Month: October 2020

The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. (Deuteronomy 28:12) I have a precious little poodle mix named Lucy. She is a great companion, weighing in at about 8 pounds and is the sweetest, most […]

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’ (1 Samuel 7:12) I’m remembering a time when my then-teenaged daughter came to my church office during choir rehearsal. She was crying. There’d been a disagreement about the […]

“David said further to his son Solomon, ‘Be strong and of good courage, and act. Do not be afraid or dismayed; for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you, until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished.’” (I Chronicles […]

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of God. (Matthew 7:21) Just before dawn, I was traveling through the small southern Illinois town of Benton on my way to an early morning meeting. After stopping for coffee—my morning kind of fuel, I […]

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-22, NRSV) […]

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it […]

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. (Matthew […]

For you shall go out in joy, And be led forth in peace; The mountains and the hills before you shall break out in singing, and all the trees of the field shall Clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12) In the summer of 1972, I found myself in a rural area of West Virginia, north of […]