Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice... (Eph. 4:31) Let me call her Eleanor. She was in her seventies. I visited her every month. We would read scripture, pray, share communion together, and then she would launch into bitterly complaining about her mother. During …
Month: May 2019
Singing the Lord’s Song
'How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?' (Ps. 137:4) The Jews cried these words while they were being deported to Babylon. They had just witnessed their army being defeated, their Temple being destroyed, and God’s city being sacked. On their long march to Babylon, they worried about whether they would …
God’s Love in Christ Jesus
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers…nor anything else will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:37 passim) I recently attended a funeral. It was a sad funeral for many reasons, one of which is that the man …
Jesus with You Always and Everywhere
But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you. (Mk. 16:7) I’ve been to Galilee. Even though it was incredible to be where Jesus once walked, no one would have thought Galilee was anything special before Jesus …
Encouraging One Another
Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. (1 Thess. 5:11) She was a world-class athlete, who had competed at the Iron Man championship in Hawaii—which is 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, and 26.2 miles running. I had met her at the gym. If you sweat in close …
Into the Hands of Jesus
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (1 Cor. 15:20) When my father died, my stepmother gave his body to medical science. A year later his ashes were returned and we set a burial date. We had the internment service, a lovely reception, …
Our Struggles With Faith
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails …