A Blessed Assurance (10/30/07 - 33 Comments)
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes..." Dr. Criswell, long-time pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, was once traveling by plane to attend a speaking engagement on the East Coast. After boarding the aircraft and getting himself settled and situated, he was thrilled to recognize the man in the seat beside him as a well-known Christian theologian. Criswell greatly admired this man and was eager to get to know him. Soon the...
Autonomy (10/26/07 - 5 Comments)
Lessons from an infant... Michaela, my youngest daughter, is just about eighteen months old. She's at the stage of infancy I enjoy the most--she is just starting to figure out how the world works and is just learning how to communicate. Her vocabulary is increasing by the day and so many of her attempts to use these new words leave us howling with laughter. A couple of times a week Aileen "puppysits" for some neighbors...
Guarding the Deposit (10/25/07 - 13 Comments)
“O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you...” One of my favorite television programs is Antiques Roadshow. The program affords people the opportunity to present their antique possessions—whether furniture, paintings, toys, or anything else— and to have them appraised by some of the world’s foremost experts in antiquities. For every episode the producers single out ten or fifteen items and show an expert providing a detailed description and valuation of the item. Each section closes...
Halloween - Trick or Retreat? (10/24/07 - 69 Comments)
Will you participate in Halloween this year? Halloween is once again nearly upon us. Articles about the occasion are beginning to make their way into my RSS reader and I thought I'd keep up with one of this site's few traditions and write an article on the subject. My thoughts on the subject continue to develop as perhaps long-time readers will notice. Just this morning Pulpit Magazine linked to a great article courtesy of Grace...
The Source of Submission (10/22/07 - 27 Comments)
Is submission a consequence of man's fall into sin? The concept of submission is a tough one to get our minds around. There was a time when I'm sure it came more naturally to people--a time when inequality and hierarchy were assumed. In that kind of social situation I'm sure submission would seem more natural. But today, when we acknowledge that all men (and women) are created equal and when and when there are few...
Involuntary Community (10/14/07 - 17 Comments)
One of my ongoing concerns with the way churches tend to be gathered today is that people seek to build very homogeneous communities. Pastors or church planters often choose a target audience and attempt to attract primarily that kind of person, gearing all the church does to one particular audience. Many of these churches have seen dramatic growth, but growth that does not show a lot of diversity. Yet diversity is one of the things...
Blessings, Kingdoms, Smiles and Books (10/12/07 - 13 Comments)
This is a compilation of various things that caught my eye this week. They were things that needed more explanation than I could offer in A La Carte, but not enough that they merited an article of their own. Same Sex Blessings It's easy to write off the Anglican Church, and especially so up here in Canada where it seems that so few churches have really remained faithful to the gospel. So many churches, or...
Bringing Life to the Living (10/08/07 - 15 Comments)
Taking God at His Word. Do you remember that amazing miracle of Jesus where he brought life to Lazarus? I'm sure you must remember it. Lazarus was sitting in his home along with his sisters Mary and Martha. He was chewing on some bread and cheese as an afternoon snack when, from outside the door of the house he heard a bit of a commotion as if a crowd was quickly approaching. There was mourning...
A Wedding Contract (10/01/07 - 10 Comments)
Last week I went to Ottawa to enjoy my cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful, classy, simple wedding. While the service was great from beginning to end, I particularly enjoyed the brief sermon which drew a startling contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God; between the love of the world and the love of God. The pastor began by discussing a marriage contract drawn up by Albert Einstein. With his...
Beautiful Old Age (09/30/07 - 4 Comments)
Just a few days ago I found out that a dear old friend died last week. Though we had not spoken to him for several years, he is a man who, along with his wife, left a deep impression on Aileen and me. When we were young and newly married we held up this man and his wife as the example of elderly godliness; we did aspire and still do aspire to be like them...
New From HarperOne (09/25/07 - 0 Comments)
A couple of new titles from HarperOne showed up here last night. Both look excellent. As a reader and reviewer who focuses on Christian books, it's easy to keep an eye on the Christian publishers and neglect to watch the mainstream ones. But Harper sometimes publishes notable volumes that I wouldn't want to miss. The first is A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History by Larry Witham. Here is...
Reading Better with Richard Baxter (09/23/07 - 5 Comments)
A few days ago I provided some suggestions for reading more and reading better. I recently dug up this valuable advice from the Puritan Richard Baxter. Centuries ago he wrote some advice on reading that seems as appropriate for us to learn from today as it was for the men and women of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the advice is even more important today as we have access to far more books and writing than...
Is Scripture Study Required of Christians? (09/19/07 - 22 Comments)
Yesterday I received a question from a reader of this site. The question was simple: "Is Scripture study required of Christians? Is it actually discussed in the Bible?" As I wrote an answer I felt that it might be valuable to think it through carefully and even to share the answer. I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Scripture is far less than encyclopedic. However, I am quite sure that if you...
10 Tips to Read More and Read Better (09/17/07 - 17 Comments)
The subject of reading has been much on my mind lately. I love to read but often receive emails from people who struggle to read and struggle to enjoy reading. Thus I thought it might be beneficial to piece together a list of tips to read more and to read better. I hope you find it useful. Read - We start with the obvious: you need to read. Find me someone who has changed the...
The Most Perfect Human Compendium of Christian Truth (09/16/07 - 17 Comments)
Yesterday I finished Iain Murray's biography of theologian John Murray (there is no relation between the two Murrays) and was struck by John Murray's insistence on the importance of memorizing the catechisms. I was raised on a steady diet of the Heidelberg Catechism at church and the Shorter Catechism at home and can attest to their value. Murray, being a product of Scottish Presbyterianism, was an ardent supporter of the Shorter Catechism and once said...
Spoilt for Choice (09/14/07 - 28 Comments)
How endless choice is making us endlessly miserable. A few weeks ago my cell phone went missing. For a few days we looked for it passively, keeping half an eye out for it as we went about our business in the house. It didn't show up. So for one morning we tore the house apart, looking high and low. We couldn't find it anywhere. All we knew was that it was last seen in the...
Christians and Social Media (09/12/07 - 33 Comments)
Making an impact on the world of social media. On Saturday I had 11,000 unexpected guests drop by. One of my stories got picked up by Reddit and StumbleUpon, two of the big social media sites, and it ended up on the front page of both sites concurrently. This caused about 11,000 people to drop by my blog in a matter of hours (on a Saturday, no less, when traffic to these sites is probably...
Being Cast as Predators (09/10/07 - 45 Comments)
Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. 'Being male,' he explains, 'I am guilty until proven innocent.'" As awful as it sounds, I sympathize with this guy. As terrible as it might be to see a...
Bludgeoning with Providence (09/07/07 - 30 Comments)
Misusing the will of God. I dedicate this post to you, the person reading it. Before you were even born, God planned this very moment, the moment you would type the address of this site into your browser or the moment you would click a link from another site to arrive right here, right now. It is no accident that you are here today and you can be certain that God has orchestrated all of...
How to Organize a Personal Library (09/05/07 - 31 Comments)
Suggestions on organizing and cataloging a personal library. I am developing what I suspect will soon be an extensive personal library. Though it is currently not all that large, as these things go, it is growing at an alarming rate. When we moved into our current house just over one year ago, I had, to the best of my recollection, four bookcases in my office which left me lots of wall space to hang prints...
