Hope Springs Eternal
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” So wrote the eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope. Platitude? Yes, but true for all that. I have to confess the lines (from An Essay on Man) come to mind frequently at dinner when…
Tag Faith
Insuppressible Truth: The Design for Life
A fashion designer goes about creating clothes for people with a keen sense of how the parts and the whole will best fit together. The designer does not just throw fabric, thread, and needles into the wind but carefully draws…
Insuppressible Truth:The Design of Creation
Genesis 1-2 reveals that God created in an orderly way and a cosmic order with everything having a function based on what he created it to be. In other words, when we use the phrase “the design of creation” we…
The Good Fight
It is fascinating to see how St Paul looks back over his Christian life in face of his fast approaching departure from this world. Writing to Timothy, he describes it as a race to be run, a faith to be…
Overload
Do you ever get overwhelmed by all the things you need to get done, and discouraged by all the things you probably won’t? Almost every day, right? I felt overloaded when we made a few small domestic renovations, leaving our…
Insuppressible Truth: All Creatures of Our God and King
From the opening verse of Genesis 1, God is declared to be the Creator; and as the creation account is described throughout chapters 1 and 2, the Bible simply states that God was there before anything else, and this fundamental…
Bathsua Makin and the Education of Women
As the news challenge us to think biblically about the place of women in today’s world, it might be useful to remember there was a time when women were discouraged from reading, studying, and thinking independently. In fact, the Roman…
Discipline: the Misconstrued Grace
It was John Knox, the Scottish Reformer, who added discipline to the word and sacraments as the third mark of a faithful church. Perhaps it was because the Celts are an unruly lot by nature and he felt the latter…
Jonathan Edwards as Father
Many see Jonathan Edwards as a terrifying preacher. Some consider him one of the greatest American theologians. A few know a couple of endearing details of his life, such as his loving relationship with his wife Sarah. Very few know…
Persecution in Turkey – From Polycarp to Fikret Böcek
If it’s true, as the ancient Tertullian said, that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” much seed has been sown on Turkish soil, from the 2nd-century martyrdom of Polycarp to the massacre of Christian Armenians in…