Isn’t our modern, technological world wonderful! Today we will eat food that was in a garden ten thousand miles away a week ago. We can walk into a store and find electronic equipment that gets smaller, more efficient, and even cheaper with each new model. We are no longer bound by the sun in our activities, and if we choose to go to Wal-Mart at midnight to do our grocery shopping, there is nothing to stop us. Each day we hear news from the other side of the world almost instantaneously.

And yet, as the late engineer and inventor Charles F. Kettering noted, “You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside.”

Haven’t you seen the truth of Kettering’s words? A woman may have a friend tell her again and again about something that will revolutionize her life, and she may never accept the information, or a man may hear the gospel a thousand times before he obeys.

Since it sometimes takes us so long to understand, it is not surprising that the Bible is often repetitious. We have four accounts of the life of Christ, with some of the information from one book to another virtually the same. Some themes are hammered home again, and again. Writing to the church at Philippi, Paul said, “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe” (Philippians 3:1). Paul necessarily had to repeat himself from time to time, to keep the brethren “safe.”

You have heard these before. Have they gotten to the inside of your head?

“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37).

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39).

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).