Sometimes the Shrimp Hides the Problem
We’ve all felt the temptation, after someone has been called out for sin, to just leave them there and be done with it. But in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul tells the Corinthians this punishment is enough—now they need to forgive and comfort the one they punished.
The King is Coming
Most of us know what it feels like to wonder whether God has just lost interest—whether we’ve messed up too much, waited too long, or ended up too far gone for him to still be working. The prophet Isaiah delivered God’s word to people who felt exactly that way, and what he told them in passages like Isaiah 7 and 9 raises a question worth sitting with: does “God with us” still hold when everything around you says otherwise?
Grateful for the Dark Places
You ever felt the walls enclosing around you, a dark place you never invited in and would never have chosen? Jeremiah knew that feeling in Lamentations 3, where he says the Lord Himself led him into darkness, not into the light. How could we be thankful for a place like that?
Loving Towards Restoration
A few taps can broadcast someone else’s failure before you’ve felt any of their pain. In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul describes correcting a troubled church through affliction, anguish, and many tears—insisting the words came from abundant love, not a desire to wound. His example presses a searching question: what is actually happening in your heart when someone else must be corrected?
Faithful, Not Flashy
An acre of dirt, trees, and rock is being lifted over a California freeway on seventy-five girders—the largest wildlife bridge on earth, twenty years in the making, priced near a hundred million dollars. We tend to go for the grand, but the Apostle James suggests that being grand isn’t what matters most.
“Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,”
Episode 49: We Report, Jason Cries
The Boys are back — one standing, one sitting — both trying to make sense of Cardinals chaos, Blues heartbreak and the first hundred days of Trump 2.0. Plus: speculation on the next album from Taylor Swift and a meditation on the mystery of Jesus’ two natures.
Sometimes the Little Things Are Big
One would never have guessed the power of just zooming the camera back.
In late spring, as I’ve written, our beloved local priest, Father Mark, died of esophageal cancer at age 49. The grief-stricken congregation was oddly denied admission to the parish church for his funeral. The church ended up being half empty; the service was to be streamed for those who cared to watch.
Ecclesiology, Doctrine, Ecumenism: A Few Difficult Questions
I am provoked by an internet presence that goes by “Redeemed Zoomer,” presumably a 20-something young man holding theologically conservative views, and similar views on Christian ethics, who is Reformed.
Oremus
When one of my sisters phoned the other day, we got to talking about the church in which we grew up.
We were raised high-church Episcopalian. When you went to church there was no other place it could possibly be and nothing but worship could have possibly been going on. As the priest consecrated the body and blood for communion, he — yes, he — faced the altar and crucifix. We received communion on the tongue while we knelt at the communion rail. The lay readers — those who read the Epistle at each service — were enrobed, as were we acolytes.
Little Hills Church
Harvester Christian
Bible Baptist Church
True Life Community Church
FaithTree Christian Fellowship