Who among us hasn’t seen the pain we can bring to ourselves and others by thoughtlessly saying the truth without humility, love, or wisdom. Those who accused Jesus of being a sinner, or worse (demon possessed) weren’t all wrong. They were followers of Moses. They had heard the rumors about Jesus’ birth, and were not […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A friend of this blog sent me a YouTube link to a brief argument against those who consider themselves more moral than atheists. The thoughts that followed went something like this: Religious people often claim that atheists have no morals because they have no moral guide. It went on to say, for instance, if you’re […]
In a recent post we revisited the thought that it’s hard to find many clear prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament–at least in the form that we might expect to find a predictive prophecy. Few of the prophecies we cite are as plain in their context as the vision of Micah who foresaw that […]
The Newtown, Connecticut, killing of 20 children and 6 adults once again raises mind-numbing questions. As is the case of any premature death, or tragic loss, there are no adequate answers for the grief and anger that follow. No attribution of mental illness, social pathology, cultural storming, demonizing, or finger-pointing can begin to fill the […]
How does the slowest shark in the world catch its food? Living in frigid, near-freezing waters, the Greenland shark swims at less than 1 mile an hour. It takes seven seconds for one full sweep of its tail to propel it forward. Researchers, however, have found remains of seals in the sharks’ stomachs. Those findings […]
