Consider this

A huge crack of thunder woke me up at 3:30 this morning. It was then that I realized that it was raining very hard. Several more flashes of lightening and a couple of more huge thunder rolls later, I realized something else: my youngest daughter was in bed with us. She does not like storms and when the thunder woke her up, she came to our room. After unsuccessfully trying to convince her to go back to her own bed, my wife, Sara, decided to left her crawl in beside her. When lightening lit up the sky again, my daughter jumped over Sara so that she could sleep between us and that is when I woke up. Now, we generally don’t let our kids sleep in our bed. In fact, I think it has happened only a handful of times, but there was something nice about it this time. The storm had not changed. In fact, if anything, it had become worse, but there was my daughter, no longer scared, sleeping like a baby between her parents. It mad...

Life after death has always fascinated humankind. For example, “Christian Book Distributors”, an online bookstore, has more than 2813 books on its website that have to do with heaven, hell or life after death. From the Egyptians with their pyramids and mummies, to all the movies and books that our culture produces, we want to know what is to come. 1 Corinthians 15 gives us some answers, sort of anyway. In this chapter, we are told that life after death is real (verses 20-28). We are assured that our physical death will not be the end of us and that our Spirits will live on. “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (verses 51-52). Now, the Bible does not answer all our questions about death. For example, it never tells us where heaven will be, what our new heavenly bodies...

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day made one huge mistake: one that is still being made. See if you can spot it in this passage about Jesus’ crucifixion. “In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. ‘He saved others’, they said, ‘but he can't save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.’ Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him” (Mark 15:31-32) Did you see it? The mistake is found in the phrase, “Let this Christ… come down… that we may see and believe”. The old phrase says that “seeing is believing” and that is exactly what the people of Christ’s day demanded. They wanted proof. They wanted to “see” before they “believed”. Unfortunately, God’s kingdom does not work that way. In fact, the Spiritual order is “believe and then see”. In John 11, when Jesus raises his friend Lazarus ...

When my girls were little, we forced them to read for at least 15 minutes every night. In fact, it was part of their homework for school. At the time, they did not necessarily like to read, because, like any new skill, it was difficult. If we had let them, they probably would have skipped their reading times altogether. Strangely enough, now that they are older, I often find my girls curled up on their beds reading! What happened there? How did reading go from something that we had to force them to do, to being something that they freely choose to do? Well, they found out how much fun reading is and how they can benefit from it. In short, they discovered the “joy of reading”. There is a tremendous difference in reading because you are forced to and reading because you want to and that difference has to do with “motivation”. They have stopped “reading” and have become “readers”. I believe that the...

If you know anything from Psalm 118, if may be this verse, “This is the Day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (verse 24). I don’t know about you, but I sometimes need a reminder to “rejoice”. It can become very easy to focus on the things that are wrong or stressful in my life and sometimes I forget to see the good things. I have ruined many good days simply because I have not had the right focus. The question then is, “How do I rejoice in this day?” The rest of Psalm 118 gives us some good ideas. The first thing to notice is the phrase “Give thanks” (verse 1). Over the last few years, I have come to believe that thankfulness (or the lack thereof) is a “Spiritual indicator”. It shows that we know who is in charge and that we trust God to provide what we need. Next, the Psalm reminds us “His (God’s) love endures forever”. We need to get that picture in our mind because that is what God is like. He loves us forever. Verse 3 then says, “In my anguish ...

Here are two stories that made the news this week. First: A motorist in Montreal came across a car that had gone into the ditch and rolled. Fearing that someone was seriously injured, the passerby stopped his car and got out to offer assistance. When he did that, four people emerged from the rolled vehicle, ran up to the highway and stole his car. Second: On April 26, 2008, the Western Oregon women’s softball team was playing against Central Washington University. During the course of the game, Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky hit the first homerun of her college career. She was so excited that she missed touching first base, so her coach yelled for her to turn around. As Sara turned to go back, she blew out her right knee. Crying, she tried to crawl back to the base. Her teammates came to help her, but the umpires informed them that if they touched her, she would be called out. They also told them that if they...

The church in the city of Corinth was a mess. People were fighting with one another. Some were taking others to court. Sin and dissension had crept in so far that they could not even agree on what their worship times should look like. They even fought during a friendly meal that they called “The love feast” (ironic huh?). It is no wonder then that as we read the letters that we call 1 and 2 Corinthians, we see the apostle Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, trying to sort out one issue after another. The surprising part, though, is the problem that Paul deals with first. In the first ten verses of 1 Corinthians chapter one, the name of Jesus is used ten times. In these verses, Paul reminds them that they have been “called by Christ” (verse 2) and they have received “grace” and “mercy” from Christ (verses 3 and 4). He underlines the fact that Jesus is the one who will keep them “strong to the end” and that he is the one who m...