Update on what I'm doing and what I'm reading

I just finished the new Nevada Barr novel Borderline. It is set in the Big Bend National Park in Texas. All of Barr's Anna Pigeon books are set in National Parks. Pigeon is a park ranger. In this book she is on vacation. After killing a man in self defense, her head is all messed up. Her husband Paul takes her to Big Bend to recuperate.

BUT recuperation is not to be. There is suspense from page 1 and the action never stops. There is, of course, a dead body. Then a couple more murders, an unfaithful husband, a cow named Easter. Yes, I said a cow named Easter. And a newborn baby that Anna delivers on the banks of the Rio Grande. The worst nightmare of all is, someone wants that baby dead.

OK. That is what I've finished reading. Now a peek into what I'm writing.
I've finished the second Bible Study lesson in Jeremiah based on Chapters 3 and 4. God gives the prophet Jeremiah the duty of telling the people of Judah that God is angry with their sins and the future holds destruction for the land.

God is angry because His people have turned away from Him and now worship idols. Exodus 20 quoting from the New Century Version of the Bible: "You must not have any other gods except me (v.3). And v. 4 "You must not make for yourselves an idol that looks like anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the water below the land."

The people disobeyed God and now they would be punished.

What is the lesson for us today? We don't have idols! We don't? Yes we do! Anything we put before God is an idol. A trip to the lake on Sunday is something we put before worshiping God. If we worship material things so much that we forget that God gave them to us, they become idols. A person, a car, a job. Any of those things can become idols if we put them before God.

We do all these things, yet when we have problems, we go running to the preacher begging, "Pray for me. Pray for me." God expects faithfulness and the rewards are blessings.