What would you wish to write if what you penned were the last words you would ever put to paper? Well, Hannah was not an author, per se, but the last words we ever hear/read from her lips are recorded in 1 Samuel 2, and they speak to this very day! Hannah’s song is 112 words in the Hebrew language and, by comparison, Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address is 272 words. Hers is an “emancipation procla...  Read More

Suffering. What a stark and somber word. In Cost of Discipleship we read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's profound statement: "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." This beloved German Christian pastor literally gave his life in faithfulness to the gospel and the way of Jesus. At dawn, on 9 April 1945, at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, he was stripped, dragged to the execution yard, and hanged...  Read More

[Originally published March 27, 2026] "If you are not suffering now, you will someday" are words that cause me trepidation, because the man who wrote them, Paul David Tripp, lived what I would call a life without photo-shopping. There was no need to edit the flawless image that his life and ministry represented, as many often do on social media posts. He had the perfect family, ministry, and healt...  Read More

Never give up the resurrection facts, but also make sure to abide in their truth! I recall a precious woman, who knew in detail the facts about Jesus’ life and death, but she did not believe that He was raised from the grave. She did believe, like so many others in our generation, that Jesus was a good teacher but not a risen Savior and Lord. I am in full agreement that facts about Jesus are criti...  Read More

The truism says that the journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. We will quickly recognize that Israel fell into subjection to her enemies, not because the enemies were more powerful, but because the nation, step by step, had distanced itself from the Lord (6:1). This sometimes proves to be the case in our own spiritual lives. It often is not the godless enemy outside our door that overt...  Read More

“For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another” (Psalm 75:6-7). We likely find comfort and calm when the Scriptures speak of God’s mercy and love, but become unsettled where God exercises judgment according to His sovereign will. The account of the commander of the Lord’s army provid...  Read More

The rubric called “muscle memory” means we can reproduce a particular movement without using conscious thought. Frequent repetition makes this effort possible. Allow me to coin a phrase: moral memory. It means that we learn to respond to those around us like God has demonstrated with us. We must always keep God’s goodness to us in mind, and it is to be evident in how we treat those who are the wea...  Read More

All along the timeline of history we read the sorrowful chapters of the mistreatment of children. From the Greco-Roman practices of abortion, infanticide, and leaving newborn babies outside city walls to die, to the labor and sexual abuses of little ones and teens throughout the ages, to child abandonment by parents and families, the ongoing saga is complex and soul-scarring. America is no excepti...  Read More

[Originally published Feb. 27, 2026] The idiom, "tip of the iceberg," describes a small, visible part of a much larger, hidden problem. Only ten percent of an iceberg's total mass is typically visible above water. These enormous chunks of ice, sometimes nearly fifty miles in length, have always posed a problem to ships, but the disastrous sinking of the Titanic in 1912 likely gave the phrase its m...  Read More

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, the nourishment of the mind with His truth, the purifying of the imagination of His beauty, the opening of the heart to His love, the surrender of the will to His purpose” (William Temple). Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944, indeed encapsulates the heart of worship. Hardly any...  Read More

Jesus came to seek and to save suffering humanity. The familiar narrative of the Gerasene demoniac reminds us that Jesus has authority and power over debilitating mental illnesses (cf. Lk 8:26-39). He also demonstrated His control over nature (Luke 8:22) and crippling physical illnesses (Luke 8:43:48), as well as power over death itself (Luke 8:40-42, 49-56). The point was to show that He indeed i...  Read More

“I argue that the Jesus of the Gospels is essentially a myth,” wrote Alvar Ellegård, a Swedish author on religion and science.[1] There have been those, like Ellegård, who for well over a century have claimed that there was some sort of Christ myth that grew among Jesus’ earthly followers. There were no real miracles, there was no resurrection, and there was certainly nothing divine about Jesus of...  Read More