And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...
In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenl...
We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. A...
The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultima...
Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we probe the mysterie...
When a father tucked his eight-year-old daughter into bed, he asked her a serious question: “What’s the one thing you’re looking forward to the most about heaven?” Immediately, the girl’s eyes lit up ...
The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the ki...
A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on the HMS Beagle in Dec...
John 1:3, Psalm 104:24, Genesis 2:2-3, Genesis 1:27, Genesis 1:31
The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories. When one compares the ...
When the waters saw you, O God, When the waters saw you, they were afraid; Indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; The skies gave forth thunder; your arrows flashed on every side...
The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'...
Psalm 148:7, 10-13, Matthew 6:26, Job 12:7-10, Genesis 1:20-21, Psalm 104:12, 24, Mark 16:15, Colossians 1:16-17
Unlike most of us, Francis of Assissi's love of preaching extended beyond just human beings. On one of his journeys through the valley of Spoleto, near Bevagna, Francis of Assisi came upon a large...
Contrast the creation of the first man according to Genesis 2 with the creation of the first human beings according to Mesopotamian tradition. Both start with dust or clay, but then the accounts vary....
A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on trheHMS Beagle in Dec...
From the very beginning was Your Word, Which spoke this world into being, Your Word, Which thunders from the skies, Your Word, Which flows like mountain streams, Your Word, Which whispers in morning b...
This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this…. We all like astonishing tales because they to...
Matthew 27:57-60, John 19:41-42, Luke 23:50-56, Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:14-15, Isaiah 53:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22
They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden the Romans setting a military guard lest there...
Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:14, Psalm 33:9, Isaiah 45:18, John 5:17
John Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One that rather than concerning material creation, the creation account in Genesis one concerns functional creation, because that is how ancient reade...
The cosmology of the ancient world was dramatically different from the way that we think of ours. Scholar John Walton writes in The Lost World of Genesis One , “Old world cosmic geography is based on...
If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making...
Leader: Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! People: You have set your glory above the heavens! Leader: From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, ...
Genesis 1:2, Exodus 14:21, 1 Kings 19:11-12, Psalm 104:3-4, Acts 2:2-4, John 3:8, Matthew 6:25-34
If birds could write books, their story of creation would no doubt read quite differently than ours. In the first place, I expect they would make quite a lot out of that wind of God that swept over th...
Leader: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, Darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. People: Centuries before Jesus walked among us, Th...
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...
Genesis 1:3-4, John 8:12-20, 1 John 1:5-10, Psalm 27:, Matthew 4:12-17
In The Lost World of Genesis One , John Walton points out that the creation of light and the division of day and night is profoundly puzzling if we understand light in the modern way, as a material o...