Lamentations

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Prize Fight Paul pulls no punches in this letter to the church of Ephesus. It is an onslaught of theological intensity from the first ring of the bell. Like a prize figh...

In fractal geometry, there is a complex set of numbers that produces an infinitely intricate shape when plotted on a plane. It’s called a Mandelbrot set, after the founder of fractal geometry, Benoit ...

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

There are two golden days in the week, upon which, and about which, I never worry—two carefree days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday; Yesterday, with its ...

“God pity them both! and pity us all,  Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;  For of all sad words of tongue or pen,  The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’  Ah, well! for us all some...

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

In this first-person memoir, Pastor Peter Chin shares a story that most pastors can probably relate to, the reality vs the expectation of a church-planter or even the pastor of an established church: ...

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...

I’ve known a lot of people who have lived painful, tragic lives. When I was young, I assumed these people were abnormal. Their suffering was the exception that proved the rule that a well-lived life i...

What’s the bravest thing you ever did? . . . Getting up this morning.

Lord, we confess that we do not love you with our whole hearts And we do not love our neighbour as ourselves. We seek the blessing of others Rather than the blessing of your grace We seek comfort in w...

Loving God, you show us grace and mercy, again and again and again. You shower gifts on us that we could never earn, and you are slow to punish us when we most deserve it. All too often, we forget to ...

O God, we thank you that you have not treated us as we deserve. We thank you that, though you are Creator, Judge and King, you are also Father, so that, though we are wandering children, there is alw...

Steadfast, ever faithful God, you are always with us. Day in and day out, you provide for us, you show us your grace, you inspire awe within us as we experience your goodness. But almighty God, our me...

In our culture slow is a pejorative. When somebody has a low IQ, we dub him or her slow. When the service at a restaurant is lousy, we call it slow. When a movie is boring, again, we complain that it’...

In 1998, Nick Cave*, an Australian rock/pop artist, was asked by the Vienna Poetry Academy to give a series of talks on the nature of song-writing. A year later he gave a slightly revised version of t...

Memory is one of the highest powers in our nature. By it day is linked to day, the unity of life through all our years is kept up, and we know that we are still ourselves. In the spiritual life, recol...

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from God’s love. St. Paul reminded the Romans of this when he wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things p...

To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem...

He hurls our sins overboard. What a picture of the way God treats our sins. Corrie ten Boom, a dear saint of the last century, used to say, “And then God put up a sign saying, `No fishing allowed.”‘ W...

When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere that day is half done, When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, Our Father’s full giving has only begun. His lo...

Hope is reliance upon grace in the face of death: the issue is that of receiving life as a gift, not as a reward and not as a punishment; hope is living constantly, patiently, expectantly, resiliently...