Creation as it felt to God — since then every artist has felt an echo, a sympathetic vibration: a craftsman who squints at his finished product and reckons, “Very good”; a performer who cannot suppres...
Jeremiah 17:7–8, Deuteronomy 30:19–20, Ezekiel 36:26–27, John 15:4–5, Romans 7:4–6, Psalm 1:2–3, John 15:1-8, Matthew 7:17-23, Galatians 5:22-23, Colossians 1:10, Galatians 5:22-23
Why does a tree bear fruit? Not because there is some law of nature that says it must. But simply because of the life within it, rising up from the soil and water that feed its roots and flowing in th...
Psalm 19:1, Romans 1:20, Isaiah 6:3, John 1:9-10, Colossians 1:16-17
"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...
Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe. The more I delve into natural l...
If God wanted to remain silent about His existence, He wouldn’t have bothered creating the stars; He wouldn’t have made the Milky Way, or Betelgeuse. In fact, He wouldn’t have made the majestic Rocky ...
Genesis 2:9, Colossians 3:2, Matthew 13:1-17, Matthew 13:16-17
Years ago, my family and I visited Sequoia National Park in California. The highlight of this trip was seeing the Giant Sequoia redwoods, after which the park is named. These trees are awe-inspiring, ...
Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...
Matthew 5:48, 1 John 3:2-3, Galatians 5:16-17, Philippians 3:13-14, Colossians 3:1-2, Ephesians 4:22-24
The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.
After finishing a major project, have you ever stood back, taken in what you have accomplished, and said to yourself, “That’s pretty good”? I’ll admit that I have on numerous occasions, especially aft...
In 2010, an oil rig named “Deepwater Horizon” suffered a catastrophic failure. Due to improper installation of the cement seal, a malfunctioning blowout preventer, and cost-cutting decisions by corpor...
The daily e-newsletter 1440, tries to share regular stories of human kindness. This one, from Carl G. in Noblesville, Indiana, is quite touching: My daughter just got married and was on Southwest...
James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, Proverbs 18:21, Colossians 4:6, Proverbs 10:19, Matthew 12:36-37, Proverbs 29:11, 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Proverbs 17:27-28, James 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 10:12-14, Psalm 141:3
Have you ever heard of Godwin's Law? While it may sound like some overly technical scientific hypothesis, it’s actually quite simple. Godwin's Law, first coined in 1990 by an an attorney and e...
I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What . Miller took this point to an even further extreme. In his book, he tells a story about one occasion when he was speaking to a class at...
Philippians 2:, Isaiah 7:14, Luke 2:1-20, Matthew 1:, Colossians 3:10, 1 John 3:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17
You have wonderfully created us, O God, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. Allow us to share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesu...
The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...
In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...
I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...
Matthew 23:25-26, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Colossians 2:6-7, Jeremiah 31:33
Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...
Context of Galatians I still remember my intro to New Testament class in college and the professor discussing Paul’s letter to the Galatians. All of Paul’s other letters begin with words of adoration...
We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally smal...
In this beautiful poem by the English Divine John Donne, our nature as both redeemed and still sinful is eloquently described: We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s Tree, ...
Mark 2:23-28, 3:1-6, Mark 2:23-28, Mark 3:1-6, Acts 12:12, Acts 12:25, Acts 15:37-39, Colossians 4:10, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 1:24, 1 Peter 5:13, Mark 1:14-15, Mark 2:1-22, Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Exodus 34:21, 1 Samuel 21:1-6, Luke 11:37-54, Mark 2:1-17, Genesis 1:26-31, Genesis 2:1-2, Genesis 3:null, John 19:30
Preaching Commentary Context Authorship of Mark Mark’s account of the story of Jesus is commonly held to be the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Early church tradition identifies the author...
C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...
James 2:1-17, James 1:27, Galatians 3:16, Colossians 3:11, Romans 2:11, Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 3:25
A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc...
God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united b...
Genesis 1:, John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-17, Hebrews 1:2-3
The Father created the world by a miracle; it is difficult to express its measure. Letters cannot contain it, letters cannot comprehend it. Jesus created for the hosts of Christendom, with miracles...
Luke 11:1-13, Matthew 18:23-35, Colossians 3:13, James 1:2-3
Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...
Hosea 1:2-10, John 1:13, Psalm 85:null, Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 138:null, Hosea 1:null, Colossians 2:6-15, Luke 11:1-13, Colossians 1:15-28
The Good News or the Bad News? Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news? Well, if you’re preaching Hosea these next two weeks, it doesn’t matter what you want. You’re getting the bad ...
Mark 14:36, Colossians 3:12, Matthew 6:1, Philippians 2:6-11, Romans 1:1, Isaiah 53:7, Mark 14:61, 1 Timothy 1:15, Ephesians 2:8, Luke 18:10-14, Matthew 5:23-24, Mark 7:8, Matthew 7:1-6, Matthew 16:52
Gentled by grace. That’s the incredible and inspiring story of Abba Moses the Black. He was a violent thief who became a humble and kind monk and one of the great Desert Fathers who served the Lord ...