bible and theology from luke 5

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...

Gracious God, you have given us great mercy through Jesus, yet we have withheld mercy from others. Our hearts have been hardened by the world and our sin. Would you soften our hearts? And give us a de...

This prayer also works well for the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18) Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. I have failed to love as You Love I have treated others as objects and...

This Man (Jesus) suddenly remarks one day, 'No one need fast while I am here.' Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules?

One could not live in any village in lower Galilee and escape the effects and ramifications of urbanization.” Life here was urbanized and urbane as anywhere else in the Empire. Did these urban influen...

Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature th...

I am still haunted by a long conversation I had with a man who was a member of one of my early congregations. . . . He had a stunning vision of the presence of the risen Christ . . . [and] had never t...

Ann Voskamp, in her book The Broken Way, describes what it was like to have mental illness trivialized from the pulpit, as someone who identified with similar struggles: I was eighteen, with scars a...

We cannot will ourselves to accept grace. There are no magic words, preset formulas, or esoteric rites of passage. Only Jesus Christ sets us free from indecision. The Scriptures offer no other basis f...

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through....