The books of 1 and 2 Samuel (and in the Hebrew it’s just the single book “Samuel) are pivotal in the overall scheme of God’s World Renewal Plan. These books, even though named after Samuel the prophet, are all about David. But wait...
Something I’m not used to in American mainstream Christianity is all the topical sermons. In all the churches that I’ve visited in the past few weeks the sermons have almost ALWAYS centered on a topic (10 Steps to a Healthy Marriage...
I had a great chat today with a friend. The conversation started with my asking about the four months that he spent in Indonesia. He said that if he had to describe his experience in one word it would be, “humbling”. “I went there...
Living in Haiti for eight years now has forced me to think a lot about what it means to struggle. Webster’s defines “struggle” as “to try very hard to do, achieve, or deal with something that is difficult or that causes problems.” This word best...
Deepak Chopra is becoming one of the most widely read teachers on spirituality in the Western world. Over the past two decades Chopra has produced more than 20 publications, whose teaching focuses primarily on holistic healing (physical, emotional...
In this post, I wrote that observant Jews read Psalm 30 each morning upon rising. I also noted that Psalm 30 is a temple dedication psalm (as the superscription notes for us). In terms of genre (or “form criticism“), the psalm itself is...
One of the paradoxes of the Christian faith that I struggle with is strength through weakness. I do not struggle with believing it to be true, I struggle with putting it into application on a day-to-day basis. What does this look like in the daily...
God is not only concerned with redeeming the spiritual; he’s concerned with redeeming all of his creation, including physical dimensions. God continually makes earth a dwelling place not only for his people, but for himself to share with his people...
In this post I talked about God’s presence being mobile. I touched on the fact that Israel believed that their expulsion from the Promised Land meant their expulsion from God’s presence as well. The vision of Ezekiel, however, made it...
Back to Ezekiel’s initial vision. One of the characteristics of the being “with the likeness of four living creatures” (Ex 1:5) is that it was mobile. “Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another...