Posts from January 2024

Ecclesiastes was my father’s favorite book of the of the Old Testament, and his favorite verse in Ecclesiastes was 10:1. At least, I think it was his favorite verse. It certainly was the one that he quoted most to my teenage self. To this day, I have no trouble summoning up, “Dead flies make a perfumer’s oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor,” from memory. Now that I have a ten-year-old son, I also have…

Often the Bible presents lessons from nature. “Go to the ant, o sluggard, observe her ways and be wise” (Prov. 6:6). For this lesson, let us consider the bear. During the winter they will spend four to eight months in hibernation, depending on the severity of the winter. During the months they are awake, they are consuming up to ninety pounds of food a day in preparation for hibernation. During hibernation, their heartbeat slows from fifty beats per minute down…

Perhaps you have heard the title of this article before. It is meant to illustrate the function of the church. A hospital is a place where people who are physically sick or injured go to get better. The church is also such a place, but in a spiritual way. People who are spiritually sick or injured should find healing through the efforts of the church. Sometimes people criticize the church as being a place of hypocrites precisely because there are…

There is much talk these days about “privilege.” While this word has been in the English language for hundreds of years, it is being wielded in order to divide this country along economic and racial lines. But, no matter what monetary or societal privilege a group of people may or may not have in this world, nothing compares to the privilege of being a Christian. No matter what skin color you have, what neighborhood you grew up in, or what…