Daily Bible Verses

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14...

For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one an other.  Mark 9:49–50 

Australian theologian Sally Douglas considers Jesus’ teachings about power:   

In Mark 9, we hear about an argument between Jesus’ male disciples. They have been disputing amongst themselves which one of them is the...

It is precisely the parts of the body that seem to be the weakest which are the indispensable ones.
 —1 Corinthians 12:22 

How ingeniously you get around the commandment of God in order to preserve your own traditions! 
—Mark 7:9 

Father Richard Rohr examines different ways of understanding and using power: 

The epigraphs above are two subtle scriptures that I...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-17-lamenting-church-economics-r25

James 2v1-9

1My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism. ...

Richard Rohr explores the ways we have used our God-given power for good and ill:  

Despite the many abuses of power documented throughout history, power itself cannot be inherently bad. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described as dynamis, which means power (Acts 10:38; 1 Corinthians 2:4–5). Jesus tells his disciples before his Ascension that “You will receive power when the...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-22-deep-roots-real-life-r25

But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.  They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-1-heroes-r25

Hebrews 11: 32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness...

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16)

Every day I would sit at a particular set of five-way traffic lights at the end of my road. It always seemed like an interminably long red light, but one day, it seemed even longer than usual, and I clearly heard God saying to me, “Richard, are you really going to be any happier on the other side of the traffic light?”   ...

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (1 John 4v16)

In his letters to a laywoman, Brother Lawrence shares: 

God does not ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time, a little love, sometimes asking for...

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

• In Genesis, God makes humans in his own image. Seeing a troublesome neighbour as someone bearing the image of God will change how we deal with them.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve are told to steward creation on God’s behalf. Understanding that creation is God’s handiwork will affect how we make use of its resources.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve listen to the voice of temptation and disobey...

Surrender yourself to the Lord, and wait patiently for him (Psalm 37:7)

In the mid-17th century, a man named Nicolas Herman joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris, France. Wounded from fighting in the European Thirty Years’ war, and suffering a sustained leg injury, he took the monastic name “Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.” He worked in the monastery kitchen and eventually became the head cook. Amid the chaos of food preparation and the clanging of pots and...

There was silence in heaven for about half an hour. (Rev 8:1)

Father Richard Rohr describes prayer as a practice of being present before the mystery of God.  

I believe that immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union. Naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence.

Prayer is the way to make contact with God, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or...

45 ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought...

He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
...

“Love your neighbour as yourself” Leviticus 19:18

Brian McLaren recalls how he felt led to reach out to local mosques in the days after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks: 

While praying, I felt a voice speaking, as it were, in my chest: Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisal. You must try to protect them. The next morning, I wrote and made copies of a letter extending,...

‘Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall...

Blessed are the pure of heart; for they shall see God. —Matthew 5:8  

Cynthia Bourgeault explains how understanding the ancient meaning of the word passion can help us gain emotional equilibrium:   
The tradition from about the 4th century on has been unanimous with what gets in the way of becoming pure of heart. I will quote directly from the Philokalia: “The problem with the passions is that they divide the heart.” The passions are the culprit that sucks the...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-18-burning-bushes-r25

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the...

‘And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?’   Matthew 6:28–30

Our clothes say a lot about us, whether we mean them to or not. In this case they’re symbolic not only of our...

Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘What is that in your hand?’. 
‘A staff,’ he replied. (Exodus 4:2)

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-15-what-is-that-in-your-hand-r25...

We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, (1 Cor 1:23)

Richard Rohr describes how Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ death critiques both the conservatives and liberals of his day: 

One of the dialectics that Paul presents is the perennial conflict between “conservative” and “liberal”, to use today’s terms. In his writings, Paul’s own people, the Jews, are the stand in for pious, law-abiding traditionalists; the...

“I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). 

The earliest documentary witness to Jesus Christ which we possess is the witness of mysticism; and it tells us, not about His earthly life, but about the intense and transfiguring experience of His continued presence, enjoyed by one who had never known Him in the flesh.  

Paul was a great contemplative: we have not only a sense of vivid contact with the Risen...

“Because of Christ, I now consider my former advantages as disadvantages.… All of it is mere rubbish if only I can have a place in him” (Philippians 3:7–8).

Richard Rohr writes of conversion as an experience of participating in divine reality: 
Before conversion, we tend to think God is out there. After transformation, God is not out there, and we don’t look at reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what I call the mystery of...

‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.’ Matthew 5:38–42

Jesus sits close to his disciples, teaching...

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.  (1 Timothy 1:15)

Richard Rohr explores how Paul’s mystical encounter with the risen Christ led him to embrace paradoxical thinking. 

Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus was in...