So, on this first day of September, consider this challenge, gentle reader: As you sit there, pick up any object near to hand, and see if it does not contain in it something to strike wonder in you. A wooden pencil? Consider then a tree. Consider also how complicated the manufacture of a pencil is. … [Read more…]
The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father, who art in Heaven: Thy name be hallowed, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,” and ends, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” How do Thy name/hallowed, Thy kingdom/come, and Thy will/be done fit together? Next, how do kingdom, power, and glory … [Read more…]
I read once — maybe in a biography of T.E. Lawrence — that it’s no accident that the three great monotheistic religions were born in or near deserts, since that landscape’s sky-filled starkness underscores human limitations and draws one’s thoughts to the eternal, or something like that. A beach does that even more, since the … [Read more…]
In reading this book I was arrested almost at once by this passage (xvi, emphasis added, footnote omitted): … With the aim of restoring the Word of God to the life of the church, Luther used every legitimate means to make known the truths of Scripture. His strategies included writing books, tracts, pamphlets, and letters, … [Read more…]
I just finished reading this book, about which I had mixed (though mostly favorable) feelings, and wanted to highlight just two points. First, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is generally praised these days by all Christians, liberal and conservative, so it’s worth noting that he was pro-life (92-93; note that Eric Metaxas also recently wrote a biography of … [Read more…]
The Gospels read like unembellished eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life (per C.S. Lewis and Richard Bauckham, among others), and I’ve devoted other posts to the historicity of, and Luke’s reason for writing, Acts (see here and here). But what about the various New Testament epistles? [Footnote: The remaining New Testament book, Revelation, is also an … [Read more…]
I will say at the outset that, in answering this question, I’m defining “holy” not as we colloquially do now as basically “without sin” but in its earlier sense of “set apart.” That is, the question I’m asking is, To what extent does God want us to separate ourselves from the world? And by that … [Read more…]
Here’s Macbeth’s famous “tomorrow” soliloquy (5.5.19-28): Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets … [Read more…]
Love is a big deal to Christians, of course, and today starts a big month for love, with all those weddings and June-moon-tune-swoon-spoon rhyming. So here’s a couple of thoughts to begin the next thirty days: Love makes you feel good, makes you do good things, and is good not only for you but for … [Read more…]
Below is the text for a possible children’s book that would introduce them to the Bible. Of course, there would be illustrations, too, but I can’t draw, or at least not very well. Or a parent or grandparent could just read this text to his or her child or grandchild. WHAT IS THE BIBLE? What … [Read more…]