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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
Happy Easter! He is risen! I had written during Advent last year about the sensicality of the way Jesus taught and died. And today is a good time to add that His great post-death event — the Resurrection — makes perfect sense, too. It made sense for Jesus to offer some proof for His divinity … [Read more…]
I should begin this post by acknowledging that the Bible is God’s Word on, especially, how He wants us to live, and it ought to be followed whether or not doing so makes us happy. Indeed, there’s no question but that sometimes following the Word will lead to short-term suffering, up to and including death. … [Read more…]
If you have an hour-and-a-half and want to get a good introduction into an area presenting serious problems for a purely Darwinist secularism, I can recommend this installment of Peter Robinson’s video series Uncommon Knowledge, titled “By Design: Behe, Lennox, and Meyer on the Evidence for a Creator.” As the first two words of title indicate, … [Read more…]
We’re told that sometime next month the earth’s population will reach 8 billion. And it’s estimated that close to one-third of the people in the world today are Christians. So here’s a thought, shared by our church’s minister in a recent sermon: What if every Christian brought just one other person to Christ? Even better, … [Read more…]
When I was growing up, my mom would from time to time offer me a “t.l.” or “trade last.” She’d explain, “Somebody said something nice about you to me, and I’ll tell you what it was, but first you have to tell me something nice someone said about me.” I never heard anyone else use … [Read more…]
The top two commandments are to love God and to love others. See Matthew 22:37-40: “Jesus said unto him [i.e., a Pharisee — and a lawyer, to boot — asking Him what was “the great commandment in the law”], Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy … [Read more…]