The aged prophet Isaiah showed up at the bedside of the middle-aged king. Hezekiah was only about 39 years old and terminally ill. But the prophet was not bringing good news, “Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover” (Is. 38:1).
The weak king cried out to God, “’ Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight’. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (Is. 38:3).
“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction.” This is the conclusion of the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by sociologists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe. In The Great DeChurching, pastors Jim Davis and Michael Graham unpack why and how over the past twenty-five years, forty million of those who formerly attended church no longer do so.
Jerusalem, Israel
3:15 am, April 13
I sat up in bed to a wailing sound I had never heard before, but knew immediately: an air raid siren. Our building rattled to the booms of interceptors from Israel’s missile defense system hitting their inbound targets. I pulled back the curtains and watched as sprays of light streaked the sky.
Iran launched 170 drones, 20 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s purported attack on an Iranian embassy in Syria.
Nothing is more iconic to the Tucson landscape than the saguaro. The emblematic cactus is to the Sonoran Desert what the palm tree is to Miami: hard to imagine without it. Saguaros typically live between one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five years, not sprouting its trademark arms until around thirty to seventy years of its life and growing to around fifty feet tall.
For those Sonoran Desert natives, we intuitively know where saguaros thrive. They love the rocky (both granite and volcanic) soil at the foothills of the five beautiful mountain ranges that surround Tucson.
I drove a little manual 2005 Scion xB for about eight years. It finally gave out after 230,000 miles. I loved that little car. It was fuel-efficient and required minimal maintenance. But it is undeniably close to the least powerful car on the road. I’m pretty sure that on its specs, next to 0-60mph, it says, “Eventually!”
Unless I was lined up against someone from a nearby retirement community, I was the last car to reach the speed limit coming off a stoplight. Unsurprisingly, more aggressive drivers with more powerful vehicles tended to treat my little Scion like a safety cone on the road, more like an obstacle than a fellow traveler.
The aged prophet Isaiah showed up at the bedside of the middle-aged king. Hezekiah was only about 39 years old and terminally ill. But the prophet was not bringing good news, “Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover” (Is. 38:1).
The weak king cried out to God, “’ Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight’. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (Is. 38:3).
Six categories of the cross: JI Packer begins, “Jesus Christ is, in fact, an expression of the temper of the whole New Testament. For explaining the cross, the New Testament uses many images, many categories, many modes of thought blended together. These various categories and modes of thought serve to enrich our understanding of the cross and its meaning.”
A game of hide-and-seek: how shame keeps us from the Father’s love: Bethany Broderick shares a moment with her daughter, “The angry speech I was ready to give her melts away, and I drop to the ground next to her. I pull her close, and she cries against me. She is broken over her sin, yet she doesn’t know what to do other than try to hide.”
One of my least favorite reading experiences was reading Beowulf in high school English. Were you subjected to this torture? Beowulf was written sometime between the 8th and 10th century and uses an early form of Old English called West Saxon. Maybe if I re-read Beowulf I would love it, but at the time it felt like it was just one of those books we were reading because of its historic significance. Getting through the language was just brutal. I could barely piece together what a sentence meant, much less a paragraph, and understanding the plot felt virtually impossible. On top of that, this bizarre story of a monster in a far-away land felt profoundly irrelevant to my life...
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else… Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.” Sam Harris
Can we trust the Bible? Do Christians believe the Bible with “no evidence whatsoever”? What is the evidence that it is trustworthy?
Why should I believe that the Bible is trustworthy? How do I respond to a friend who has questions about the Bible?
Atheists.org begins its post on Biblical Contradictions with this statement: “It is a central dogma of all fundamental Christians that the Bible is without error. They teach this conclusion by “reasoning” that god cannot be the author of false meaning and he cannot lie. Is this true? If written by a perfect being, then it must not contradict itself, as a collection of books written by different men at different times over many centuries would be expected to contradict each other.
Do ghosts exist? Do we have access to the spirit world? If so, what does that mean for our spiritual life?
Not long ago I was asked by a congregant to make sense of the bizarre story of Saul and the Medium at En-Dor. This story is understandably confusing, and one of the strangest in scripture.
At the heart of this text is a critical question: will you obey God?
Why pineapples used to cost $8,000: Suzanne Raga with the intriguing history of pineapples, which were considered so luxurious and exotic at one time they were rented. She begins, “Though native to South America, pineapples (scientific name: Ananas comosus) made their way to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and it was here that Christopher Columbus first spotted their spiky crowns in 1493. Columbus and his crew took pineapples back to Spain, where everyone loved how sweet this new, exotic fruit tasted.”
A normal life includes a great deal of suffering: Alan Noble asks us to consider, “Think about someone you know who is living the good life: someone well dressed, confident, smiling, high achieving, maybe even attractive and intelligent and funny. Nine times out of ten, they are carrying around something unspeakably painful. And often, when you learn what that pain is, it’ll be something completely unexpected. You weren’t even aware that people could suffer like that.”
Standing on the shoulder of nobodies: Brianna Lambert considers the humble fiddler crab and concludes, “It’s true, our hard work may still feel small and forgotten. To the world it may look inconsequential like those tiny fiddler crabs. But we know our lives are not singular. We know that God has linked our small acts of service to an immensely valuable mission.”
14 facts about biblical life: Here is one, “Balm is a kind of resin taken from trees by cutting the bark. People used it as a perfume. And the community also considered it a medicine (Jer. 51:8). Although Gilead is mentioned together with balm (Jer. 8:22; 46:11), the substance was not produced in Gilead.”
We are defined not by our failures, but by Christ’s victory: Jen Oshman tells the amazing story of a forgotten missionary couple. What appeared to be the end of the story was this (but it was far from the end!): “It’s not totally clear what happened, but records show that after 17 years Dr. Leslie and his wife were asked by local tribal leaders to leave. There had been some kind of falling out and they were no longer welcome in or around Vanga. The Leslies abandoned their mission outpost and returned to the U.S. defeated—believing they had failed.”
How cancel culture points to the gospel: Marie Burrus says, “Like most cultural elements, cancel culture does get some things right. Throughout Scripture, we’re reminded that injustice and evil should be uncovered and eliminated. Though we may not affirm its methods, cancel culture points to the truth of human depravity and the prevalence of injustice in our world.”
Think little: Darryl Dash with a related article, “So often, we’re focused on the big. I’m grateful for those who are faithful in big things. I just think it’s time we stopped overlooking what God does through the rest of us who aren’t powerful, connected, and leveraged. It’s time to move from focusing on what’s big and powerful to seeing what God can do through the ordinary, even when it doesn’t look like much.”
When I was losing my marriage, Jesus taught me to forgive: Sheila Dougal shares, “Suffering when someone hurts you doesn’t save you or anyone else. But walking through this suffering with Jesus brings a miraculous change in our lives because of the blood of Christ which does save us. It’s the love of Christ that compels us to forgive others. As we look at Jesus and what he has done at the cross—bearing our unjust acts and wicked thoughts—his love grows in us and empowers us to forgive rather than begrudge.”
An easier way to read Revelation: Have you ever felt stumped by the final book of the Bible? Jim Davis offers some helpful advice to the reader, “Revelation is notoriously confusing, but it doesn’t have to be. Yes, there are dragons, angels, antichrists, and (seemingly) multiple returns of Christ. But if we read this book through the lens of recapitulation, it becomes easier to understand.”
Why do snakes have forked tongues? Isn’t our Creator amazing?
1. The Cosmos Keeps Preaching: Kevin Hartnett shares about his faith after forty years of discoveries at NASA. He begins, “Have you ever landed great seats at a concert, show, or sporting event — seats right down front, near the center of the action? That’s very much how I think about my position as an employee at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center over the past forty years (now retired), a career spent assisting in the development and testing of satellite control centers and directing the operation of various scientific missions.”
2. Sex and Christ Crucified: Excellent post by Ed Welch, making Paul’s insights to the church at Corinth clear. He says, “Notice how we can find a belief, somewhere in our souls, that we are independent agents, free to make our own decisions. This belief can be aroused when we hear that we “are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). But be careful. Even people who don’t follow Jesus would say that freedom has its limits. Some choices are good for us and some are not.”
3. Guarding Cherished Resentments: Steve Cornell warns, “Resentment often comes with a blinding effect. It can be hard to recognize how anger and bitterness double our loss and send extended effects of the evil done against us to others.”
4. The Unexpected Beauty of Babel: This is a fun one by AW Workman. It’s similar to a post I wrote here (but I think even better). He says, “Yet Babel was not only an act of judgment. It was also an act of creation. Creation through judgment. Apparently, when God acted, dozens of languages burst into existence instantly and then began to live and move and have stories and descendants of their own.”
5. Two Types of Airport People: Pretty funny.
Every Day’s a Bad Day: How Ecclesiastes Taught Me to Enjoy Life: Carolyn Mahaney wants us to see Ecclesiastes in a new light, “Ecclesiastes has shown me the secret of enjoying life, even in the midst of trouble. It has rescued me from disillusionment when labors I thought were fruitful appeared to be for naught. When friends have turned their backs, Ecclesiastes has helped me guard against bitterness. It has cured me of setting my hope on a particular outcome, and protected me from becoming bewildered and disheartened by bad news.”
Hannah’s Funeral: Oh my, get your tissues out for this touching piece by Seth Lewis about their daughter they lost during pregnancy 16 years ago.
What Things? D. Eaton considers Jesus’s casual two word response on the road to Emmaus and invites us to consider their spiritual power for us, “It is only because Jesus can ask, “what things?” without further suffering that we can look at our sin and ask, “what debt?” without being thrown into an anxious or guilty state. In Jesus, we have no reason to re-experience the threat of wrath that once hung over us.”
Not a Dinosaur: Mitch Leventhal makes a convincing case that Leviathan in Job is Satan, not a dinosaur. “Job cannot subdue the Evil One. Satan is untamable by man, like a multi-headed sea beast in the waters of chaos. But God can overcome Leviathan. According to Jim Hamilton, ‘the whole book is bracketed by Yahweh’s enticing Satan to do his bidding at the beginning, and by his putting a hook in Leviathan’s nose at the end.’ Yahweh rules over the deep. Evil will not have the last word.”
More Than Jumper Cable Christianity: JA Medders explains, “We use jumper cables when our car’s battery is depleted, dead, and in need of a jumpfrom another battery to get going. We connect jumper cables to another car, get some juice, and then go about our day and way. I fear far too many of us approach “abiding” in Christ this way.”
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