It's now two and a half weeks since we gave Oscar his frankly horrible send-off, I'm back to work so I've run out of time to write much other than sermons, and yet I'm still grieving, so thanks for continuing to sit here with me for a bit. By this point, I now also have… Continue reading The Awful Truth
Every time I teach SITS, or promote it, for that matter, I talk about "what if God were there, even in the dark times"? Well. What if He were? Does that make the fact that you lived through those times better? Or worse? If He were there, and you still went through it, that must mean He didn't do anything about it, right? Why would you want to find that out? What's more, how could you continue to trust Him if you learned that He was?
Oh for goodness' sake. If I can't even keep up with this blog by posting stuff I've already written, there may be no help for me. Here are the rest of the readings and associated thoughts and questions to conclude Part One of When God Is Invisible. 7th Reading - Esther 5 What do you… Continue reading All the Other Readings
Second OSF post of the exploration study: If you’ve read this story a million times before, it might be so familiar that nothing about it really seems surprising. See if you can read it as if you’re coming to the story for the first time (or maybe you really are!). What kinds of questions does… Continue reading 2nd Reading: Esther 2:1-18
Then I read the story for myself.
By the time I got to Leviticus, though, I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
I said, "Actually, I've come to a whole host of realizations about our childhood on the basis of some boxes I discovered here over the weekend."
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you, as though something strange were happening to you... (1 Peter 4:12) Sometimes, if they seem open to the idea, I suggest to people that God doesn't ask us to go through the sorts of things He wasn't (isn't?) willing to go through Himself. He became a human being for that very purpose. And He… Continue reading First World … Formation
I was loved as a child. I know I was fortunate in this, and I think I even knew it then. I was loved by my family, I mean, which I suspect is the main thing, in childhood. I had a little more trouble at school, though, and somewhere along the way I picked up… Continue reading The Like of God
How is it that Christians are still so divided along color lines that in almost half a century, a missionary kid like me never heard of the actual "Father of Modern Missions"? Or if I did, it was never in those terms, and I don't remember it?
