beauty

George Herbert – Pastor and Poet What would the English poet George Herbert have to say at the toppling of our monuments? Maybe something similar to what he said in 1633, while contemplating the monuments to the dead inside his church’s crypt. In the end, he concluded, the dust and earth to which...

Every Day Matters Brandon Crowe is the associate professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, and the author of several books—most of them on the theology of the Old Testament. This time, he’s written a book on productivity, which piqued our curiosity. In the past decade or so,...

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller – An Inquisitive Woman Some time ago, I wrote an article about Hugh Miller, a Scottish geologist and author who was greatly esteemed by both scientists and common readers during the perplexing times of the Scottish religious Disruption and of Darwin’s new scientific...

Johann Heermann and the Comfort of the Cross In the spring of 1630, while the Thirty-Year War raged around Europe, pastor and poet Johann Heermann wrote a hymn to inspire his congregation to meditate on Christ’s suffering. Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that we to judge thee have in hate...

Every year a late night talk show host encourages parents to prank their kids with a faux profession that they devoured all their little pumpkins’ Halloween candy. [1] The show features videos sent in of children throwing monstrous fits of rage and heartache until the parents reveal they are “just...

There is much more to grace than meets the eye. Indeed, to borrow and slightly tweak the title of a song made famous by Bing Crosby in 1955, ‘Grace is a many splendored thing’. Although we instinctively link it to the idea of God’s demerited favour towards sinners in salvation, when we begin to...