acts on Chaos

It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

An attempt to wrest from God the prerogatives of absolute freedom and infinity leads to the inversion of Pentecost and what is in effect a new Babel. 'Postmodernism' represents that Babel perf...

Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...

May the Lord of love keep us all in peace, transform our conflict into the beauty of his grace, and give us joyful hearts to do his will. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A...

Creator of all things, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, Father, Shepherd, Servant, Brother, Priest and King. Whose love poured out mends broken hearts. Whose wounded hands reach out to all. Whose S...

Gaius Caesar, more commonly known as Caligula (AD 12–41), was a Roman emperor notorious for his cruelty. He developed an insatiable appetite for gladiatorial games and other violent spectacles. On one...

Somehow, strangely (and to us sometimes even annoyingly), the Creator God will not simply abolish evil from his world. The question that swirls around these discussions is, Why not? We are not given...

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

Come, Worship The Alpha and Omega The Beginning and the End The First and the Last Unmatched Majesty, drawing near closer than breath closer than pulse Meeting you here Meeting you now

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

In all life we see this circle of giving, which is the law of love. Consider electricity: when electricity moves through metal wires it does so by the movement of electrons from one atom to another. T...

Every time your enemy fires a curse, you must fire a blessing, and so you are to bombard back and forth with this kind of artillery. The mother grace of all graces is Christian good-will.

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

Every five hundred years, give or take a decade or two, Western culture, along with those parts of the world that have been colonized or colonialized by it, goes through a time of enormous upheaval, a...

In the book of Hebrews (and elsewhere in the New Testament and theology, generally), the Greek and Jewish worlds collide. A funny parallel may be drawn between this and George's complete meltdown ...

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...

Out of the depths of darkness and despair we have cried out for your mercy, O God. Instead of marking our iniquities with the just weight of our condemnation, you have forgiven us, breathed new life i...

Most powerful Holy Spirit, come down upon us and subdue us. From heaven, where the ordinary is made glorious, and glory seems but ordinary, bathe us with the brilliance of Your light like dew.

The disciples are tossed on the waves again. They are in a storm, fully as bad as the previous one. Gently and by degrees he excites and urges the disciples on toward greater responsiveness, even to t...

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you w...

Pastor: Now to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout (insert your community) and the surrounding communities, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sa...

Wondrous God Father-Son-Spirit Your joy is our strength Nothing more Nothing less Nothing else Grant us grace to receive you and your joy Grant us grace to trust it above all other powers and plans ...

O God, we pray for the church, which is set amid the con­fusion of contemporary life and is face-to-face with a great new task. Be with your church, O God. Grant the church a new birth through the...

History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...

Nothing good has ever come into the world without opposition, and that is especially true in spiritual matters.

Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but his by essence and by nature.

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is ...