Category: Christian Spirituality

Like the first blessing in the Beatitudes, the second appears at first to be nonsense. “Happy are those who mourn” is a contradiction in terms. Jesus, I’m convinced, did this on purpose: he chose terms that were meant to shock and bewilder before giving way, upon closer inspection, to hope.   Like poverty of spirit,…

When Moses went up into a mountain, he delivered the Law, summed up in the Ten Commandments. In biblical symbolism, ten is a number of completion: it presents a finished form, in the case of the Law a rounded righteousness. Jesus also climbed a mountain and delivered a torah–a “teaching” or “law”–but he began his…

When Moses declared some fourteen hundred years before Jesus walked the earth that God would “raise up a prophet like unto me,” it’s doubtful anyone thought he was talking about a specific person to come. Moses, the deliverer of Israel and the one through whom God gave the law and instated the Sinai Covenant, was…

Matthew 4:23-24 gives the shape of Jesus’s early ministry: Jesus was going all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. Then the news about Him spread throughout Syria. So they brought to Him all those who were afflicted, those suffering…

In September 2014 I had a sudden cardiac arrest in a Canadian Tire parking lot. No cause was ever found, but God provided immediate care and I lived through the experience with minimal damage, though I am told I was technically dead for twelve minutes. The hospital where I recovered, Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor,…

Matthew 4:18-22 tells the story of the day Jesus called his first disciples: While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you…

If you grew up evangelical, you know that the gospel is this: Jesus died for our sins so we can go to heaven when we die. The problem is, that’s not true. Or rather, it IS true, but it’s not the gospel–not the whole gospel, not even really the point of the gospel. The gospel…

It’s easy to think of the life of Jesus as one long list of supernatural extravagances: Be born of a virgin, check. Be baptized during a heavenly visitation, check. Go toe-to-toe with Satan, check. And then it’s ministry, miracles, save the whole world, check. Oh, and that time Jesus moved away from home. You know,…

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. After He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. Then the tempter approached Him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’” (Matthew 4:1-3, HCSB) For years I…

After Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him. And there came a voice from heaven: “This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him! (Matthew 3:14-17, HCSB) This —…