I love my hose. It’s about a foot long, and it’s attached to the faucet in the sink on my back porch. I love it because it saves my fingers. Apparently my fingers can’t deal with stress. When they feel overwhelmed, instead of talking about it like normal fingers, they crack and bleed and complain that nobody understands them. Lots of contact with water makes it worse, which brings us back to my hose. I can use my hose to spray the mud out of my children’s clothes so I don’t have to scrub them with my hands. I can use my hose to spray the undesirables out of Bailey’s unmentionables without even the danger of touching it. I can use my hose to clean out my mopping pad so I don’t have to do that with my hands, either. In short, my hose saves my fingers a lot of stress, which saves me a lot of pain. It’s amazing how one little thing can change our lives so much, isn’t it? For instance, take this sentence: “Jesus paid it for you.” Nobody in Pal understands that sentence. Lots of people I know in America understand it, and because of this gap in understanding the lives of those American people and these Pal people are vastly different. And not because of driving cars or wearing shirts or eating smoked rat. I’m talking about the life that matters–the life that you have if you understand that sentence, and the one that you’re lacking if you don’t. That sentence can change everything. In Pal, to right a wrong or restore a relationship requires a willing act on the part of the offender. It’s called “mələgəm.” It’s not a passive reception of punishment; it’s an intentional act of the will to fess up and make restitution. Because of this built-in understanding of how to make a wrong right, I pray that they will really grasp and identify the concept of the sacrificial system and that God prescribed a way to make their relationship right with Him. And I pray that they are quick to accept the fact that Jesus filled that prescription for them thousands of years ago. For Pal people it’s not about escaping punishment, and so it should be with all of us. Jesus didn’t die to let us off the hook; he died to make things right between us and God. He is our “mələgəm.”