One of our friends asked a good question in response to the last post. Does anyone have a valid reason for being angry with God? Our answer to that question, as well as our thoughts about “anger with God” may depend on the extent to which we are inclined to “be right” or to “do […]
Is it safer to take out our anger on people or God? If we discover that we really do have a beef with the Almighty, are we wise to keep our feelings to ourselves? The Hebrew Scriptures give us plenty of examples. Let’s think about a couple. Jonah was a prophet who was angry with […]
Hopelessness can come from a lot of different directions. Sometimes an inclination to depressive moods reflects an inherited factor; or changes in our bodies. Feelings of despair can also reflect real or imagined loss, or the lingering trauma of birth, battle, or accident. Feeling like we have no hope can also reflect the results of […]
It seems increasingly clear that wisdom involves the ability to see what matters in the middle of confusing and conflicting information. But what keeps unnerving me is the realization that when it comes to seeing what matters, it’s so often something that cannot be seen by our natural eyes and understanding. We talked about this […]
Conventional wisdom reminds us that there is often more than one way to do something. The point is that it doesn’t make much sense to get stuck on our own way of how we want to do it if we agree on what it is that needs to get done. Yet to make the point, […]
Relationships are like chemical reactions. Just as hydrogen and oxygen need one another to become the H2O of water, so we need at least one other person to show who we are and to become who we were made to be. Doesn’t our own life, and the whole story of the Bible say that we […]
Marcion of Sinope’ was a Bishop of the early Church (2nd century) who had a hard time reconciling the Gods of the Old and New Testaments. Without completely rejecting the Jewish Scriptures, he apparently found a way of seeing the God of the Jews as different than the God revealed in Christ. Like so many […]
Who can measure the importance of the statement: “The Word became flesh, and lived among us full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)? Think about the implications of a statement that does not simply say that “The Word was full of truth”, or that “The Word was full of grace.” Imagine what Jesus might have […]
Am guessing that when you see the following short list of famous pairs, you will think of other duos that have a way of doing together what neither could do on their own. In addition to bacon and eggs, there are, Sherlock and Watson Tom and Huck Abbot and Costello Batman and Robin Lewis and […]
When are we really happy? What do we thoroughly enjoy doing? Under what conditions are we tempted to say, “this is heaven”. I ask because I’ve been thinking about what David said about “Delighting in the LORD.” In the 37th Psalm he said, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires […]
