place on Sin Nature

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

In 1879, the preservationist and explorer John Muir took his first trip to Alaska. As he explored the fjords and rocky landscapes of Alaska’s now famous Glacier Bay, a powerful feeling struck him all ...

There is no mere world or matters of fact for covenant theology; there is always the wonder and duty to the concrete moment at hand, where God’s illimitable gift of life is given into our hands – to h...

The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lor...

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty...

First, God placed humans here on earth to work the land where we are standing. The Hebrew here literally means to “serve” the land, implying that we humans are designed to serve the place where we liv...

Leader: Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. All: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you a...

Why must holy places be dark places?

The fact is there is nothing that we are doing that God could not raise up a stone in the field to do for him. The realization of this puts us in our true place. Though, lest we get too knocked down by...

[God’s grace is] always hidden under the strangest appearances.

Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains...

Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace.

Place is a quintessentially human concept in that it is part of our creatureliness. E. Casey, who has done the most comprehensive work on the philosophy of place, notes that “to be in the world, to be...

Yahweh, unlike the mountain and fertility gods of the ancient Canaanites, refuses to be bound by any geographical locale. All of the 'high places' pretending to capture the divine presence mus...

Where transformation is actually carried out is in our real life, where we dwell with God and our neighbors. . . . First, we must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in as the place ...

We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s Tree, stood in one place; Look Lord and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam’s blood ...

All: O Lord, you declare that the forgiven person is blessed, that the person who has no deceit is blessed. We confess that we have had deceitful hearts, deceitful tongues, deceitful thoughts, and dec...

God is our safe space, our hiding place, a very present help in times of trouble. God is our safety, we will not fear! The mountains shake, the oceans roar, the nations rage, the world changes. ...

Because our consumption can take us anywhere, we are nowhere in particular.

The path I walk, Christ walks it.  May the land in which I am be without sorrow.  May the Trinity protect me wherever I stay, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Bright angels walk with me-dear presence-in...

The witness of the New Testament is, therefore, twofold: it transcends the land, Jerusalem, the Temple. Yes: but its History and Theology demand a concern with these realities also. Is there a reconci...

While the incarnation does not mean that God is limited by space and time, he asserts the reality of space and time for God in the actuality of His relations with us, and at the same time binds us to ...

The essence of building is letting dwell.

Preaching Commentary In Israel’s tribal society, redemption was the act of a patriarch who put his own resources on the line to ransom a family member who had been driven to the margins of society b...

Come Thou and dwell with me,  Lord of the holy race;  Make here Thy resting-place, Hear me, O Trinity.  That I Thy love may prove,  Teach Thou my heart and hand,  Ever at Thy command Swiftly to move....

Come Thou and dwell with me,  Lord of the holy race;  Make here Thy resting-place, Hear me, O Trinity.  That I Thy love may prove,  Teach Thou my heart and hand,  Ever at Thy command Swiftly to move...

We can’t locate ourselves, much less find ourselves, apart from the places we inhabit.

In the Old Testament there is no timeless space, but there is also no spaceless time. There is rather storied place, that is a place which has meaning because of the history lodged there. There are st...

My body continually takes me into place . It is at once agent and vehicle, articulator and witness of being-in-place.

Leader: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations. From everlasting to everlasting, You are God." People: But in comparison, the days of our life on this earth are but a ...