I’ve been wanting to do a Q & A podcast episode for a while, and my plan was to walk through a bunch of your questions all at once. But (of course), as I was working on it, this one particular question–about the seemingly problematic God of the Old Testament–kind of arrested my attention…and in the end, fully stole my attention, because it’s such a big question. So this episode is all about that. In
And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. — Matthew 12:44-45 A friend of mine, who knows I’m a sucker for reading things I don’t understand, sent me an article this past week entitled “Our Improbable Existence
by George MacDonald, adapted by Ross Byrd Long ago, in a land far away, there lived a king and a queen who were very sad because they had no children. But after years of waiting and hoping, the queen gave birth to a girl. The king was so delighted that he called for a great celebration and invited almost the entire kingdom. Almost. What the king did not realize–or perhaps he did–was that he neglected
This poem, by Sam Kittrell, is the first in a series we’re calling “Psalms, Proverbs, and Parables.” The goal is to adopt the format of the biblical psalms (poems and songs to God), proverbs (pithy sayings, mostly about wisdom and foolishness), and parables (images and stories that convey deeper truths) as we wrestle with God and life and death and beauty here in the 21st Century. To be clear, we are not suggesting that our
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie
Martin Luther King’s “Letter to Birmingham Jail” is a masterpiece of Christian protest in a world that could use a few lessons, especially in 2021. Where are the communicators like him in our generation? (Honest question.) I am not always proud to be an American. But I am proud of this moment in our history, and proud we have a day to commemorate it. Whole thing is worth a listen.
from The Four Quartets, East Coker, by T.S. Eliot I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the
“Man’s conquest of nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be nature’s conquest of man.” — C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943) A lot of us have been trying to figure out how to make sense of the protests that turned into riots that turned into the storming of the Capitol Building this past week in DC. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And then I read an article
This is a list of recommended resources I prepared for our Virginia Beach Fellows program. VB Fellows is a leadership development program for recent college grads, which I co-direct. Happy browsing! Feel free to leave your thoughts and questions in the comment section. Short Reads, Watches, & Listens: On Justice: “Justice” by George MacDonald (a sermon that challenges what we mean when we say “God is just” and “Jesus died for our sins”): http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/31/ On
I have a question from 1 John 2. It comes from this passage: Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me What gods might we have? Not literally “money” or “sex” or “power” or “success” or “fame.” No one worships these things directly. It is the “gods” hiding behind such things. The subtle deals we make with those unseen forces which we barely understand and to which we may really be tempted to pay homage, as though they were the sources of all meaning, blessing, and deliverance. No
Question: I’m wrestling with the balance of believing the Bible to be true but also feeling like some parts of it either don’t make sense or don’t seem to apply to modern life. For example, how do I live as a Christian woman in the 21st Century? Am I supposed to be complementary to men in leadership? There to help, but not to lead in the church as it seems to say in 1 Timothy
