“To be or not to be, that is the question,” asked Shakespeare through his character Hamlet, in the play by the same name. That’s probably both Hamlet’s and Shakespeare’s most famous line. But the question is incomplete. “To be or not to be WHAT?” What are we going to fall on our swords over? Being […]
It’s fascinating to me that our New Year here in the West occurs in the dead of Winter. I know other cultures’ New Year occurs at different times of the year, and that’s great. I’m sure God is speaking to all cultures with the timing of their New Year celebration, but I’m only qualified to […]
The Christmas rush. Do I have all the presents? All the food? Are all the decorations done? I hate the crowds, the lines, the traffic, because when I’m scampering to get my last-minute presents, they’re in the way of accomplishing my goal. I do commando shopping: get in, get the target, get out. My focus […]
We all hate to wait. We live in a culture where we want the microwave to cook faster. And often we treat our relationships like that. Let’s just cut to the chase. But that’s not how relationships work. We can do grave damage trying to take short cuts in our impatience. I’ve learned this the […]
No one wants to be needy. But this one thing makes us needy and there’s nothing we can do about it, no matter how hard we try. And we try really hard. We pretend really hard. But the one thing that makes us needy against all our best efforts to the contrary is… God’s Design. […]
There’s a world of difference between controlling someone out of fear and confronting them out of love. When we have to deal with someone else’s bad behavior, we have a choice. We can try to control the other person and manipulate them into doing the right thing. Control is hypocrisy because we’re trying, by sinful […]
They could not have been more different. When Jack said “black,” John said “white.” When John said “black,” Jack said “white.” One drove a smart car, the other a hummer. One was rightly concerned about social justice, the other rightly concerned about government over-reach and losing freedoms. One loved the Washington Redskins, the other the […]
“Silly Catholics, don’t they know he’s not on that cross anymore?” I smugly thought to myself, when I noticed the crucifix up on the wall. I had just gotten to the room that would be my home for the next week. About 2005 or so, I took time off from work and went to a […]
At 17, Jennifer was the poster child of a Christian teen-ager. She was the model for her church youth group. As the Pastor’s daughter in a conservative church body, she lead the meeting many times. She was also secretly pregnant, a fact she couldn’t hide much longer. Everyone looked up to her. On the outside, […]
Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to the wind: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) His point was that, just like the wind, you can’t physically see […]