trials on Beauty

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

Brenda Peterson is an author whose work crosses multiple genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. In an essay entitled In Praise of Skin, Peterson shares a true story from her own ...

The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy: Thine has a great hook nose like thine, Mine has a snub nose like to mine…. Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read&...

Trials come to prove and improve us.

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and al...

Trials are the ruler and scale to reveal in our lives.

Our worst things are often our best things. . . . There is blessing concealed in the righteous man’s crosses, losses, and sorrows. The trials of the saint are a divine husbandry, by which he grows and...

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Merciful God, in your gracious presence we confess our sin and the sin of this world. We are a people torn apart by racial, national, social, and theological divisions. We fail to welcome the foreigne...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

Holy and Gracious God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We give you thanks for the gift of life, for the gift of Jesus our Savior, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and for the gift of this sacrament that ...

The nearer the dawn, the darker the night

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...

Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and th...

Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...

"Everything we encounter today is used by God to prepare us for tomorrow. he wastes no trials, withholds no blessings, nor does he hold back on the discipline of his soldiers. All He does prepare...

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exer...

Pastor: In the beginning, Father, Your Word spoke all things into being and from nothing You made all that is. Help us to see the imprint of Your love in the goodness of creation and to exercise res...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

Who cannot relate in the digital age to the irony of being overconnected and lonely all at once? Yet Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking at his son’s middle school graduation, exhorted the young grad...

O God, the author and foundation of hope, enable us to rely with confident expectation on your promises, knowing that the trials and hindrances of the present time are not worthy to be compared with t...

Deep insights into the character of God don’t come without great trial.

If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

Sisters Corrie and Betsie ten Boom were ultimately sent to the Ravensbrück after being arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 for hiding Jewish people and members of the Dutch resistance from the Nazis. In ...

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...