If You Wrote a Psalm After reading so many psalms and trying to put myself inside the expressions of praise and pleading, prophecy and prayer, trouble and triumph, and confidence in the mercy of God, I wondered if I could compose a psalm that would encompass the circumstances of my life and articulate them in […]

You Are Not All That Today I want to focus on Psalm 49 in particular because it set the tone for the rest of the Psalms that I subsequently read. During my reading, I experienced a sense that I was judging David both negatively and positively because I know the many surprisingly great things, as

The Answers To Everything Our world today has so much to offer: Things that make our lives better, convenience beyond belief, and access to knowledge literally in the palms of our hands. Do you want to know how to fix almost anything? There is probably a YouTube video that will show you. Want an education?

The Necessity of Reflection The Book of Job is filled with extremes. The poetic language used is both cryptic and descriptive at the same time. It is also repetitive to emphasize themes and expand on metaphors. It is a series of arguments to determine Job’s course of action and attitude. If we apply these things

If You Can’t Be Good Looking, At Least Be Good I have heard the story of Ester many times but had never read it myself. The story I have always heard is one of faith and courage but the story I read came off very differently to me. Surely courage and faith were elements in

Negotiating With the World As much as we would like to think of ourselves as independent, free-thinking individuals, we find ourselves in a severely restricted environment that I will refer to as the world for today’s purposes. Certain aspects of life are non-negotiable such as age, physiological limitations, intelligence quotient, etc. Other self-imposed restrictions govern

When The Sacred Becomes Profane As I read in 2 Kings 18 this week, I was amazed to learn that Hezekiah (a righteous king) broke in pieces the brasen serpent fashioned by Moses in the wilderness. He did it because the children of Israel had begun burning incense to it and had given it a

Prophets and You During the past two weeks, we have read about two great prophets of the Old Testament, Elijah, and Elisha. Both were involved in some miraculous and frightening events. Both men solved complex problems for people who regarded them as men of God and raised havoc and destruction for those who chose to

Earning The Confidence of God When we read stories like Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, or Elijah calling down fire from heaven, we may wonder if any of them are real. Like so many Biblical stories, critics pass them off as fables with a moral, or as clever manipulative instruments designed to capture imaginations,

Who Do We Think We Are As we read the stories of David and his son Solomon, their rise to greatness, and their precipitous fall from grace, we may wonder how it all could happen. The courage and faith of David and the wisdom of Solomon are legendary, and they left legacies nearly unmatched in