FYI The New Quarterly Starts This Sabbath If you haven’t noticed already, there were fourteen Sabbaths in this quarter and there are twelve in the first quarter of 2023. So start the new quarterly on the last Sabbath in December (this Sabbath December 31st) to even up our Sabbaths and complete the lessons in a […]
Winter Morning A forest sparkles bright in dawning sun amid new-fallen snow this day begun. There’s stirring movement here throughout the trees in rustling boughs . . . a sermon in the breeze in quiet celebration of God’s ways. The faithful trees stand sure in utmost praise — the woodland thriving patient for the Spring […]
How do we reconcile the Bible’s teaching of a God of love and a God of wrath? There is no reconciliation to be made in God’s nature. God’s love and God’s wrath exist in the context of one another. As surely as a mountain’s peak cannot exist without the valley deep, so God’s love cannot […]
Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am (Psalm 39:4). When I was a lad, “I’m next” was a wonderful place to be: next in line for a ride at the fair or for carrying my plate to the smorgasbord. […]
I’m new to wearing glasses. After the first day of trying to adjust, I was convinced they made my vision worse rather than better. It seemed everything was actually blurrier than before. I pulled the glasses off my face and held them to the light. That’s when I noticed the problem. The lenses were plastered […]
Discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you (Proverbs 2:11). Head down, shoulders shaking, and tears flowing, this was not the Uncle Leonard we knew. Years of poor choices still showed in the crevices of his bony face. However, his wrinkles no longer widened with laughter that turned into a ragged cough. He wasn’t regaling […]
I love to tell the story; Tis pleasant to repeat What seems each time I tell it, More wonderfully sweet. . . . I love to tell the story; For those who know it best Seem hungering and thirsting To hear it like the rest. And when, in scenes of glory, I sing the new, […]
We were hungry and excited. The catering truck had come to Missoula, Montana! We showed up in the parking lot and got in line to place our order. The line kept getting longer as people flocked to get their fish and chips. Freshly cooked, with a little salt and vinegar, fish and chips is one […]
There is nothing like living in hell, but there is something close to it: incarceration. In my hell, where I’d lived since the winter of 2014, there was, as Dante understood, no hope. People think the worst part of a life lived in the concrete jungle is the violence. They are wrong. The worst part […]
I have always been afraid of not finishing what I start. As early as age eleven, I worried that I could not say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). How did Paul remain faithful through more than thirty years of […]
