Don’t be anxious about anything, but in every circumstance, with thankful prayer and petition, make your needs known to God. And God’s peace, which transcends all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Phil 4:6-7 Human culture has always suffered from a plethora of disease states, with each generation seeming to specialize...... Read More

A slave does not remain in the household, but the children belong to it forever. John 8:36 In case you weren’t around, I had a cranky week to begin the month of May. Our new home is missing any semblance of landscaping, and the weather has prevented the situation from improving. Several encounters with customer...... Read More

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1). Certain ideas are more subject to becoming clichéd than others. Love, life, happiness – and our word for today, freedom – are all abstract, big-picture concepts that writers, singers, and casual conversationalists abuse every day. We constantly trivialize and banalize the fundamental questions...... Read More

When God called him to go to a land he would later receive as his inheritance, Abraham obeyed and left his home, even though he did not know where he was going … and lived in tents as a stranger, even in the promised land, because he was looking forward to a secure city built and designed...... Read More

“By faith, Abraham heard the call to leave his home for the place he would receive as his inheritance, even though he didn’t know where he was going” (Hebrews 11:18). To me, the most obviously difficult aspects of faith are its unknowingness and seeming invisibility. The story of Abraham is cautionary and emblematic. Every piece...... Read More

Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6) By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going (Hebrews 11:8). If you read this blog on a regular basis, you may...... Read More

The Alelyon (one another) passages in the New Testament: Do not lie to each other but speak the truth to each other in love. (Ephesians 4:14, 25; Colossians 3:9) – Part 4 Over the past month or so we’ve been developing an evolving response to Pilate’s question of Jesus on the matter of “what is...... Read More

The Alelyon (one another) passages in the New Testament: Do not lie to each other but speak the truth to each other in love. (Ephesians 4:14, 25; Colossians 3:9) – Part 3 In Book 7 of his Confessions, the early church writer Augustine speaks of discovering that all that is true in the world comes...... Read More

The Alelyon (one another) passages in the New Testament: Do not lie to each other but speak the truth to each other in love. (Ephesians 4:14, 25; Colossians 3:9) – Part 2 Both the corrosive effects of lying, even to ourselves, and the corrective and transformative promise and power of the gospel, even for ourselves,...... Read More

The Alelyon (one another) passages in the New Testament: Don’t bite and devour each other, or else you will end up destroying each other (Gal. 5:15), part 3 Our daughter Annie is spending most of this summer volunteering at an orphanage for special needs children. One early morning a few weeks ago I answered my...... Read More