Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
The irony wasn’t lost on me. All my writing of the past three months evaporated in a keystroke. The subject of my writing? Sin. The cause of the lost file? A computer virus that wiped out both my back-up file and my hard drive. I hadn’t made any print copies of the project so I …
Read More Thank you Lord!The Bible is a faith-producing book. As we read it boldly and regularly it generates a response: a growing confidence in God and, with that, a sense of entrustment. The Bible is also brutally honest. It tells stories of misguided faith and un-faith. For the faithful reader those stories help in navigating a dangerously skeptical …
Read More Hearts both tender and hardThis is a new iteration of a story I’ve used in talks and in earlier informal compositions. The Bible will strike most objective readers as odd, very odd. Why? Because it has so much gross content: sin, arrogance, murder, incompetence, hatred, brazen betrayals, and much more. The startled reader who takes up the book without …
Read More Parable of the capsized cruise shipThis is a revision of a post I first offered a few years ago for the Multnomah University website that maintains Alumni connections. Years ago, long before today’s satellite GPS—global-positioning-systems—the standard way for navigating boats of any size through inland waterways was to combine a set of resources: the boat’s radar, its magnetic compass, …
Read More Navigating by faithFifteen years ago last Tuesday the killings started. In just 100 days almost a million people were killed. Nearly two thousand years ago last Friday God’s Son was killed. The conjunction of the two remembrances in one week was striking to me even though the events are distant from each other in time and scale. …
Read More Genocide and the CrossThe psalmist, David, began Psalm 138 with a resounding peal of praise: “I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart!” In the stanza immediately following he spoke of bowing down toward the Jerusalem center of worship—to the tent where the ark was located. But it wasn’t this temple that stirred his worship, …
Read More The name and word of GodThe prophet Jeremiah was told by God to buy some property from his cousin Hanamel even though God had already promised him that the city would soon be overrun by the Chaldeans. Jeremiah responded with a remarkable statement: Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who has made the heavens and the earth by your …
Read More Is anything too hard for God?Jeremiah Burroughs, a 17th century Puritan pastor, spoke of contentment as a rare jewel. It’s something experienced by some but not all. A paradox he also noted is that for Christians true contentment will always leave us dissatisfied. He unfolded one side of this mystery but left the other side undeveloped. Both are important and …
Read More A dissatisfied contentmentI preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 7 today, calling it “Marriage Matters.” The double entendre was intended. Paul addressed matters of marriage that Christians need to embrace; and the text reminds us that marriage is wonderfully important. The chapter also illuminates the weak status of marriages both in and outside the church throughout human …
Read More Marriage MattersFear holds a paradoxical status in Scriptures—it is regularly treated both as a positive and a negative; as fruitful and as destructive. Positively, wisdom is a crucial moral outcome for those who “fear the LORD”. On one occasion in Genesis God is even personified as “fear” when Jacob twice addressed his hostile father-in-law, Laban, …
Read More On fear, faith, and love