We once had surprise visitors and went through our monthly food budget in one week. Martha understands the way unscheduled visits can bring pressure. Imagine instead a visitor who provides food for you. After losing her husband and sons in a foreign land, Naomi heard the Lord had visited his people and given them food.…
The scandal of the incarnation started before Jesus was born, when his unmarried mother was pregnant. Then the God-become-baby was laid in a feeding trough in a fusty animal stall. The God whose power is unbounded became an infant bound in swaddling cloths. The God who makes the riches of his glory known to us,…
There are motivational posters highlighting vulnerability. For the most part, they feature words, like “Vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness,” but few have pictures. There is one with a fluffy baby plover and the juxtaposed caption, “Vulnerability makes me powerful.” Another, inexplicably, features towering mountains, some of the least vulnerable of earth’s landforms. When…
These works of art remind us that our marriage is also a picture—a picture of Christ and the church: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,so that he might present the church…
In 1990, moved by the Deaf participants who attended one of Ligonier Ministry’s regional conferences, R.C. Sproul made a commitment that set his staff spinning. Dr. Sproul promised that, within a year, some of his teaching resources would be available in ASL. Michael Beates, who had gone to the seminary where Chuck had interpreted for…
Thomas Cranmer stood for the Reformation during his ministry and the early period of his imprisonment. Cranmer saw his friends, Latimer and Ridley, burned at the stake. Ridley’s death was particularly gruesome as, for some time, the fire burned him without killing him. After months of pressure and the constant threat of the stake, Cranmer…
According to a study published in December of 2023, brief conversations with strangers can boost happiness. Talking to people we pass on city sidewalks can be a form of hospitality–love of strangers–a virtue our hospitable God both commands and blesses. We met Fawn when she was barbecuing chicken in her backyard. Chuck took out the…
My prayer life was upended when I began praying for specific pastors and churches before praying for beloved family and friends. I pray for pastors something like this: “Father, enable them to spend the week mountain climbing and bring a description of the summit back to the cloud-covered lowlands. Empower them to see past the…
When I was a child, I loved poetry. I didn’t bring home books of poetry from the school library for the same reason I brought home horse books. I brought home Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague because we had circle segments in reading wheels with spokes for various genres of reading; we were to color…
