God is watching

Key verses

Proverbs 29:7 - The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

Hebrews 12:2 - Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Isaiah
56:1-2 - These two verses caught my attention.  I read them, and thought, 'that's kind of neat'.  To have the righteous die in order to be saved from evil sounds comforting.  This isn't always the case though, and I found out through Barnes' Notes on the Bible that Isaiah was likely talking about the massive slaughter of most of the devout Jews by Manasseh, the king of Israel at that time.  None of their fellow country men paid any attention to this wholesale killing, suggesting that those who merely watched and said nothing were okay with what was going on.  In the end, those who were still alive would eventually be conquered by an invading nation, but the righteous who had already been killed escaped this later terror.  I came away from studying that passage with the renewed sense that studying commentaries are important so we can see where the author is coming from (in this case, Isaiah).
58:4-6 - This passage reminds me of the Pharisees, who claim to follow the letter of the law, but completely miss the spirit or intent of the law.  Many of the Jews in Isaiah's time were following the law, taking pride in the fact that they fasted so often, and yet completely ignored the downtrodden and poor among them.  We aren't supposed to fast in order to draw the attention to ourselves.  Fasting should turn our attention away from us, toward God and toward our neighbours.  If fasting is making us self-centred, then we shouldn't be doing it.

Luke
Luke 24:26 makes reading the Old Testament on its own without our "Jesus-coloured" glasses a bit more difficult.  By "Jesus-coloured" glasses I mean that we are living in the year of our Lord, we have seen the coming of the Messiah and believe all the prophecies that were proclaimed about him.  Jesus himself told these two men on the road to Emmaus that the prophets spoke about himself.  However, if we are to understand the Old Testament as its authors understood it, we have to take a few steps back in history.  Clearly, there are references to Christ in the Old Testament, but where do we draw the line?  Many of the prophecies were not meant for our day, or for the early Christian church, but spoke to the ancient Israelites in their time.  Let's remember to use a bit of caution when interpreting the scriptures.

Hebrews
We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses!  I saw that and thought, 'that's kind of creepy'.  When you think about lots of invisible people watching you do your daily tasks, that can be encouraging or well... creepy.  Then I realized that, wait a minute, God is always watching me.  If I should care about anyone seeing what I do, it should be God.  But it is so easy to not pay him any mind, and continue doing what I do without a thought of what God is thinking about me.  Life application for this passage for today?  Remember that God is always watching!