Good morning Kate (and the rest of the world), Today you are ** years old. As we are now six hours ahead of the rest of your friends and family plus I was up late, I am fairly confident that I was the first to express my birthday greetings to you
Life is final. There are no do-overs. There are no mulligans. The consequences are real. The stakes are high. When we are young, we don't realize it. Then over the course of our lives, we experience pain and agony. Life becomes real. We make mistakes that cost real money, real
Jesus maintained the tension of present pain and future glory without falling into our trite sayings (see last post). It is humbling to read how Christ approached life. We all err when it comes to the balance between truth and love. My natural state is to emphasize truth and come
Most of us fall into a routine of using trite sayings to answer difficult situations. They are often true--at least partly so--, but we miss the pathos of life in recycling something we saw in a church bulletin or heard a special speaker say. We should not be afraid to
Life hurts. Yet we try to deny this fact. Not outright denials, but in hushed undertones. Christian art often is rightly panned for being cloy or trite. It is all too commonly a sickeningly sweet look at life the way it never was. We use cute clichés, or even look
Where I'm at and where I'm going I've been wanting to write this for a while, but I just haven't. I need to though, so we are all on the same page. I'm Baptist. I'm an independent Baptist.(see #1 below) I'm a classic fundamentalist.(see #2 below) I have
Continuing our theme from yesterday, I want to state up front two things. First, I am not perfect in this regard, but I'm working on it. If you here me preach a sermon, and mess it up, call me out! Second, these are things that all people do and do
Lately, I've been thinking about telling the truth in preaching. In some ways, I guess that sounds a bit crazy to most believers. But I am afraid that there are three or four areas that we preachers can slip into and undermine the truth of the Bible and our own
This is the rest of list of practical thoughts from yesterday on who to travel and expand your view of the world: Eat everything--or at least a lot. Do they eat much meat? What kind of animals? What parts of the animal? Is the food spicy, savory, or bland? What
If you want to push yourself beyond your boundaries, it won't be easy. If you want to expand your view of the world and you find international travel easy (Canada is an exception!), you're doing it wrong, or you are incredibly gifted. No passport, no problem First, don't think that
Polka in Prešeren Square Kissing the Ground Here's what I seem to hear every time a group returns from a short-term missions trip: "I am so thankful to live in America." "God has really blessed us." "I don't know how I would survive in [insert
A crowded gate in the Vienna airport. There were no where near enough seats. We stood. We get used to what surrounds us. City dwellers accept the din of traffic and the bustle of urban life. Suburbanites thrive with strip malls and shopping centers close at hand. Country folks enjoy
Sunset over the Adriatic Nearly eight years ago I stepped aboard my first international flight. I was excited. I had no idea what to expect. I was convinced of American exceptionalism and the glory of the American South. I was in love with the past--a golden era of American Christianity.
Yesterday: I began reading John Piper's Bloodlines which is now available for free in pdf format. While there are many areas of theology and practice where I would disagree with Pastor Piper, I have been encouraged by the first four chapters. Racism is absolutely and unequivocally incompatible with the Gospel.
<img src="http://dbgi6clnbgca3.cloudfront.net/media/2012/4047982682_daf2b1ae70.jpg" w[> Not the maybe, kinda, sort of, middle school guy hoping the girl he has a crush on will ask him out to the Sadie Hawkins dance (or banquet for us IFBer's) type of hope.
"Always winter, but never Christmas." This was the curse upon Narnia in C.S. Lewis' classic. Good writing is amazing. Lewis instantly transports us to a bleak world, but not just a bleak world–a world without hope. His five simple words capture the timbre of a life
