Being Christian Without Losing Your Mind
Up until the last verse, the conclusion of Isaiah is breathtakingly beautiful. It paints a picture of a new heaven and earth, foreshadowing the triumphant vision at the end of Revelation. “All nations and cultures” will finally recognize God’s love and power. “All humanity” will gather in Jerusalem, the place symbolizing the Lord’s immediate presence. …
Don’t you have eyes? Why can’t you see? Don’t you have ears? Why can’t you hear? Don’t you remember? — Mark 8:18 Scientist and author Paul Wallace once commented on a popular advertisement from a few years ago: “Have you seen that commercial for a sugarless gum, the one where ‘4 out of 5 dentists recommend …
But Esau ran to meet him, threw his arms around his neck, kissed him, and they wept. — Genesis 33:4 Know anyone named Esau? I don’t. But there are a lot of Jacobs around. This is totally unfair. One of the most dysfunctional families in the Bible is that of parents Isaac/Rebekah and sons Esau/Jacob. …
Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character. — 2 Timothy 3:16 My home church in Poplar Bluff was putting on a Christmas pageant. I was asked to narrate it. As a teenager deeply involved in church, and planning on entering the ministry, I was …
All will sit underneath their own grapevines, under their own fig trees. There will be no one to terrify them; for the mouth of the Lord of heavenly forces has spoken. — Micah 4:4 I was reading Micah 4 one day and read about beating swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks. Where had I heard that …
“The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how terrible that darkness will be!” — Matthew 6:22-23 One of the …
“Now the one who had received one valuable coin came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man. You harvest grain where you haven’t sown. You gather crops where you haven’t spread seed. So I was afraid. And I hid my valuable coin in the ground. Here, you have what’s yours.’” — Matthew …
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this. — Galatians 5:22-23 There’s something eerie in the grocery store I shop at. I’m turning a corner at the end of an aisle, usually looking for something that’s hidden several rows over, …
Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her. — Luke 1:38 Here’s a story I found somewhere that gets to the heart of what believing in God really means. A Bible translator in India was working to translate the New Testament into one of …
Every so often you run across a quote that stops and makes you think, like this one from Rev. Molly Phinney Baskette: “Our faith, frail as it is sometimes, is also flexible. It is self-correcting as we have profound encounters with people who are different from us and are exposed to new experiences and ideas.” …