Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
Let’s play with words for a moment. We speak of feeling sheepish in the embarrassed moments after an obvious mistake. But what if we apply “sheepish” to the quality of human character God finds attractive? God often refers to believers as his sheep but not as his lions, horses, camels, ferrets, or wolves. Is there …
Read More Sheepish thoughtsA growing field in Christian missions is called member care ministry. Workers in this field help global workers—missionaries—with emotional and spiritual hurts that have come from their time in ministry. Our question for today, then, is: Why the wounds? And who’s doing the damage? We may have heard the easy answer to the Why question: …
Read More Is the Spirit in?Our question for the day: how pragmatic can we be as followers of Christ without losing our credibility? Is there, in other words, such a thing as a pragmatic faith? Or are the terms an oxymoron and the stuff of hypocrisy? Faith, we know, is a response of trusting obedience to God and his word. …
Read More Pragmatic FaithA few years ago at an academic conference in San Antonio I sat in on a debate between a scholar who had just offered a paper on the reformer John Calvin and a questioner in the audience. The presenter had argued that Calvin’s ideas were “pre-critical.” The questioner respectfully disagreed; and a productive exchange went …
Read More Comfortably non-CartesianI confess: in days past I’ve used a laser pointer with our family cat. You know the trick. A jiggling laser dot on the floor can entertain us and frustrate a bewildered pet for minutes at a time. It only takes a bit of human perversity and the cat’s preying instincts to have Mitsy pouncing …
Read More Chasing Dots