Although I have been reading the Bible almost every day for eight decades now, I still am amazed when suddenly a verse I have read a jillion times seems to jump off the page and scream, “Look at me!”

One day recently my daily devotional included 2 Peter 1:5-7, a relatively simple admonition that lists several qualities all of us who serve Christ should be trying to develop. Unlike many scriptures that vary so much in different Bible versions, Peter’s list of desirable traits is almost identical in most of the versions I checked.

To our faith, Peter tells us, we need to add goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. The word that arrested my attention that day was “self-control,” a character quality that nowadays seems to be alarmingly in short

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