analogies on Abraham

God calls people. Whether it is the calling of Abraham to leave the land of Ur and go he knew not where, or the calling of Moses, confronted with the burning bush, or the calling of Isaiah who encount...

Since our savior is also our Lord, we are called to follow his ways. And whenever discussions arise about what those ways look like in a church, confusion is bound to follow regarding grace and works....

Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

In his enjoyable little book on Christian pilgrimage, British scholar N.T. Wright shares three propositions on the value that pilgrimage can bring to a Christian’s life: First, pilgrimage to holy pla...

Is it possible that God’s promises are given less consideration and value today than in the time of evangelist Dwight Moody? Moody described the preciousness of God’s promises this way: Let a man ...

Andy’s children are avid readers. He has just bought the latest whodunnit for Matt. Lizzie announces that she wants to read it too. The bookshop is out of stock and Lizzie will accept no substitute, n...

A century ago, men were following with bated breath the march of Napoleon and waiting feverishly for news of the war. And all the while in their own homes, babies were being born. But who could think ...

As an amateur yet serious student of the American Civil War, I am constantly amazed at the sheer volume of material, which was preserved orally for half a century and longer, surrounding the key figur...

Martin Luther King, Jr. was right: We can overcome, despite adversity, the trend toward mediocrity, and the temptation to rationalize our weaknesses. You simply cannot keep a good person down. Crippl...

Throughout Scripture, God uses the picture of adoption to describe his relationship with his people. This picture became all the more poignant for my wife, Heather, and me when we chose to adopt our f...

Adam was called by God to take care of Eden. But it was too much work for one man. Eden was massive. Adam was incapable of gardening the whole thing. He needed help.  That’s why God created Eve. Go...

When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...

As in buying real estate, three principles are crucial to understanding a person’s words: location, location, and location. We cannot make sense of what someone says unless we understand the context i...

Every year at Christmastime, the world looks back two thousand years to the birth of a baby. But for more than four thousand years, people living on the other side of that birth looked forward to the ...

We find hope in the ancestry of Jesus that no matter what we’ve done or where we come from, we too can be included in Jesus’ family. Jesus does not look for people who are perfect and have never faile...

In describing the role of the Israelites to the Gentiles, author Vaughan Roberts draws an analogy from a former prince: When the future George VI was a young boy, his mother, Queen Mary, often use...

In this excerpt, the French monastic leader Frere Pierre Marie, shares an interpretation of Jesus as the true prodigal son—bringing all of us home with him: He, who is born not from human stock, or ...

When Albert Berte Thorwaldsen, the renowned Dutch sculptor, finished the clay model of his statue of Christ with arms raised in blessing, he left it to harden overnight in his studio. The next morni...

The Bible has its own garden path. It runs from Genesis to Revelation. In fact, some of the most important events in the Christian faith take place in Biblical gardens, evens around which Christianity...

I heard a story about a little boy who wanted to give God an offering but had nothing to give. He sat on the floor, watching people pass by and place their offerings in large wicker baskets. How he lo...

This is how adoption works—like a sacrament, that visible sign of an inner grace. It’s a thin place where we see that we are different and yet not entirely foreign to one another. We are relatives not...

There were two important steps to a Jewish marriage: the betrothal (the promised agreement to marry) and the actual wedding ceremony. These two events were often separated by an extended period of tim...

For millennia Jews have celebrated Passover to commemorate God’s rescue of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins with the Seder, a ritual feast. In its liturgy is the Dayenu, which me...

The lesson of Genesis is that the first work of rest is to cease from our own effort. All that needs to be done has already been done. The work of God was finished long before we ever came on the scen...

One of the best stories of humility is that of a man who arrived in 1953 at the Chicago railroad station to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He stepped off the train, a tall man with bushy hair and a bi...

There once lived a peasant in Crete who deeply loved his life. He enjoyed tilling the soil, feeling the warm sun on his naked back as he worked the fields, and feeling the soil under his feet. He love...

Some of my favorite heroes have a dual identity: Clark Kent is Superman; Bruce Wayne is Batman; Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The list goes on and on. You and I also have a dual identity, though, unlike...

The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Home We Build Together , points out to the reader that in scripture the description of the creation of the universe in Genesis is given a mere thirty-fou...

Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled – perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages. Isaiah uttered his prophetic words about the renewal of the natural Creation into...

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, ...