It’s the long slog through the desert that is the most depressing and debilitating for many believers – that interminable “race” (in Paul’s words) that seems to be much more like a crawl through parched sand traps, spiritually speaking. It is when there appears to be no advancement in sanctification that one is most defeated – or at least that is when I’m most tempted to see no hope in the Christian life of (apparently) overblown promises. If day after... Read more
There is a meme currently making its way around social media that sounds appealing – if you don’t think about it too much, that is. At first glance it seems to be quite on the money and actually a bit inspiring. In part it says: “If you KNEW how [Jesus] can transform you, how He can take away all that bitterness, that sorrow, that hurt, that depression, anxiety[!]”. If you only knew that He could do all that! (with, of... Read more
There is a meme currently making its way around social media that sounds appealing – if you don’t think about it too much, that is. At first glance it seems to be quite on the money and actually a bit inspiring. In part it says: “If you KNEW how [Jesus] can transform you, how He can take away all that bitterness, that sorrow, that hurt, that depression, anxiety[!]”. If you only knew that He could do all that! (with, of... Read more
Beloved brothers and sisters, let us reflect for a moment on the extraordinary magic and significance of something not being us. How wonderful it is that the trees and the lakes and the mountains are not me, and – what is infinitely more important – that they are not God. I rejoice in the fact (the thankfully undeniable fact) that there is a gulf and a chasm that yawns between myself and the world of Nature – personify her as... Read more
In John 16:33, Jesus tells His followers that “in this world” they will have troubles or afflictions, but not to worry: He, Jesus, has “overcome the world”. Which I take to mean that whatever trouble you face as a Christ-follower can be easily overcome by the Lord, depending on how He weighs the relative advantages of your ongoing chastisement or your immediate succor. Now earlier, in Luke 8:7-14, Jesus had told “the parable of the sower”, in which He had... Read more
“Your ‘if’ is your only peacemaker: much virtue in ‘if’” — Shakespeare This may not be the place to launch into the eternally-convoluted battle over predestination, but it might be worth considering for a moment the sheer number of times the word “if” is used in scripture. I haven’t counted up all the instances of its occurrence in The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, but they spread like lines of sprinkled pepper on page after page. According to one... Read more
In the second book of Samuel, in chapter 12, we read the story of how King David’s infant son dies as punishment for David’s adultery with the baby’s mother, and for the king’s complicity in the murder of the mother’s husband. While the child lingered in illness, David prayed desperately and fasted, imploring God for the baby’s recovery. After the infant dies, the king washes, resumes his usual countenance, and sits down to a meal. His courtiers respond with these... Read more
Imagine you and a friend are hiking through a large Northern California forest, and the two of you are immersed in a deeply-involving discussion of philosophy. Lost to your surroundings, you both stop for a moment, face each other, and expound your points enthusiastically. You put an exclamation mark on your last sentence and turn around. You walk smack into the largest, tallest Redwood tree on earth. You look up: the monster tree looms like a skyscraper and is wider... Read more
G.K. Chesterton once wrote that a person who relied entirely on his own spiritual resources, was like a man who sucked his own thumb in order to derive nourishment. Obviously we have to look outside of ourselves to find our true “food”. Our eternal sustenance comes from an eternal Source; the immediate question is: how do we cultivate and ingest that “immortal manna”? We human beings tend to make a great pother and to-do about getting close to God, as... Read more
It doesn’t seem to be true at first glance, but the words provision and providence mean exactly the same thing etymologically. The prefix pro-, a variant of pre-, means, of course, “before” or “preceding”; while both -vision and -vidence derive from the Latin video, meaning “I see”. Therefore, both provision and providence signify a kind of “foreseeing” or a “seeing something before” the events that follow after. But we know well enough that the definitions of these words differ greatly. ... Read more
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