What are we to make of joyless religion or faith? We’ve spent quite a bit of time emphasizing that the goal of Christ is love for our neighbor. So what about joy? What if we find that we don’t know what to make of the words of David when he sings about a kind of […]
In thinking back on the last conversation, it seemed to me that we actually stayed within ourselves as “friends” better in talking about different perspectives of prophecy (which can be such a divisive issue) than we did in dealing with the role and meaning of love. Ironically, sometimes love can be so intuitive that even […]
Earlier this week, an Egyptian army chief and Minister of Defense warned that the political crisis in Egypt could lead to the collapse of the state. Today more protests are planned after Friday prayers. Events resulting from mass protests to the policies of President Morsi (Mursi) is putting the spotlight on an ancient nation mentioned […]
Samson is one of the most interesting people of the Bible. Like the Philistine Goliath, he’s remembered for his legendary physical strength. After killing a lion with his bare hands, he took on a whole army with the jawbone of a donkey and, in his last act, pushed down the pillars of a huge temple […]
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 […]
