Serving the community since 1922
Serving the community since 1922
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I’m writing this article before the election takes place, but you’ll read it only after Election Day has come and gone. I can’t see into the future, and don’t know how the election will turn out (or what the reactions to the results will be). Is there any perspective from your past that makes a difference in ignorance of the results? I believe there is, and especially from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Daniel was given more detailed previews about the future flow of events than any ot...
A few years ago I was at the bedside of a woman who was very near death. She could no longer speak and could barely move, but she was very thirsty. Most of my last visit with her was spent spooning water from a cup into her mouth. Was there any value in giving water to someone on the edge of eternity like that? I doubt that it prolonged her life. I have no reason to think it made any big difference to her thoughts or feelings. In the moment, I mostly went on with that because I didn’t really k...
Sometimes you’ll hear people talk about being godly, or godliness. Maybe it’s more frequent to hear something called “ungodly.” These words are rarely used, and it’s likely that sometimes even the people using them don’t really know what they mean. The basic idea of godliness is being like God. You can see it in the parts of the word: god…li[ke]…ness. People who believe in God usually see that as the best thing you could hope to be, for good reason. In the Bible, we find God saying: “You sh...
The book of James tells us about an amusing scenario: a man who looks in the mirror, carefully considering his own face. But once that man steps away from the mirror, he promptly forgets what he looked like! All the scrutiny of his own features didn’t leave them in his memory (James 1:23–24). In this little scenario, we can see a problem that is very widespread among human beings, that is, a lack of self-awareness. Robert Burns, in his poem “To a Louse,” wrote these lines: Oh, would some Power t...
Psalm 121:4 tells us, "Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." That's a good thing for us! We all have a certain tendency to drowsiness. We "zone out" of what we're doing, or nod off in the middle of something. That can be pretty dangerous if it happens while we’re driving, but even with other activities it at least means we miss out on part of the experience. That's also true spiritually. Because of this, the New Testament often commands us to watch, that is, to stay a...
Proverbs 27:14 – “He who blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it will be counted a curse to him.” In this proverb, we are faced with a man who loves and likes and wants the best for his friend. There is one problem: The man loudly utters all that before his friend has gotten out of bed! And the horrifying reality is that this exuberant blessing turns into a curse because of that. The friend would rather have gotten some rest then received that loud blessing. There...
Receiving an inheritance was a big deal in the Old Testament. People set their hearts on entering into their inheritance, and were serious about maintaining that inheritance and passing it on to their own children. They had a great reason for that. God had promised to give them an inheritance, which we often call “the Promised Land.” We call it that just because God had promised it to them. God enacted special legislation to preserve that land as an inheritance. For instance, in order to pre...
Do you remember the Amelia Bedelia books, by Peggy Parish? Amelia Bedelia works as a housekeeper, but is constantly causing disasters because she inevitably misunderstands what she is told. At one point she’s roped into a neighborhood baseball game. When she’s encouraged to steal the bases and run home, she picks up the object used to mark third base and sprints back to her house. Another time when she was told to give the chickens scraps, she took small pieces of cloth to the hencoop. Ame...
We all exercise a right to choose what we like most. When you go to a restaurant, you might order from the menu what sounds best at the time. Maybe when eating a salad or trail mix you pass over the parts you don’t like — the croutons or the cashews or whatever. When speaking about food and similar areas, that’s reasonable, and no problem at all. If we practice that habit in other areas, though, that can be quite bad. Imagine someone who practiced picking and choosing in math. If you refus...
We have a lot to be thankful for. The specifics will be different for you than for me, but we live in a world that contains many wonderful things to enjoy, and blessings abound. If you take a moment to review problems you've survived and good things you enjoyed this week, I have no doubt there will be a good list of things for which you could give thanks. In [BEGIN ITAL]A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich[END ITAL] Alexander Solzhenitsyn takes the unusual tack of telling us about a good day in...
Should faith be a public or a private matter? That question comes up in several contexts, but the basic answer is that faith must be both. We can illustrate that point from the practice of the Lord’s Supper. Since there are only two sacraments, the Lord invested each one with an astonishing depth and richness of meaning. In the instructions given by Paul about the Lord's Supper, it's clear that there is a strongly individual element. Each one is supposed to examine himself (1 Corinthians 1...
Every church is flawed. People have bad experiences, of one kind or another, even at healthy churches. Churches are made up of people, so this isn't a big surprise. It can be a big disappointment, or an obstacle to going back, but it shouldn't be a shock when churches have problems. A major source of problems is people. That's too big a subject for one article, though, so I'll narrow the focus substantially. Some of the difficulties churches have, and some of the bad experiences people have in churches, arise from a lack of purity. What I mean...
Many people are at least vaguely familiar with the Ten Commandments. And quite a few people know the story behind them — that God gave them to Moses on the top of Mt. Sinai. But much less familiar is the story [BEGIN ITAL]inside[END ITAL] the Ten Commandments, a story about God. Several of the commandments have backup information included in them. In other words, there’s whatever God tells us to do or not to do, but then there’s also an explanation for it. And those explanations give us some ama...
God's word often exposes the sins of God's people. In that way, the Bible is a tremendously honest and forthright book. Even in the case of heroes and giants in the faith, the reality of failure or unfortunate behavior is recorded. I'm thinking specifically here of Paul and Barnabas. They were old friends – Barnabas brought Paul into the church in Jerusalem (Acts 9:27). They worked together in the church in Antioch (Acts 11:25–26). They had been companions in missionary labor, with its att...
Churches have a lot of things in common. But they are not all the same. There are differences as well as similarities, as anyone who has visited other churches while on vacation can verify. And if there are differences between one congregation and another, or one denomination and another, that’s even more obvious between one religion and another. If you’ve ever thought about it, it’s kind of a strange thing. We’re all human beings, after all, and we share a lot of the same interests, concerns an...
Christianity teaches a lot of amazing things: that God is triune, that God the Son became man, that our salvation was accomplished by a great exchange of Christ taking our place, to name just a few. One of the most amazing things is that God wholly gives Himself, to the Church, and to each individual believer. As it says in Psalm 63:1, O God, You are my God. Explaining this verse, Henry P. Liddon said: The word represents not a human impression, or desire, or conceit, but an aspect, a truth, a...
It’s always nice to be able to make and stick to plans. That isn’t always reality, though. If a flight gets canceled, we wind up making new arrangements on the go — sometimes with considerable disappointment. Since it happens to all of us, you would think people would understand. But when the Apostle Paul’s plans changed, some in Corinth took that as an opportunity to criticize him for being a fickle and unreliable person. He had said he would come to them when he passed through Macedon...
The book of Ecclesiastes has a number of texts that make us scratch our heads and wonder a little. To give just a few examples: “In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (1:18). “Therefore I hated life” (2:17). “A time to hate” (3:18). “I praised the dead who were already dead, more than the living” (4:2). “Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise”(7:16). Statements of this puzzling kind come up so much that I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s...
Although a big chunk of the book of Genesis is devoted to Abraham's life, there is a great deal we don't know. For instance, 13 years go by between the end of Chapter 16 and the first verse of Chapter 17. The history in the Bible leaves out a lot. There must be a principle of selection, a way of determining what was significant in Abraham's life for later readers. One suggestion, made by the late Noel Weeks in his book Gateway to the Old Testament, is that Genesis is highlighting the promises...
The Bible is very blunt about the fact that life in this world is quite difficult. Genesis explains that Adam and Eve, by their rebellion against God brought death into the world and the necessity of hardship (Genesis 3:8–24). The book of Job illustrates that life is harsh through the story of a man, who lost everything. The reality that life is short and full of frustration is the background for everything Ecclesiastes says. And in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul takes the hardships of life...
Christians are against murder. After all, it's prohibited by the law of God (#6 in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:13). In fact, even the beginning of murder - hostility and hatred in the heart - is ruled out by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:22). And yet there is one murder we celebrate and give thanks for: the judicial murder or unjust execution of Jesus Christ when Pontius Pilate was Procurator of Judea for the Roman Empire. The moment I say that, of course, I have to hurry up and explain...
The story of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph is one of the most dramatic in the Bible. With a couple of interruptions this story runs in Genesis from chapter 37 to the end of the book (chapter 50). During that time, Joseph's brothers first planned to kill him and then decided to sell him into slavery instead. Once in Egypt he was imprisoned as a result of a false accusation. A prisoner whom he helps forgets all about him for a long time. Joseph's story for a very long time is one of...
