analogies on Praise

In Circle of Quiet , Madeleine L’Engle describes how her young adult novel A Wrinkle in Time was dismissed by eight publishers before it eventually landed with the publishing house of Farra...

Good liturgy, whether formal or informal, ought never to be simply a corporate emoting session, however “Christian,” but a fresh and awed attempt to inhabit the great unceasing liturgy that is going o...

Epiphaneia in New Testament Greek means manifestation. An effective method of teaching the content of the faith, not often enough used, is to instruct congregations in the texts of the seasonal hym...

Speaking on the essential element of gratitude as part of our faith, the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once said, “We need only to know who and what we really are to break into spontaneous p...

Work is one way, perhaps even the main way, we can glorify God in this life. This may sound confusing if you tend to think of glorifying God as what we do in church when we sing praises to God. No qu...

Have you ever heard of a Stradivarius violin? It’s the gold standard of violins—instantly recognizable and famously expensive. These aren’t $29.95 instruments. One sold for $1 million, another for $4 ...

At a worship service I attended a couple of years ago, my attention was drawn to the enthusiastic worship leader. He opened our time with prayer, asking God to meet us and draw us together in the Lord...

Corrie ten Boom was once asked if it were difficult for her to remain humble. Her reply was simple. “When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, and everyone was waving palm...

John Dryden (1631–1700), an English critic and poet laureate, often skipped classes at Westminster School in London and rarely prepared his lessons. One day, when tasked with writing a poem on the gos...

When Martin Luther discovered that some had begun calling the first Protestants “Lutherans,” he strongly objected. It is funny to think that some 500 years later, many are still known by his name: ...

[A] vivid scene from the Gospel of John [John 20:19-23]. It’s intimate from the start-a stunningly private scene that occurs behind locked doors among dear friends. The scene begins with a friendly gr...

In our modern materialistic world, it is easy to lose sight of that sense of longing. In her wonderful collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard speaks about that growing void...

Frank Laubach recounts the profound shift in his life that came when he wholeheartedly committed to following God’s will: Before that moment, I was barely alive—like a tree rotting from within. Bu...

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh:a star shall come out of jacob. Numbers 24:17 KSV No star is visible except at night, Until the sun goes down, no accurate north. Da...

At start of spring I open a trench in the ground. I put into it the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read. Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents...

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

You may have heard about confirmation bias, which is the tendency to embrace information that supports our viewpoints. The antidote to confirmation bias is to intentionally expose ourselves to other v...

The Rule of Benedict is a document that has ordered the life of Benedictine monks for 1500 years. That remarkable document, written by Saint Benedict of Nursia, instructs the monks in how they are to ...

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away form God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. So the blues on one hand — running away; gospel, the ...

I am convinced that C. S. Lewis is correct in the point he makes in his remarkable speech “The Weight of Glory” that the cure for pride is not the humiliation of a person so that pride is broken. Rat...

John Ruskin (1819-1900), the famous art historian, wrote about a beautiful tradition that existed among the shepherds of the Swiss Alps during his lifetime. These shepherds grazed their flocks often i...

The Danish philosopher and contrarian Soren Kierkegaard once compared Christians of his time to a flock of geese in a barnyard. Every week, they listened to an eloquent speaker who recounted the stori...

Seeing that wealth is neither to be avoided nor praised but rather stewarded wisely and generously, how should we think about material wealth creation? This is an important question worthy of thoughtf...

One summer, the composer Edvard Grieg stayed at a small Norwegian hotel. A restless child also resided there, constantly annoying the guests by attempting to play the piano, producing nothing but disc...

Some marches are not against anyone or anything. They are marches for something or someone. Jesus. Peace. Hope. Unity. In a town where I lived for many years, a few of us organized an annual Walk of t...

“Good work! You did your job well” (Matt. 25:23 MSG). That phrase reminds me of a story Joe Stowell told me about a time he met the president at the White House. Joe was president of Moody Bible Insti...

What resonance does the word glory have in today’s English language? How often is it used, and with what meaning? The adjective glorious is familiar enough—we might say that we saw a “glorious” sunset...

Thus the incomparable George Herbert writes of our glorification in his poem “The Star”:  Bright spark, shot from a brighter place,  Where beams surround my Saviour’s face,  Canst thou be any where ...

In the English language, worship is an important word. It comes from ancient Anglo-Saxon and means “worth-ship”—to ascribe ultimate worth to something or someone. Matthew is portraying the nature of t...