In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes the mystery of his spiritual awakening. Of a certain sunny day, he writes, “When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor […]
Others had said something similar. But it was during a dark time in my life that, through the novels and Unspoken Sermons of Scottish author and poet, George MacDonald (1824-1905), I began to take to heart— what I now believe to be some of the most helpful counsel and caution I’ve ever heard: If, while reading […]
As much as I don’t like snakes… one more thought. In the Garden, the fiction sounded believable. The words, logic, and appearance of the Serpent— encouraged trust rather than alarm. The prelude to the sequel is easy to forget. An embittered enemy, disguised in the appearance of a pre-cursed creature, seemed to offer a better hope […]
Mark Twain is one of those attributed with the quote that “Although history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes.” The truth goes deeper than words or events. When the Word of God was tested by Satan in the wilderness(Matthew 4:4) (Deuteronomy 8:3), the last Adam was challenged to do for himself what the first Adam […]
I began today in an updated edition of Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotional. The text is “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you.” Psa 55:22. The words that followed were hard for me to deny. We can care too much. The thought surprised me by hiding behind the assumption that we can never […]
This Spring, a Robin built her nest in this wreath on our front door. I watched as she wove the nest, mudded it, and then made it into a soft bed for her family to be. Over the next few days I got pictures of three blue eggs and then babies barely able to lift their heads. But four […]
Those of us who have struggled with mental illness, either in ourselves or in someone we love, have learned what it means to be not quite right. And when we read the story of the Bible we discover that what we think of as troubled thinking— is a hint of something common to all of […]
Authority issues are hard to avoid and easy to confuse. According to the Gospels, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Give us … forgive us … lead us… deliver us…” he gave us verbs in the imperative mood. When he prayed from his cross, “Father forgive them they don’t know what they are doing”, […]
At telling moments our Accuser has made his case for why people like us shouldn’t trust our God— and when that worked—why we shouldn’t believe that our God could possibly love people like us. In both cases the Great Divider appeals to our imagination. First he stretches our minds to believe that the source of […]
When Jesus was crucified, he suffered under signage that bothered the religious leaders of Israel. Pilate the Roman governor of Judea had written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” But when the chief priests saw the sign, they objected saying, “Don’t write King of the Jews, but instead, […]
