• When Lightning Doesn't Strike | Posted by Mart De Haan on Jun 24 2008

    A caricature of God that many of us shed in our early-teens is that, if we do something really bad, we’ll get struck with lightning.
    We soon discover that it’s more likely for that to happen if we challenge a thunderstorm with a golf club, fishing rod, or umbrella.
    I remember the day my daughter and I [...]

  • Already But Not Yet | Posted by Mart De Haan on May 22 2008

    The phrase sounds self-contradictory. But I think it helps to capture what the Bible tells us about the forgiving rescue and kingdom of God.
    Many of us would say that we already know Christ, but not yet as we will in the future. The Apostle Paul teaches us to think this way in his famous [...]

  • Jesus and Sodom | Posted by Mart De Haan on May 20 2008

    No one could rightly accuse Jesus of having low standards. But he was accused in his day of being “a friend of sinners.”
    Religious leaders of the lakeshore community of Capernaum, for instance, would have criticized Jesus if he had befriended the kind of people who once lived on the shores of the Dead Sea, at [...]

  • Jerusalem and Sodom | Posted by Mart De Haan on May 19 2008

    None of us can afford to call good bad, or bad good. The prophet Isaiah says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and [...]

  • The Big Fish Story of Yom Kippur | Posted by Mart De Haan on Sep 01 2007

    On Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, a big fish story is read in synagogues. As worshipers fast, confess their sins, and reflect on the words of Moses and Isaiah, they listen once again to the account of a catch and release that is so amazing no one would believe it [...]