When we consider our own end, it will not bring us into a final wrestling match with the messenger of God, but into the embrace of the Messiah of God.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
This is the third in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.

All Articles

I hoped like mad they’d spit in my face and laugh me all the way out of town. I wouldn’t have even cared if a mob of them had beat me to death in a back alley. But heavens no, I couldn’t be that lucky.
Of all the words this woman ever spoke, these alone are chiseled forever into the stone of holy writ, and into the church’s memory. Mrs. Job becomes the patron saint of quick-tongued women.
A cemetery is a hard place to confess because the cemetery itself seems to confess, “You, O mortal, have lost.”
I believe, however, that lurking behind every reason we don't forgive is one fundamental impulse: the desire, real or perceived, to control the offender.
O such is the crumbling fortress of the god of this world, but how it entices our flesh! For it looks like a house of candy to the Hansels and Gretels who wander through this world.
But this dying world is still the world of our living God, who graces us with tokens of a final renewal. As leaf subsides to leaf, and frost to snow, and snow to ice, there comes a day when the gold of nature sprouts anew.
Yes, He knows all—not only the sins you remember and are ashamed of, but also those you have forgotten and even those you never knew you committed.
For out of the mouths of these opposition forces, gathered on enemy turf, comes the defiant declaration of death’s undoing: “Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!” An audacious act it is, to march smack dab into the middle of a place that screams, “Dead!” and to sing, “Alive!”
What kind of fool does what David did? What kind of fool ignores the riches spilling out of his pockets to steal the only penny a poor man has?
This is the night when the earth is formless and void; and the darkness of blood is over the face of Thy Son. And the Spirit of God moves out of His body as He gives up the Ghost.
Not only does he give them a fourth chance; he risks the very life of his son in doing so. There lay three of his servants, with blackened eyes and broken bones, scarred by cuts and abrasions, and he imagines things will go better for his son?
He had a way with words, this Preacher, a way that well-nigh sent Him plummeting headlong down a nearby cliff. What got Him in trouble was quite simply telling the truth – always a dangerous activity, for men prefer that you lie to them, especially if the truth exposes them for what they are.