When the Accuser Speaks and the Truth Answers Many of you have seen Ren Gill’s performance of Hi Ren. It’s hard to forget. A young man in a hospital gown sits in a wheelchair in a bare, decaying room. With nothing but an acoustic guitar and his own voice, he stages an intense conversation between…
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When the Years Feel Heavy and the Father’s Shadow Is Long There is a song that has followed me for a long time—Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years.” It is not a gospel song. Mick Hucknall wrote it as a teenager about a childhood marked by an absent mother and a stern father. Two lines…
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Four-Fold Blessings: Clear, Kind, Loving, and Bountiful Deuteronomy 10:12–22 and 11:1–17 show us a God who does not leave His people guessing, abandoned, or empty-handed. In these words Moses holds up four expressions of the Lord’s blessing. They are not abstract ideas; they are the way God relates to the people He has chosen. Even…
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There are two sentences a man can hear from God, and they do not cancel each other. Nathan the prophet looked at a king who had taken a woman and arranged a death, and he said, “The Lord also has put away your sin.” In the same breath he said the sword would not leave…
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A feeling is not a covenant. A word for the husband or wife waiting to feel like staying — and for anyone who learned that love is weather. I know this house when the lamps are low. That is where a marriage actually lives. Not in the photograph from the day you said the words.…
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Men measure years on the work that leaves their hands A word for the man who has looked at an old object and felt the years leave with it — and for anyone who still has wire on the spool and does not know what to do with the rest. There is a kind of…
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How you get to the altar can change. What a thin yes costs does not. A word for anyone who grew up in a quiet, unhappy house and is being asked to marry before they have healed — and for a church that knows how to decorate a wedding better than it knows how to…
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You do not have to make the sound. A gift of the Spirit cannot be practised into existence, and it must not be required for belonging. When a church, a porch, or a workplace circle treats tongues as the handshake, a new believer will be tempted to produce what he has not been given. That…
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Christianity is not a flag you hoist so a civilization can survive. It is a Person you kneel to so a sinner can live. A meme has been moving through Facebook this week. Enough of you have sent it that it needs an answer from the church, not another share. I am not going to…
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Children are not a prize for adults. They are a heritage from the Lord. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” (Psalm 127:3) When we speak about adoption, we are speaking about one of the most solemn trusts a society can give: the care of a child…
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