Many of us may feel there is little reason to give thanks this Thanksgiving. We may be facing relational, physical, mental, financial, occupational, and cultural challenges. The list could go on. These struggles may weigh heavily upon our faith. In the midst of such difficulties, we can take comfort from Habakkuk 3:17-19. The writer does not deny that life’s circumstances can be incredibly daunting. It looks like nothing seems to be working for him and his people and that all… Read more

Tomorrow many churches across the globe celebrate Christ the King Sunday. It serves as the last Sunday in the liturgical year. It was instituted in 1925 to honor Jesus’ supremacy and guard against the encroachment of secularism in every domain of life globally. Next Sunday, November 29, will be the first Sunday of Advent, which is also the first Sunday of the new Christian year. Both Sundays account for Jesus’ coming. As the Alpha who is the Omega, Jesus is… Read more

We all pay tribute and follow some individual, group, ideal, or law. It could be a ruler or a boss, a parent, teacher, a religious leader, or a celebrity. It could be a nation or political party. It could even be that we follow ourselves, obeying our narcissistic thirst and being a law to ourselves to a fault. I was reminded of the point on allegiances yesterday as I reflected on the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley’s remarks… Read more

Have you ever been part of a politically and culturally divided church? How do you navigate such divisions where people are literally and figuratively across the aisle from one another in the congregation and their thinking? Do you avoid the issues or seek to engage them? If you engage the issues, how do you go about it? In the video at the close of this blog post, we at New Wine, New Wineskins address these matters. The aim is to… Read more

We can vote politicians in and out of office, but we cannot elect or remove God from the throne. Nor does God fret over opinion polls. The Almighty, the Holy One, is incomparable. No matter what party we align ourselves with on Election Day and beyond, whether the one symbolized by the donkey, the one symbolized by the elephant, or the “elephonkey” in the middle, God sees all of us as grasshoppers, as Isaiah 40 relates. It is important to… Read more

Aristotle claimed that courage is the means between cowardice and temerity or excessive confidence. Great leaders model such courage, and this quality was on display in President Abraham Lincoln’s life. This is my fourth and final post in a series running up to the U.S. Presidential election on the qualities of leadership that President Lincoln modeled. The basis for my reflections results from my reading of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of… Read more

I am doing a series of blog posts related to leadership as we approach the U.S. Presidential election. This is my third blog post on the qualities of leadership that President Lincoln modeled (refer here and here for the first two posts), as discussed in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Lincoln Prize. One of the qualities that Goodwin highlights was Lincoln’s empathy, which is constitutive of humaneness. There are so… Read more

It’s easy for many people to pass over meals as unimportant and uneventful in our fast food society. One wonders how COVID impacts our sense of communal meals. For some, there is perhaps a sense of wistfulness and for others wariness of communal gatherings involving food. Perhaps both wistfulness and wariness are in play. Certainly, COVID has impacted the way churches engage in Communion from wistfulness to wariness. It’s hard taking Communion over Zoom for those who are really about… Read more

I am doing a series of blog posts related to leadership as we approach the U.S. Presidential election. This is my second blog post on the qualities of leadership that President Lincoln modeled, as discussed in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Lincoln Prize. One of the qualities that Goodwin highlights was Lincoln’s ability to adapt to the various challenges, heartaches, and afflictions he endured. Goodwin writes, Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists… Read more

Politicians take God’s name in vain when they employ it for personal benefit. The same holds true for the rest of us. The third commandment makes clear that God does not take divine name-dropping lightly: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7; ESV). The bitter and tragic irony is that even as Moses was up on the mountain to receive the tablets… Read more