Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
I reminded a friend recently that our being is prior to our doing. It’s a pretty obvious statement—a truism—but we still do well to think about it for a moment. In biblical terms our identity should be based on who we are by creation and not by who we wish we could be. In other …
Read More Enjoy BeingThis entry is also found on the Cor Deo site. Please post any comments there (click here). A quote in the Washington Post caught my attention. As hurricane Sandy approached the American eastern seaboard a Washington DC resident remarked, “I emailed my preacher today and said we need a sermon on the wrath of God …
Read More Divine WeatherHere is a crucial truth: you are not God. You never have been nor will you ever be. But what is a god? Here’s a description: Someone who rules the universe; or, in much more common and less grandiose terms—yet the same in substance—it is someone who thinks he or she is independent and wholly …
Read More Truth and FaithThis entry was first published on the Cor Deo website – I invite any responses to be offered on that site (click here to go to Cor Deo) A man asked me the question out of the blue. “Do we still have idols today?” A couple of options jumped to mind before I answered. First …
Read More Enjoying Idols?Car dealers speak of the trim levels available in every car model—meaning the features automatically added to a given version of that model. Options range from the very basic to the fully loaded. And salesmen know that the appetites and wealth of buyers vary so a successful salesman learns how to nudge a given buyer …
Read More True JesusThis entry is also offered on the Cor Deo website. Please offer any responses on that site (just click here). We may be too hard on the apostle Peter. Or, to put it differently, I think it’s unlikely we would have done much better than he did in his “confession” week. So while we may …
Read More Confused by JesusThis Saturday Jonathan married Rosemary and I was invited to offer a Bible reflection for the occasion. Let me offer in a nutshell what I shared with them. In its ultimate expression marriage is God sharing his eternal life with us: we are united to Christ in marital oneness by his Spirit. So Jon and …
Read More MarriedThis was first offered on the Cor Deo website and repeated here. Please post any responses on that site. Thanks! Click on Cor Deo A rich benefit in reading through the Bible regularly and at a bold pace is that themes start to jump off the pages. One of these—I’ll note it in a moment—especially …
Read More Delighted or driven?Jonathan Edwards, in his Freedom of the Will, wrote that “Many particular things may concur and unite their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as it were one complex motive” (Yale edition, 1.2—p. 141). Let me chase Edwards’ point: how is it that a host of “particular things” …
Read More Thinking about thingsThis post was first published on the Cor Deo website. If you choose to respond I’d love for you to respond on that site. To go there please click here. Yesterday over lunch Matt, a global minister who serves in Germany, shared something important. Brokenness, he commented, is something we all experience in a fallen …
Read More Broken