How little we appreciate the privilege and blessing of prayer. That we, sinful mortals as we are, should have access to God beggars belief. That he should even consider us, let alone countenance our requests is astounding. Yet he calls…
The ability to ‘read the room’ is a really good life skill to have. What do I mean? Oftentimes one may get themselves in a fair bit of trouble if they, in whatever varied situation they find themselves in, are…
I remember the first time I saw John Calvin’s personal seal—an outstretched hand holding a heart—in a hallway on the campus of Calvin College, now University, in Grand Rapids. Surrounding the upheld heart are the words of his motto, in…
When I was in college I took a class on various religious traditions. My class visited a Jewish synagogue and while there the priest said this in response to a question asked of him that I no longer remember, “You…
In a world full of uncertainty and confusion, each of us longs for the ability to navigate our circumstances well, to make a right judgment or take the right action. Sometimes we are presented with a plethora of options and…
Maria Fearing and the Mission to the Congo If you think you are too old for something you wish to do, Maria Fearing can prove you wrong. She learned to read when she was 33 and became a missionary at…
“The guy upstairs.” “The big man in the sky.” These are just two of the more common, modern slang terms for God. Aside from being utterly irreverent, they transgress the Second Commandment of having no graven images of God in…
In our last post we considered Paul’s warning to believers in the Galatian churches, ‘If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another’ (Ga 5.15). And we noted that, sadly, this warning…
It is often the case that we only begin to appreciate what really matters in life when, for some reason, we have lost it. We say, ‘absence make the heart grow fonder’ when we are forced to be away from…
Recently I had been thinking about how to minister to several members of our congregation because of what God is calling them to go through again which will surely tax their energy and emotions. I had also been pondering what…
