Reflections on God … Man … Life
Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.
Death is something we all have to face. For most of us, it is faced first in the loss of someone we know and love. Ultimately, we have to face it in our own lives, recognizing that it is inevitable, not something we can avoid forever, although in Christ we know it isn’t final, that there is an unfathomably wonderful forever on the other side of that fearful doorway. Yet death was never meant to be. It is an intruder… Read more »
Many of you know how you can read a Scripture passage and something jumps out at you that you never saw before. I attribute that to the leading of the Holy Spirit. A few days ago, I was reading in Psalm 71 when my mind (and spirit?) was arrested by just a few words—verses 9 and 18—separated from the rest of the text but united in thought. Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me… Read more »
The Church of Jesus Christ consists of all those who have received the truth about themselves and their relationship with God. It consists of those who have seen the awfulness of their sins, who have come to the Cross in repentance and faith for the forgiveness of those sins, and who have thereafter dedicated their lives to serving the One who gave His life for them. Those who have done so are the actual Church, and that Church has only… Read more »
A group of evangelical leaders concerned about the future of evangelicalism, spurred by 80% of evangelicals having voted for Donald Trump in the last election, held a meeting recently at Wheaton College just outside Chicago. Whenever I see evangelical leaders concerned about unstinting support for Trump and the potential problem of having the Christian witness tied to him, I am usually encouraged. But I have my qualms about the political direction of some of Trump’s evangelical critics. Those who have… Read more »
My study of C. S. Lewis’s correspondence has been primarily his letters to Americans. While one of my delightful projects for the future is to read all of his letters, I’ve only grazed the surface of those outside his American connections. I have noted, though, some of his correspondence with his Catholic friend, Don Giovanni Calabria. The Anglican-Protestant Lewis kept up a lively and friendly interchange with that friend. Some of those letters deal with the divisions in the church… Read more »
What’s perhaps the biggest deception in our day that keeps people from getting their lives right with God? I want to draw from three C. S. Lewis writings to offer one possibility—a possibility that I think is far closer to a probability. In Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, the path to establishing a relationship with God is clearly laid out: Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to… Read more »
All Scripture is inspired by God. When you read it with an open heart, God’s Spirit can speak directly to you. What’s even more remarkable is that passages that you have read often can sometimes stand out in a rereading in a way they didn’t before. That happened to me recently when meditating on chapter 4 of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Let me see if I can convey why this section was so meaningful this time. Since through… Read more »