Grains of Sand

Jeremiah was known as "the weeping prophet." The situation facing his people was a dire one and the message from God that he was called upon to deliver to them was not always encouraging. He wept because of the sin that had brought about God's judgment and because of the pain that God's judgment would cause. But here and there throughout the prophet's message were words of hope, the assurance that the day would come when God's people would be exactly that: God's people, people who would follow Him wholeheartedly once again.  Jeremiah 50:4, 5 gives us one of those rays of hope: "' In those days, at that time,' declares the Lord, 'the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the Lord their God. They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten .'" In the Old Testament Zion re...

Pixabay The Gospel and the young. However you define the “children” Jesus refers to in Matthew 18:1-14, the result is the same—don’t cause the young to stumble in their faith, or else! Jesus was responding to a question put to Him by His disciples: “ Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? ” (18:1) Considering some of the other discussions they had among themselves I suspect they wanted Jesus to affirm that they, for the sacrifice of following Him, qualified for the position. Instead Jesus takes a young child and uses the simplicity and fervour of a child’s faith as an illustration of who will be the greatest in the kingdom. That provides a launch pad for this: “ But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea ” (18:6). Yikes! This leads to an even more graphic description of what is necessary to protect the budding faith of the young. ...

“ Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts ” —Isaiah 26:8, NIV. “When God’s name and reputation are the most important things in my life, I …” Fill in the blanks. If exalting God were my primary goal, what would I look like? What would characterize my relationships? What would change about my priorities? My attitudes? My needs? How would my use of time be affected? What would happen to my resources? This verse is wrapped in two other verses that are equally important. “ The path of the righteous is level; O upright One, you make the way of the righteous smooth. Yes, Lord, walking in the ways of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desires of our hearts, My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness ” (vss. 7-9). More follows: “ Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we...

“ So God created man in his own image , in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them ”   —Genesis 1:27, NIV In the beginning the space occupied by goodness was huge. The moral character of God filled the heart and soul of that first man and woman. God has no flesh to imitate but he has perfection. With the first sin, goodness began to shrink until, in some, it became a mere pinprick or better said, as difficult to find as that proverbial “needle in a haystack.” How much, or how little, remained was still far from what satisfied the righteous requirements of God. The root word from which “ image ” comes means “shade.” Man went from there being a slight degree of difference between himself and God (for only God can be God) to having only a slight amount of “God-ness” in him. Only God could restore what that first sin, and the nature it imparted to all the generations after it, had lost. So he took on flesh, accepted the consequences for sin that he, ...

A lot of time and effort is expended by mission agencies to train their candidates on how to bridge the culture gap and live incarnationally in the country to which they are being sent. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary statesman of centuries past. was among the first to live and look like the people he sought to win to Christ in China. Incarnational thinking is modeled after Jesus Christ who took on flesh to become one of us; to look like us, to live like us. Sort of. In one area Christ was never like the people he chose to look and live like. He never sinned. In that he did not model us. So as I read this morning's passage in 1 Peter I took notice of the number of times Peter called his readers "strangers" while he was busily exhorting them not to be the same as the people around them, but to be different. He begins his letter: " To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. . . " –1 Pe...

My prayer for all of you out there in cyberspace who might read this post: " I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love , may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ , and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God " –Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV. It's all there: 1. The saving faith that comes from him and brings us unto a personal and intimate relationship with him expressed in " so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ." 2. The growth and permanence of that relationship expressed in " rooted and established in love ." 3. The power that buries "me" to embrace him as I discover the truth of " how wide and long...

I can hear the sounds of a saw next door. The renovations to the church are moving ahead quickly. In the meantime we "put up" with having to use only the north wing of the church for services while the main sanctuary and the south wing are being torn apart and then put back together. We'd hoped to get finished with the construction and the repainting by Christmas. It might not happen because renovating oftentimes takes more time that originally planned. But what about the Christmas Eve program? We might still be somewhere in "rough draft" mode by the 24th of December. I apparently echoed someone's remarks when I said that if Christ wasn't above being born in a stable I guessed that we shouldn't be too bothered about having our Christmas Eve service in a less than perfect auditorium. Less-than-what-it-should-be is sometimes an issue for us. That works in the spiritual realm as well since we are always "less than what we should be." The g...

" ...our prayer is for your perfection " –2 Corinthians 13:9, NIV. I pray a lot of things for a lot of people but I'm not sure I have ever prayed for someone to be perfect. Perhaps I'm a casualty of the popular adage, "nobody's perfect" which might make a prayer for perfection seem like a silly thing for which to petition the Lord. Perhaps I am too aware (or not aware enough) of my own imperfections, making it feel a little hypocritical to pray for someone else to be perfect when I'm not. Oddly, (or not) Paul must have been thinking the same thing. The complete sentence is: " We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection ." The whole context follows the same line. He hoped that he would not fail the test (vs. 6) but his primary concern, and prayer, was that they not do anything wrong (vs. 7). He ends this letter with an admonition to: " Aim for perfection... " (13:11, NIV). Paul isn...

This verses says it all: " For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain " —Philippians 1:21.

Every once in a while I sit down to plow through classic Christian literature. I say "plow" because often the authors of centuries past use language and phraseology that requires work to read with immediate understanding. They obviously didn't know about fast food Christianity. I've just begun a classic called The Imitation of Christ by Thomas á Kempis. I didn't get any farther than the introduction before I was caught "hook, line and sinker." Here is one of the gems. The editor, Rosalie de Rosset, writes: " á Kempis is particularly strong on the importance of Christians knowing themselves. 'We can not trust ourselves too much, because grace oftentimes is lacking in us and understanding also. There is little light in us, and that which we have, we quickly lose by our negligence.' He points out the irony that we are moved by passions that we think are real, and that, by implication, may not be at all, and while we 'quickly feel and weigh...