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Powerful Reminders from Passionate Events
By Tom Claibourne Twenty-six verses. Mark 14:1-26 comprises less than a third of the chapter, but it is filled with a whirlwind of passionate emotions and events. • We see envy, fear, anger,...
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Valentine Love
By Tom Claibourne Legends abound regarding the origin of Valentine’s Day and the namesake for the holiday. At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early...
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A Substitute
By Tom Claibourne The Bible is very bloody. Two-thirds of the books mention blood, with more than 450 total references. Blood is the scarlet thread that runs through the Bible and is central to...
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Alone in a Crowd
By Tom Claibourne The Lord’s Supper is quite paradoxical. It looks backward and forward. It calls us to look upward but also inward. It is utterly profound yet disarmingly simple. It celebrates life...
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The God Who Hung on a Cross
By Kay Moll In 1999 an evangelist visited a village in the northern part of Cambodia that for many years had been under the control of the Khmer Rouge. Christianity was seemingly unheard of. If people...
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‘Are You Being Broken?’
By Kay Moll In his book A Distant Grief, Kefa Sempangi says when he began his ministry in Uganda, he was challenged by some older ministers about the need for continual repentance. One of them would...
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Saved by the Blood
By Kay Moll Paul Brand tells the story of something that happened in 1802*. A smallpox epidemic had broken out in a Spanish settlement in Bogota, Colombia. The colonists sent a desperate cry for help...
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Nothing but the Blood
By Kay Moll In his book The Applause of Heaven, Max Lucado tells of an earthquake that struck Soviet Armenia in 1988. Just before the earthquake, a young mother named Susanna, along with her 4-year-old...
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Still We Meet on the Lord’s Day
By Jeff Faull “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus. . . . On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud...
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His Story, Our Story, the Story of Christ
By Jeff Faull Imagine a child asking the apostle Paul, “Would you tell me a story?” Where would he start? He could tell about his Damascus road experience, adventures at sea, the time he was bitten by...
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Passion
By Jeff Faull Did you ever try one of those love tester machines at the mall? You drop your coin in and grasp the handle as all your friends watch. The buzzers sound and the lights flash and the...
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Where Is Eden?
By Jeff Faull Where is the Garden of Eden? Not the actual geographical description. You can read that in Genesis 2. Where is the garden now? What happened to it? Last we knew, it was in Genesis 3....
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Bless the Hands
By Nancy Karpenske When my family gathers at the dinner table, it is common for the designated prayer person to pray, “Lord, thank you for the hands that prepared this meal.” Those would be my hands...
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Time to Recharge the Batteries
Nancy Karpenske Have you ever suddenly been awakened in the middle of the night? You lay in bed, wondering what woke you. About 30 seconds later you have almost fallen back to sleep when it happens...
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In the Painting
By Nancy Karpenske William E. Barrett’s novel The Shape of Illusion tells a story about a painting. The scene depicted on the canvas is Pilate’s courtyard. Jesus is there, beaten and bloodied. He is...
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More Than Medicine
By Nancy Karpenske One little typing error. Instead of Communion meditation, if you hit one wrong key, you type Communion medication. Medication: a substance used to treat, to heal, or cure a disease....
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Mission Accomplished
By Doug Redford Charles Swindoll’s sister once asked him, “What’s your favorite feeling?” After some thought, Swindoll replied, “I think it would be accomplishment.” He observed how good it feels to...
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Just Ten Seconds
By Doug Redford In February of 2003 Fred Rogers passed away. Rogers was the man responsible for creating Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a program on public television that sought to let all children...
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Disfigured
By Doug Redford Jane Alden Stevens is a professor of fine arts at the University of Cincinnati. During a trip to France several years ago, she noticed a stone obelisk in a small French village that...
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A Vision of Otherness
By Jackina Stark I once had a vision. It was not as glorious as Isaiah’s—I can’t imagine one more glorious than that—but for me, what I saw one morning during a worship service was profoundly...
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