Growing up, I’d sometimes ask my father for some money. He didn’t often have much, but I don’t recall him ever saying no. Later, when I was away at college…
I wish they had been walking by a field, maybe at sowing time. As it is, “they were walking along the road” (9:57). It’s a dirt road. The road is…
Seven years ago, pastor and student of church effectiveness Thom Rainer identified several reasons why churches have become less evangelistic.[1] Rainer had his Baptist constituency mostly in mind, since Presbyterians,…
Many are called but few are chosen (Mt 22:14). Is this an ad for the Marines? It’s not a really encouraging doctrine, at first glance. How about everyone called and…
Some people get hung up on 144,000. John helps us not to be concerned about that. “I looked,” he tells us, “and there before me was a great multitude…
Twice in as many days, John the Baptist points to Jesus: “Look, the Lamb of God!” (1:29, 36). Lambs had one purpose in Israel’s relationship with God. We delight in…
How are we supposed to do church? How are we supposed to be church? Those are good questions, even though we are nearly two thousand years into this. We have…
So, eighteen years is a long time, bent over, suffering, for eighteen years. Then there’s Jesus. Maybe she always went to synagogue on Sabbath. Maybe she was there that Sabbath…
I never took George Burns to be an especially religious man. I was surprised, then, to hear this bit of religious wisdom from none other than George Burns, who said,…
Over these next weeks, we are our way with Jesus to the Last Supper, the cross, and to the empty tomb beyond that cross. Today, we hear about this ancient…