Guest (Page 10)
Thankful for God’s Good Gift of Government
“I was asked the other day what I was thankful for in the midst of a pandemic. My answer surprised even me. “I’m thankful for government.” It was surprising, but true. Even as I sit at home during a long, forced lockdown, even as I wonder whether anyone really has a master plan, even as I scratch my head at some of the measures being enacted, even as I grow in my concern about some of the liberties being curtailed,…
I didn’t know I loved you like this
“I didn’t know I loved you like this. A lot of mornings, I grumbled before I saw you. It was a lot of work to get myself together, to get the rest of us together, to put things in order just to get to you. And when I saw you, I took you for granted, assuming you’d still be there when I was in a better mood, just as you always had been. Sometimes I picked at your insufficiencies or…
Living in harmony during isolation
“When we spend a lot of time together with the people we love, it can reveal a lot about what our relationship with them is really like. If we haven’t been investing in that relationship, now we find we share a house with people we barely know. If we have been working on placing others’ needs above our own, this current situation will possibly deepen what is already deep.” Read more…
A Prolonged Sabbath in a Culture of Productivity
“By taking the gift of Sabbath, a day of rest from our work and striving, we remind ourselves that our value is not in our productivity. We proclaim our “unessential” status in the sense that the earth does not depend on our busyness to continue to rotate around the sun. God continues to uphold his creation. We are invited into his work, but we should not fool ourselves that he couldn’t do it without us.” Read more…
We Don’t Sing for Fun
“Singing can be fun and at times will be fun. But God has designed and prescribed it to serve a far higher, far better purpose than that.” Read more…
How the Sacraments Acts as Contracts
“This is what the gospel is: a series of promises expressed in words. God promises forgiveness, acquittal, adoption, preservation, resurrection, and glory. The sacraments are like the signature at the bottom of the contract. In the past, agreements weren’t signed; they were sealed with a wax impression. So the Reformers spoke of the sacraments as seals. But today a signature is our normal way of confirming commitments. The covenant Promises God makes to us in the gospel are signed and…
Anxiety, Waiting and the Coronavirus
“Writing about events while they are happening is always a bit dangerous. It’s easy to encourage over-reactions and reinforce unhelpful panic in our hearts. That said, the COVID 19 coronavirus provides us with an opportunity to think about how we respond to anxiety.” Read more…
Should Christians Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
“When it comes to Saint Patrick, the true story is even more exciting than the legend and the myth. The facts are far better than the fable. This day that belongs to St. Patrick has become about leprechauns, shamrocks, pots of gold, and green—green everywhere. Famously, the City of Chicago dumps forty pounds of its top-secret dye into the river. A green racing stripe courses through the city. But long before there was the St. Patrick of myth, there was…
In This for Life
“Marriage is no ball and chain but the deep breath of patience and long-suffering that says by God’s grace, we’ll figure it out. We won’t grin and bear it. We’ll cry and apologise and try again. We won’t claim to have found any secrets or methods that are foolproof. We’ll walk the long road to our final home until one day one of us says goodbye to other, knowing we had many country roads, many frustrating phone calls, a lot…
What Apostates Don’t Say
“When people walk away from Christianity, there are some common reasons they give. They often stem from an unwillingness to maintain the Bible’s authority in the face of mounting criticism from an increasingly secular world. In some cases, it’s because of morality, other times it’s science, still others it’s the resistance of institutional authority. But there is one thing that I don’t hear an apostate say that should get our attention: They don’t say much about Jesus.” Read more…