*** Isaiah 44:3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. 4 They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams. 5 One will say, ‘I belong […]
How often have we heard it? I’d believe if God gave me a sign or wrote something across the sky so I could know He exists.” We’re not all like Thomas who got a first-hand experience of the Risen Lord. John 20:27 Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach […]
What does following have to do with faith? Well, what is following but one person acting upon a decision to go in the same direction as the leader? A Christian, really, is nothing but a Christ follower in the great tradition of the earliest disciples. Matthew 4:18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of […]
If there was a top 10 list of reasons why people reject Christianity, the idea of its being a “patriarchal religion” would make the top 10, probably even the top 5. No one accuses Jesus of misogyny, but He’s been caricatured as not being a manly man anyway. He gently holds lambs and no macho […]
Suffering. It’s awfully hard to explain in life. In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker asked, Where was God when the mass shooting happened?” It’s as if God doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or revels in mass murder. Questions of that sort provide no comfort whatsoever to grieving […]
If people have a sensitive queasy-factor, parts of the Bible can be a tough read. All the blood makes their stomachs turn. Most of us don’t like blood a whole lot. We’re glad we have it pumping through a working heart to operate a functioning brain and entire pulmonary and vascular system. We get a […]
In the Life of Pi (the movie we’ve been using for our 40 days of hard questions “Why?”), the young boy Pi asks the priest, “Why would a god do that? Why would he send his own son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people?” For an evangelist or a pastor, this is the […]
Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.” (Hosea 14:2) Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. 5 I will be […]
Couldn’t Jesus have come just as a spiritual being or a vision and been everywhere, all at once? In the movie, Life of Pi, that we have been using as our launch pad for 40 hard questions of Why for Lent 2018 devotionals, the priest elaborates on his Sunday school answer: “Because He loves us. […]
We’re living in a day and age of “identity politics.” A time in which people gather with affinities for those who are like them and pinpoint others by their affiliations. In one sense, this labeling is terribly wrong, making the assumption that everyone who identifies with a certain category, organization, or ethnicity is the same. […]
