The Open Door
Acts 14:21-28 She worked earnestly at opening the door. The woman behind her reached around and placing her hand on the door, gently pushed. It opened instantly. The woman smiled her thanks and walked...
View ArticleThe Alternative Solution
Psalm 37:1-7 Take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Let it go. These are common teachings for how to handle the stresses of daily life. Temporary ways of dealing with tensions have their place, but they...
View ArticleMy House, My Rules
2 Chronicles 33:1-9 Good parents, like God, want what’s best for their children even at the sacrifice of their own preferences. Good parents, like God, set consistent boundaries and house rules. House...
View ArticleIt’s Never Too Late
2 Chronicles 33:10-17 Something to ponder: How would people treat or remember you if all they knew about you was your past failures? People who only knew me before I accepted Christ are surprised to...
View ArticleTrue Repentance Leads to Good Choices
2 Chronicles 33:18-25 In an age of hyper-surveillance, it is difficult to be anywhere in public where there are no cameras recording our every move. That’s a fairly modern phenomenon. Yet in the Old...
View ArticleGod Is Gracious Toward Us
John 1:9-18 Our church hosts an annual festival for our community. Dozens of local businesses and organizations donate door prizes for us to give out to the folks that visit our campus. Visitors...
View ArticleCome Near To God
James 4:4-10 Years ago phones were attached to walls instead of hips. We rotated a dial to make calls. We paid extra to talk with people outside our community; it was called long-distance calling (for...
View ArticleGod Desires All To Repent
2 Peter 3:8-15 Every day we wake up with a general idea of how we think the day will go. By the time the day is half over, we’ve often had to adapt our expectations several times. We make...
View ArticleThe Repentant Finds Mercy
Proverbs 28:6-14 When an innocent person is wrongly accused, convicted, imprisoned, and then pardoned, we celebrate that justice has been served for the convict. When a guilty person is rightly...
View ArticleDo Good and Right
2 Chronicles 34:1-7 There’s a recurring pattern we find in 2 Chronicles 34: the faithful kings of Israel doing good and right in the eyes of the Lord and those unfaithful kings doing evil in the eyes...
View ArticleA Light to our Path
2 Chronicles 34:8-18 Hilkiah the priest was elated to have found the book of the law of Moses. King Josiah was restoring Yahweh as the God of Israel again. Hilkiah was ecstatic! The book of the law...
View ArticleHearers and Doers
2 Chronicles 34:19-25 There is a traditional Eastern Orthodoxy story of a spiritual director and his new disciple. The elder gave his pupil a short passage of scripture for meditation and told him to...
View ArticleHear The Word of the Lord
2 Chronicles 34:26-33 Most Christians place a high value on the Scriptures. It’s God’s holy word; it’s the authority of our lives, the rule of faith. Yet, in many churches isn’t it strange that so...
View ArticleFrom An Overflowing Heart
2 Corinthians 9:8-15 Paul arranged for the Corinthians to provide for the church in Macedonia. He wrote to remind them of their faith promise to give in this “ministry to the saints” (2 Corinthians...
View ArticleCall To Attention
Hebrews 2:1-9 A recurring pattern in Eastern Orthodox worship is calling the congregation’s attention to the proclamation of the Holy Scriptures. Worshipers hear exclaimed, “Wisdom! Attend!” and “Let...
View ArticlePractice
Psalm 19:7-14 “God does not come in extraordinary events, but works amid the apparent monotony of our daily life, in the frequently dull rhythm of our activities, in the little things that, working...
View ArticleOrdinary Times
Ezekiel 1:1-14 The heavens opened and visions flew to Ezekiel. Suddenly he finds himself trying to describe the indescribable and like a terrifying dream which removes all hope of returning to sleep,...
View ArticleThe Mobility of God
Ezekiel 1:15-21 We have a grandson who was born with profound hearing loss. My favorite story of entering the context of his world happened when he was about three years old. I verbally scolded him...
View ArticleBe Awed
Ezekiel 1:22-28 Laura doesn’t remember when the dream of seeing Mount Kilimanjaro was born. It seems as if it was always there. She often imagined the wonder of standing under a tree in Africa while...
View ArticleThe Crushing Weight
Isaiah 6:1-8 How could any human feel worthy in saying, “I saw the Lord”? If all the holy actions of all humanity were converted into water, they would amount to less than a drop in the sea of God’s...
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