Woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of an unseasonal thunderstorm. It’s unusual but not unheard of to have lightning and thunder with snow on the ground, in the middle of a Midwest winter. The rumbling skies reminded me of how an unseasonal storm was once used as a wake-up call […]
When a troubled Solomon tried to make sense of the times and seasons of life, he observed that “there’s a time to plant, and a time to harvest (Ecc 3:2). Got to thinking about how much of following Christ involves personally planting seeds of faith, hope, and love in the God whose story includes large […]
How can God allow the kinds of suffering and loss that are happening in and around us? In the darkness we hear a whisper that tells us that if we were God, we’d never let this happen. Repeatedly, doubts grow out of the thought that there are only 2 possibilities: Either God is good, but […]
In a comment on riddle-like proverbs that can be turned around in our minds and looked at from many directions, SteveWV yesterday posted at 7:20a.m. a poem called The Elephant and the Blind Men. It ends like this: And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff […]
Proverbs are short memorable sayings designed to help us think about what it means to live wisely. In that light, we’ve probably heard it said that a proverb is not a promise but rather a general rule about how life usually works. When we say that “a stitch in time saves nine” we are not […]
One of the questions that keeps coming up in our conversations is whether an emphasis on uncondemning mercy, love, and compassion will leave us with an unhealthy devaluation of moral law, spiritual virtue, and social order. Who among us hasn’t by now seen or read the drama of life that gives us the answer? The […]
In these health-minded times, we may have lost a proverb. It’s been a while since I’ve heard, “Whatever you do, keep your eye on the donut… and not on the hole.” Maybe switching to bagels could help us recover one of life’s most important lessons. From the beginning of time it’s been an issue. We […]
When my wife and I walked into the small, darkened auditorium, we saw something that has been almost as unforgettable as the documentary we had come to see. Scattered and spread out among the many empty seats, a few parents sat with children in a manner that, as I recall, looked more like a visit […]
