Tears in the Cracks

If you stare long enough at all the paper-prayers smooshed into the cracks of that enormous wall, one wonders if the cracks grow a bit wider each day in proportion to the cumulative suffering and loss experienced by our human race as the LORD tarries in His return.

Faces Downcast to Eyes Opened

Sitting around that table the hidden face of God suddenly becomes visible. The stranger becomes a dear friend. The empty hole in our heart is suddenly filled. The darkness is vanquished by piercing light. Hope is resurrected to dance a jig on the corpse of Despair. At that table the lump in our throat is replaced by an irresistible burning in our heart.

Cursing the Fall

A repost from 2008.  I was doing the annual spring yard clean-up this past weekend.  My wife had done most of the raking and left them in neat piles for me to come behind and bag up.  I'm a manly man, so I didn't think I needed to wear work gloves to pick up a …

Sermon: Suffering & God’s Providence

Several years back I was raking leaves in the late autumn sun while Keri pruned a rose bush. When I reached down to grab a big pile of leaves to stuff in the bag, my fingers grasped a handful of thorny briers Keri had tossed under the leaves when I wasn’t looking. As the thorns …

He Suffered For Us (by John Stott)

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as “God on the Cross.” In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood …

The Martyrdom of Perpetua (203 AD)

The Passion of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their Companions is one of the oldest and most notable early Christian texts. It survives in both Latin and Greek forms, and contains a first person prison diary of the young mother and martyr Perpetua. Scholars generally believe that it is authentic although in the form we …