What the Canyon Echoed Back

He told me of a day he had awoken sick in his heart, sick in his soul. He didn’t know what to think, he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what to believe. After all those years of marriage, all those years of joy, all those years of living life together, his wife had gone to heaven and he had been left on earth. Though days and weeks had passed, still he was in the depths of despair. …

We Always Glean Among the Sheaves

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 …

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The Uninvited Lodger

It is a hard truth, but also an intuitive truth: God disciplines the ones he loves and chastises his children. After all, what father does not at times have to correct his son, for what son does not at times need correction? In this way discipline is proof of a father’s concern for his child, evidence of his paternal affection. No good father leaves his child to run rampant according to his own whims, according to his own folly. No …

We Prophesy Grief, Not Grace

If this pandemic has taught us anything, surely it’s taught us that we are lousy prognosticators. The best of our politicians, the best of our scientists, the best of our statisticians, could not, between them, do much of anything to predict how far the virus would spread, how quickly it would move, how many lives it would claim. The greatest optimists and greatest pessimists alike were often shown to be wrong not just by small degrees, but by whole orders …

Singing in the Dark

“How are you doing?” I’ve been asked that question countless times since my son went to be with the Lord. I never really know how to answer it. While at that exact moment I might be doing okay, it’s possible that 15 minutes prior I was so overwhelmed with sorrow that I could barely stand. It’s possible that 15 minutes in the future I’ll be reveling in the joy of knowing my son is safely home in heaven. I can …

A Repentance Not To Be Repented Of

Do you weep over your sin? There must be some things in life that bring you to tears, but is your sin one of them? We would all do well to consider these powerful words from Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture for he warns “how far are they from being godly who scarce ever shed a tear for sin” and goes on to explain the beauty and necessity of repentance. How far are they from being godly who scarce …