Good morning from Portugal, the final stop in this Worship Round the World journey. I am here for just a few days before heading home at last. (Thankfully, Aileen has been able to join me.)
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(Yesterday on the blog: When You Long to Know the “Why” Behind Your Sorrow)
What Smaller Churches Get Wrong When They Look at Bigger Churches
This is good—a list of things smaller churches can get wrong as they look at larger churches.
Ponytails, Buns, & The Blessing of Small Mercies
“Grief finds its way into even the smallest cracks. Having suffered through bangs and large rim glasses of the 90s, my late wife longed to protect our girls from the world of bowl haircuts. Always possessing an eye for artistic design, April delighted in doing the girls up like Elsa or Belle and in sending them off to school with some new braid that she had picked up from a You Tube tutorial. One needed to only look at my girls’ hair to know that they had a mom that loved them.”
Calvin’s Take on Venerating Relics
Many Protestants are surprised to learn that many Roman Catholics continue to venerate relics. Leonardo De Chirico explains here and tells what Calvin thought of the practice (though I expect you can guess).
What is Natural Law?
You have probably heard the terms “natural law” and “natural theology?” What are they all about? This article explains.
Is God More Wrathful in the Old Testament?
Is God more wrathful in the Old Testament than in the New? If you think that, you probably haven’t read your Bible very carefully.
Never Enough
“Jesus wasn’t joking when he said, ‘Sufficient for the day is its own trouble’ (Matt. 6:34). God’s promises are real and true and trustworthy. Believers stake their lives on them, but they can be hard to remember when the sapping drudgery of each wink of the clock streaks through our consciousness never to be recovered. Believers invest in a future that hovers just beyond our grasp, told over and over that contentment comes from accepting God’s graceful provision for today. But achieving that contentment is hard.”
Flashback: Learning to Be Rich
The temptation to rely on our wealth instead of on God is very real. The God-given response is for you and me: To do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.
We are not called to be like the world, and the world does not need us to be like the world. We have something better to say because we have someone better to follow. —Alistair Begg