Cakes, red meat, and fresh neckties fly off the shelves this week. I'm grateful for the ease with which I could choose a card for my wonderful dad. But many struggle with this weekend's holiday. I heard a comedian wish aloud for a card without overstated accolades, reading something like, "Well,…
"See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared" (Exodus 23:20). I wiggled on the plastic seat and squinted toward the floor of the expo hall. Four hundred fifty-four square black caps huddled into rows…
"Put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. Above all, put on love—the perfect bond of unity" (Colossians 3:12-14). Genocide ravages our eastern neighbors. Oppression…
"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). Refugees abandon homes in pursuit of it. Defendants empty bank accounts to negotiate it. Acquisition offers empty promises of it. Anesthesia poisons the flesh with temporary illusions of it. A mother of…
"children running and shouting through the Temple, 'Hosanna to David’s Son!' . . . Jesus said, 'Yes, I hear them. And haven’t you read in God’s Word, ‘From the mouths of children and babies I’ll furnish a place of praise’?'” (Matthew 21:15-16). Easter dawned on the horizon as Christ marched through formidable gates to…
Gravity sucks us to the earth. The weight of our flesh drags us through the grime of this world. We expend all the energy we consume in the effort to sustain ourselves. At the end of the day, we collapse with exhaustion with nothing more to look forward to than another…
From the sun's wink at the zenith, a blue of immeasurable depth extends in all directions to the horizon. I squint at the brilliant sky, wishing it could swallow me whole. Through a gullet of downy clouds, the stuff of daydreams would carry me into the heavens. I could float, suspended…
"They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. . .Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off…
"Jesus answered: 'Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. . . Because of the increase of wickedness, the love…
Yellow and white blooms wilted under the blood moon. Their papery remnants clung to the vine until autumn's breeze tore them away. For a day or two, the evidence of fallen beauty littered gardens across the countryside. Within the base of those flowers who had used their season to pollinate beyond…