There are two lists below. The first is a list of some of the principal topics that have dominated the "News" and political debate the past couple years. The second is a series of Bible verses - mostly the words of Jesus, himself, with a few extras thrown in for good measure. Your job is to match each of the subjects in the first list with a Bible verse (or possibly more than one) in the second list that suggests an appropriate response to it. Here goes.
1. International Diplomacy 2. Pre-emptive War 3. Homosexuality 4. Stem-cell Research
5. Capital Punishment 6. Social Security 7. National Debt 8. AIDS
9. Taxation 10. Evolution vs Creation 11. Abortion 12. Medical Insurance
13. Lobbyists 14. Environmental Protection 15. Terrorism 16. Immigration
17. Separation of Church and State
a. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth... Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called the children of God (Matthew 5.5 and 5.9).
b.When you are having a party for lunch or supper, do not invite your friends, your brothers or other relations, or your rich neighbors; they will only ask you back again, and so you will be repaid. But when you give a party, ask the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind; and so find happiness. For they have no means of repaying you; but you will be repaid on the day when good men rise from the dead (Luke 14.12-14).
c. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matthew 5.16).
d. This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men (Mark 7.6-7).
e. If any man desires to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all (Mark 9.35).
f. The aim and object of this command is the love that springs from a clean heart, from a good conscience, and from faith that is genuine. Through falling short of these, some people have gone astray into a wilderness of words. They set out to be teachers of the moral law, without understanding either the words they use or the subjects about which they are so dogmatic (1 Timothy 1.5-7).
g. Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, but you have omitted the weightier demands of the Law - justice, mercy, and good faith. It is these you should have practiced, without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel!
h. You must face the fact: the final age of this world is to be a time of troubles. Men will love nothing but money and self; they will be arrogant, boastful, and abusive; with no respect for parents, no gratitude, no piety, no natural affection; they will be implacable in their hatreds, scandal-mongers, intemperate and fierce, strangers to all goodness, traitors, adventurers, swollen with self-importance. They will be men who put pleasure in place of God, men who preserve the outward form of religion, but are a standing denial of its reality (2 Timothy 3.1-5).
i. And why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say? (Luke 7.46).
j. By their fruits shall you know them. Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. It will be the ones who do the will of my Father in heaven (Matthew 7.20-21).
k. Therefore, whatever you would have others do for you, do it for them. This is the Law and the prophets (Matthew 7.12).
l. Would any of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost, to see whether you could afford to finish it? If you lay the foundation and then aren't able to complete it, others will laugh at you. "There is the man," they will say, "who started to build, but could not finish it." Or what king will march into battle with another king without first sitting down to consider whether with ten thousand men he can face an army coming at him with twenty thousand. If he cannot, then long before the enemy approaches, he sends envoys and asks for terms (Luke 14.28-32).
m. How think you? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, doesn't he leave the ninety and nine, and go into the mountains to seek the one that has gone astray? (Matthew 18.12).
n. Why are you looking at the speck in your brother's eye, and not considering the plank that is in your own? How can you talk about removing the speck from his eye when you have the plank in your own? You hypocrite! First, get the plank out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to get the speck out of your brother's eye (Matthew 7.3-5).
o. Those who have come to believe in God should see that they engage in honorable occupations, which are honorable not only to themselves, but also useful to their fellow man. But steer clear of foolish speculations, genealogies, quarrels, and controversies over the Law; they are unprofitable and pointless (Titus 3.8-9).