1 Peter 1:6-7, James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Hebrews 12:11-13, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Zechariah 13:7-9, Daniel 3:, Isaiah 48:10
Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...
If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural ...
Unimpeded walking is one of life’s most ordinary, least expensive, and deeply rewarding pleasures. With little effort, putting one foot in front of the other and going forward can provide a foretaste ...
There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...
According to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk tribe in Northern California and a forest manager, Fire is that which renews life. A lot of people have been conditioned to look at it as a threat and...
In the world of ecology, the tallest trees in a forest form a canopy that is called the overstory. It provides shade for the understory—all the vegetation that grows beneath the uppermost layer of fol...
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your...
Martin Luther said that every Christian ought to read the Bible from cover to cover every year. But, likening the Bible to a forest, he also said that reading the Bible doesn’t become really enjoyable...
A Musical Compilation over the Decades of Our Lives Regardless of the medium that delivered the tunes to us: radio, jukebox, record player, 8 track, cassette tape, CD, Mp3, iTunes, Pandora, or Spoti...
Revelation 22:12, Titus 2:13, John 8:12, Psalm 119:105, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 34:18, Matthew 5:44
Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...
Lord Jesus – You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your coming every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumbl...
Leader: Then let us wait for the Lord, and in this season of Lent, let us wait by the cross. "Ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength." Glorify God's holy name. People: We worship the L...
The Master & His Workshop I remember first walking into my friend Andrew’s new workshop, housed in a colonial-style barn and situated on an expansive wooded acreage on the Eastern Seaboard. Thin...
In his Christian Doctrine for Everyman: An Introduction to Baptist Beliefs, Jimmy Millikin says, “We know they [demons] are real personalities. They are capable of intelligent, voluntary actions.…We k...
Hebrews 12:6-7, James 1:2-4, Psalm 94:12-13, Proverbs 3:11-12, Romans 5:3-5
Years ago, I read an old fairy tale about a wicked witch who lived in a remote cottage in the deep forest. When travelers came through looking for lodging, she offered them a meal and a bed. It was th...
“Follow the yellow brick road.” In L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (later made famous by the 1939 film adaptation, The Wizard of Oz ), these words provide the directions given to Doro...
The devastating power of wildfires has never been more apparent as their intensity, size, and frequency has increased dramatically over the last few years in the United States (and elsewhere), causing...
As he reflected on his life’s work, the famed author of Les Miserables , The Count of Monte Cristo , and many others, Victor Hugo describes what he believed about life after death, that heaven would...
A group of motion-picture engineers classified the following as the ten most dramatic sounds in the movies: a baby’s first cry; the blast of a siren; the thunder of breakers on rocks; the roar of a fo...
1 John 3:17-18, Malachi 3:10, Proverbs 22:9, James 2:15-17, Matthew 6:21, Acts 20:35
When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St....
I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young...
Each of us ought to endeavor to tear the thorns out of his heart, if we do not choose that the word of God should be choked; for there is not one of us whose heart is not filled with a vast quanti...
Pilgrim. For a child growing up in America, the word Pilgrim had no religious connotations. Mainly heard in the plural, Pilgrims referred to a community of storm-defying. Black-clad English Puritans w...
Every day long lines of pilgrims wind their way through rooms that Elvis lived in. Not long ago my friend Paul Chandler, a Carmelite priest, was among them. He writes: I made it to Memphis and to the...
In 1995, the gray wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after a seventy-year hiatus. Scientists expected an ecological ripple effect, but the size and scope of the trophic cascade took th...
O Thou, God of all long desirous roaming, Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing, And crying after lost desire. Hearten us onward! as with fire Consuming dreams of other bliss. The best Thou givest, ...
Romans 12:2, John 15:18-19, Psalm 24:1-2, Micah 6:6-8, Genesis 1:31
We need to be careful to define what the Bible does and does not mean by “the world.” It does not mean the created order—mountains, lakes, forests, deserts, seas, animals and people—especially people...
God of grace, power and glory–Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer–and our Father: When we’re tempted to think it’s all up to us: to change the world, to overcome evil, to establish Your kingdom, to make ...