the contemporary listener, I used the most familiar understanding of those English words instead of the Greek/ANE understanding. It was my hope to offer direction for listeners, and myself, to pursue improvement in one or more of the 4 arenas of self. ...