I have a pastor friend who was almost killed in a horrible car accident a few years ago. As he tells it, he was fortunate to be alive but was sadly paralyzed from the neck down.
In the hospital, the doctors place him in one of those sandwich type contraptions that…
God is both good-hearted and strong-handed. We don’t have to be afraid. We really can trust. Fear sabotages all that trust by contracting both the internal and the external. Fear is the language of scarcity; of cramped, compressed living. All our attempts to “seize the moment” play off our anxiety that we…
When the world around us insists we be normal and behave like everyone else, what countermands those signals toward normality? Paul insists that the mind is the battlefield in the fight to resist being…
In English, we slur words and, over time, create new ones. You all became y’all and Christ’s Mass became Christmas. The same thing happened with the Old English phrase Godes sonde. It was a way of…
A high view of contentment was a consistent pattern across the ages. This, of course, does not mean that existence was easy and the streets filled with smiling citizens. Quite the opposite. Throughout most of history, life has been marked by…
For almost a month, I sat with Jeremiah, who sat with God. I let him do the talking. I read the same passage out of the third chapter of Lamentations every morning, until I almost knew it by heart…
Relationship in the body of Christ is where we grow best. Of course, we must pursue our relationship with God day in and day out as well: having a quiet time in the morning, an intentional time with God, and participating in regular worship. But community is vital for…
Jesus longed for his disciples to know from personal experience the joy of sharing in his Father’s love. It was this love that sustained Jesus in life and death; it would be this very same love that would sustain his friends in life and death as well…
Like wind and rain that erodes rock little by little, daily life exacts a toll. Resources are depleted. Buffers wear thin. Slights, once brushed off, laid aside to press on with the tasks at hand, now sting deeply as life closed in…
Sunday night. A group of friends huddle inside their upper room, doors locked, afraid. Can you blame them? Two days ago their friend and teacher was brutally and publicly executed. No wonder they’re hiding. I doubt I’ll ever understand the…