It's Blue Monday again - the (allegedly) worst day of the year. The festivities have gone, the winter hasn't and the New Year resolutions are unresolved.
Many people who have been taught the Bible as children have also been wedged full of statistics and verse numbers, books with the most chapters, middle verses and the like.
Outstanding in this series of not-very-useful information (for none of it is any use at all when trying to help someone understand God's word for them) is the shortest Bible verse. It is so short and memorable it has become a kind of moderate English expletive:
Many people who have been taught the Bible as children have also been wedged full of statistics and verse numbers, books with the most chapters, middle verses and the like.
Outstanding in this series of not-very-useful information (for none of it is any use at all when trying to help someone understand God's word for them) is the shortest Bible verse. It is so short and memorable it has become a kind of moderate English expletive:
JESUS WEPT.
Perhaps it's the text for Blue Monday?
Perhaps it's the text for Blue Monday?
Just as well, then, that this is not the shortest verse in the Bible at all. Only in the English Bible. Originally written in Greek, the shortest verse in the New Testament is found in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians: just fourteen Greek letters:
Translation : BE JOYFUL ALWAYS. 1 Thessalonians 5:16
It's also just the antidote for Blue Monday.
