There are dog people and there are the rest of people. My family of origin is dog people. My brother and his wife married almost three years ago, and my brother gave a beautiful speech describing his love for his beautiful and talented wife Alexx, but also his love for his dog Chicco, whom he […]
When were you “saved”? Many Christians can point to a time when they were “born again,” a moment when they accepted Christ, put away their sin, and began to live new lives. These people have experienced salvation in a profound way, and they separate their lives into “before” and “after.” It reminds me of the […]
The other day JP asked me, “Can you play hide and seek with me?” What do you do? You put everything else down, and you play hide and seek with your kid. We went upstairs and I said, “OK, let’s play hide and seek.” And very excitedly he said, “Yay! We’re playing hide and […]
Virginia Woolf once wrote to a friend: “I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes out of it well.” What do we do with such a book, in which God seems to allow Job’s life to be destroyed so he can win a bet? What do we do with such […]
Women are wise, and brave, and tough, and anyone who doesn’t believe that has never read the book of Esther. The book of Esther stands next to Ezra and Nehemiah and tells a parallel story at the same time. Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the Jews who went back to the Holy Land […]
We live awash in words, more so than any previous generation. Words scream at us from social media, nag us from newpapers, bully us from billboards, and inundate our inboxes. And we go home at night to watch mindless chatter from TV, or incessant arguing as the political commentators interrupt one another so that you […]
Easter is the most important day of our year as Christians. What is the biggest Christian holiday the world celebrates? It’s Christmas. The world goes nuts for Christmas. The world goes crackers for Christmas. The world goes nutcrackers for Christmas. But Easter slips by in our culture without much fanfare. It’s a long weekend maybe, […]
On this day, Christians around the world celebrate the event that got Jesus killed; his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the common people proclaimed him King. The Roman authorities saw a rebellion fermenting, and the religious leadership of the Sanhedrin didn’t like Jesus’s challenge to their authority—which he displayed, soon after entering the city, by […]
When Rick Warren founded Saddleback Church in 1980, someone asked him, “how big do you think this church will get?” Rick replied, “we’ll have 20,000 members.” The questioner joked, “Who do you think you are?” Rick answered, “it’s not about who I am. It’s about who God is.” Today, Saddleback has about 29,000 in worship […]
How can we consider the book of Joshua the Word of God? In Joshua, the people of Israel carry out total destruction, or herem, in Canaan. God explicitly commands them to “show no mercy.” After the destruction of these cities, we hear, over and over, the refrain: “They completely destroyed everything in it with their […]