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

Sometimes the Lord permits us to see “just over the hilltop” to know our future. A growing chain of circumstances seems to be challenging the contemporary church to recognize and understand more clearly how to live faithfully in challenging times. We know the Spirit “blows where He wills” (John 3:8), which means we may not always know immediately the direction our lives are headed. However, we may...  Read More

[Originally published January 28, 2026] In the year 1797, a tiny baby girl was born in a small cabin about ninety-five miles north of New York City in the town of Esopus, a small hilly settlement called Swartekill. Isabella was the daughter of James and Elizabeth Bomefree, who were brought from Ghana and Guinea by slave traders and sold to Col. Johannes Hardenbergh. Her first prayers were in Dutch...  Read More

[Originally published January 28, 2026] Mark Twain once quipped, "When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends." Sadly, countless people today do not follow his simple words of wisdom because we live in a culture of lies. Fraudulent financial schemes, a proliferation of internet scams, the fixing of sports games by athletes, and political scandals exemplify ...  Read More

There is much about our current worship that is rushed and shallow. We need to enter our places of worship prepared in heart to encounter our holy God. We need to follow the labyrinth! Labyrinths have been used for centuries to aid worshipers with eliminating distractions in prayer and devotion and drawing closer to God. The psalmist provides us with a labyrinth of sorts to guide us to proper wors...  Read More

Nothing stops quicker the bread of church life from rising than a lack of the Spirit. Acts chapter 5 presents us with evidence that the controlling presence in the daily life of the church must be the Holy Spirit. This permeating authority of the Spirit, in fact, gives rise to Christian moral influence, and must be guarded carefully. Many of our churches have bad dough, and they do not know why. L...  Read More

“The believer essentially becomes one who hopes . . . His future depends utterly and entirely on the outcome of the risen Lord’s course, for he has staked his future on the future of Christ” (HCBC, Jürgen Moltmann). Luke 19:45-21:4, which encompasses our focal passage, provides us with a view of the final confrontations Jesus had in His earthly ministry. Jesus’ rule will be radically different, an...  Read More