Ever wonder what it must have been like to be asked by Jesus Himself to be one of His disciples, to become one of His closest friends. Out of the throngs of people who flocked to Him, He singled you out and chose you to be one of only twelve, to be His closest companions. […]
In 2 Timothy 2:3-7 of our Bibles, Christ-followers are encouraged to develop qualities found in three groups of people. “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he […]
Was there an underlying lesson I was to learn from the nursery rhyme, “Three Blind Mice?” Was there a significant message other than learning that mice scare farmers’ wives and get their tails cut off with butchers’ knives? I don’t know, but it did make me think of three men in the Bible who were […]
Greed, unrestrained ambition, arrogance, pride, revenge, rage, and ruthlessness. Sounds like the evening news. I found them in the Bible’s short book of Esther. An orphaned Jewish girl raised by her cousin Mordecai [more-dah-kie], Esther becomes queen of Persia about five centuries before Christ. Haman is the villain of the story. He is a narcissistic […]
My wife and I live a short distance east of Portland, Oregon, at the west end of the Gorge. The Gorge is a canyon that follows the Columbia River along the northern border of Oregon. It is not uncommon during the winter to get sustained wind speeds of 20 miles per hour, with gusts registering […]
Here in the Northwest we’ve had a relatively mild winter. While the eastern two-thirds of our country has been brutally blasted with cold air and snow blizzards from the north, we’ve been spared. We had a short stint of snow, nothing like those other cities, but still enough to wreak havoc for motorists. Typically, the […]
At least twice a week, the news stations sound the alarm that we need to get ready for the Big One, the earthquake that will rock Portland, Oregon. Our city officials are trying to get ahead of this and mandate that older buildings be reinforced to make them earthquake-proof. I don’t intend to get into […]
When we were first painted, our colors were dazzling… we were called …. precious… priceless… beautiful… cute But as time went on we began to HEAR the MOCKING sounds from other paintings…“I’m smarter…I’m stronger…I’m richer…I’m prettier…I’m better…” Before long we accepted the lie that our value was based on COMPARISON. We began to DOUBT our […]
Our pastor has been speaking for the last few weeks about ways in which Jesus described God, His Father. This past weekend he spoke of God’s GENEROUS nature. I like it when God is generous to me. But I find that when God seems MORE generous to someone else, I hear the voice of ENVY […]
One of the movies often shown during the Christmas holiday is “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Ruined financially, George Bailey is suicidal, thinking the world would be better off if he was never born. George’s guardian angel, Clarence, who is in training to become a full-fledged angel with wings, has the task of convincing him that […]