Consider this

By now, I am sure that you have heard about the thirty-three miners that were stuck in a collapsed mine in Chile. Against all odds, after seventeen days of drilling, the rescuers were finally able to confirm that all of the men had survived the collapse and that they were alive. For the families, it was nothing short of a miracle. Not only is this a news story that has a happy ending (which is rare in itself), but I was thinking that this story is a good parallel to the gospel story. You see, spiritually speaking, we were like those miners. We were trapped in a bad place. The apostle Paul puts it this way, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Fortunately, as in the case of those miners, unbeknownst to us, someone was “digging us out”. “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righ...

The purpose of a “movie trailer” is to give you enough of the storyline to get you interested. The hope, of course, is that after you have seen a little bit of the movie that you will want to see all of it. If I were trying to find a section of scripture to use as a “movie trailer” for the word of God, I would pick Psalm 103. In this Psalm, David describes God’s nature, our relationship to him and our hope. Here is a sampling. “Praise the Lord… who forgives all your sins” (verses 1 and 3). “Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's” (verses 4-5). “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (verse 8). “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his childre...