Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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There are few things I love more than a good sunrise. There are few things I love more than waking up before dawn, driving to one of the parks or beaches along the shores of Lake Ontario, and watching the sun rise over the waters. Some of the richest and most beautiful displays of God’s artistry are painted across the sky in those few moments just before and just after the sun rises beyond the far horizon. It never fails …
Every Olympics provides us with a few special moments. While the great majority of the athletes and the great majority of their successes and failures quickly fade from our consciousness, a few special ones tend to stick around. One moment from the 2020 Olympics that will remain in our minds, even if only because of the mountain of memes it generated, is an Australian swimming coach celebrating his athlete’s success. Ariarne Titmus has just narrowly edged out her American rival …
Back in the 1950s, humanity entered into a great age of space exploration as the United States and the Soviet Union battled to be first to the moon. It seems to me that we are now entering into a second great age of space exploration as billionaires battle it out to see who can be first to establish a permanent outpost in space. We don’t need to push our minds too hard to imagine a scenario in which one of …
Many would agree that Michelangelo’s David is among the world’s greatest artistic achievements and a true masterpiece of sculpture. What few know is that Michelangelo was not the original artist. The commission had first gone to Agostino di Duccio, but he got only as far as roughing out the shape of the legs and body before his work ceased. Antonio Rossellino soon took it up, but only for a short time, before he, too, quit. The block then sat exposed …
An old acquaintance used to say, with a bit of a sanctimonious grin, “God has given me the spiritual gift of discouragement.” And while discouragement was certainly no divine gift, it was most certainly a well-established pattern. He seemed to take delight in finding ways to rain on every parade, to temper every joy, to twist the knife in every wound. And for some reason he took pride in this as if it was a skill to practice, a virtue …
Some of the most stirring but also the most tragic images the Bible gives us are of great crowds surging toward Jesus so they could be healed. At a time when humanity had only the most basic knowledge of the human body and knew of only the most rudimentary medical treatments, there were always many who suffered constantly and grievously. Thus we can picture in our minds people covered in sores limping toward him, people who could not walk crawling …
A team of scientists at Surrey NanoSystems has the distinction of having created the blackest black known to man. It is darker than soot, darker than coal, darker than night. Once an object has been coated in their patented Vantablack, it stops reflecting light so that all visible depth and texture are lost, and the object takes on the appearance of a void. Vantablack sets a world record by absorbing 99.96 percent of visible light. I’ve met Christians who are …
Ruth needed help. Ruth needed help, and in his mercy God provided for her need. He provided it first through the laws of his land which instructed landowners that when they harvested grain, they were not to reap all the way to the edges of their fields and were not to pick up any bits their harvesters had dropped along the way. Instead, all of this was to be left for the poor and the foreigners who were to experience …
There are not many in this world who are at risk of drowning in an ocean of encouragement, of being swept away by a tsunami of cheer, of being pulled under by great waves of comfort. There are not many who receive so much encouragement that they never have reason to feel doubts, never have reason to grow weary, never have reason to be tempted toward despondency. There are certainly none at all who are at the least risk of …
I have always been glad that there was one person who brought out her alabaster jar and anointed the Lord before his burial. Most people would have waited. They would have kept the jar sealed until after his death. Only then, when his body was torn and cold, would they have broken it open to anoint him. But this one woman did not wait. She opened the jar while he could still enjoy its scent, and while his worn and …