Category: Christian Spirituality
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What Faith Really Means (AKA Ordinary Trust and That Time Jesus Moved Away from Home)
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,…
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“If You Are”: What the Temptation of Jesus Reveals About Our Deadliest Trap
“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…
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Out of the Water: How History Culminates in Jesus’ Baptism
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 —…
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Life Between the Holidays
Holidays. I think about the word as I mouth the lyrics to “O Come Emmanuel,” a nine-hundred-year-old Christmas carol I’m listening to today because I’m already scripting a Christmas program for Soli Deo Gloria Ballet. Holidays. High points. Holy days. Life swirls around them like a river around jutting pinnacles of rock. They direct the…
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Getting Real about Wrath: An Invitation from a (Justifiably) Angry God
But when [John] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I…
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Preparing the Way: Why “Reconcile” Must Be the Chief Cry of Our Hearts
“For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Matthew 3:3, KJV) “And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.” (Luke…
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Make His Paths Straight: Getting Our Hearts Ready for the King
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”…
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Light of the World, Salt of the Earth
Excerpted from LETTERS TO A SAMUEL GENERATION by Rachel Starr Thomson Available in multiple formats here. “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden underfoot of men. “Ye…
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To “Repent” Is to Hope: The Real Meaning of Jesus’ Call to Repentance
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:1-2, ESV) To many of us I think the word “repent” conjures up visions of angry Baptists picketing funerals or rock concerts, or maybe of old-school preachers raining down fire and brimstone…
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The Light
I wanted to see. Should blindness be borne with religious resignation and patience? Perhaps, but I could not bear it thus. At the very least, as I sometimes thought, it ought eventually to become natural to me—a thing as unremarkable as the night which follows day, which always has, which always will. But it could…