We aren’t colleagues. We aren’t comrades. We aren’t neighbors. We are family. If we are to understand the nature of the relationship between believers, we don’t need to understand work, politics, or geography. We need to understand family. The Bible displays this truth in any number of ways. Together we call God “Father,” and if…
If I have my timing right, the last conference I spoke at was the 2020 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. It was early February and we were just beginning to hear unfamiliar words like “COVID” and “coronavirus.” (A search through my inbox shows that the first mention of it was from an old Adam Ford newsletter…
It would be a strange man who would meet a woman, pursue her, marry her, and then immediately establish a pattern of ignoring her. It would make little sense for him to marry someone he has little intention of continuing to get to know, of continuing to build relationship with. It would make for many…
Have you ever known a family who has learned that it will soon welcome a child with special needs? It could be that prenatal testing has shown a developmental abnormality or it could be that they have deliberately chosen to adopt a child with disabilities. But either way, the family will necessarily undergo a time…
It’s a verse every Christian believes in until he suffers some great wrong. It’s a verse every Christian affirms until he is called to implement it in his own life. And it’s just then that the words seem to transform from clear to opaque, the application from simple to obscure. In 1 Corinthians 6:7 Paul…
In the name of God, I, being of sound mind and body, bequeath to my children the small store of wealth and the few possessions I have been able to accumulate over a lifetime of labor. I divide these equally among my children and ask them to accept it all with my blessings—to keep it…
No one who has ever listened to Beethoven’s 9th symphony has thought to himself, “I think each of these musicians is just making it up as they go.” No one who has ever listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has thought to herself, “I am pretty sure no one is leading this orchestra.” No one who…
Father in heaven, I acknowledge that you are the one who bestows good gifts and you are the one who recalls them again. It is by your hand that each of us is brought to life and by your hand that each of us is called into death. You are the one who gives and…
How long have you been battling that sin? How long have you been struggling to find peace with that trauma? How long have you been enduring that sorrow? In some way each of us carries a heavy load through this life. In some way each of us finds it a long marathon more than a…
Until the land was expropriated to make way for new developments, Oakville was home to an exceptional tropical fish store. At its center was a massive circular aquarium filled with sharks and other predatory fish, and once each week the employees would host a feeding frenzy that was open to the public. One of them…
If you have ever visited Wittenberg, Germany and have taken the time to tour its famous Castle Church, you may have made the same observation I did: The best part of the building is its doors. Castle Church is, of course, the spot where Martin Luther chose to post his Ninety-Five Theses. Centuries later, King…
Before the tabernacle was assembled upon the plains, Moses received a vision of it upon the mountain. Before he directed the first weaving, the first stitching, the first forging, he had been given a detailed image of the completed whole. God led him in a comprehensive walkthrough and delivered to him a thorough set of…
I wasn’t quite asleep but I also wasn’t quite awake. It wasn’t quite real, but it also doesn’t seem right to call it fake. Like a story that had already been written or like a tale that had already been told, it flashed into my mind in the briefest of moments. In what must have…
My dad sometimes got exasperated with me. He sometimes got exasperated with me and, looking back, I can’t say I blame him. After all, while his passion was to nurture life within his precious gardens, mine was to kick back with a good book. While his burden was to do things well, mine was to…
The young man had forsaken his father, claimed an early inheritance, and blown it all in reckless living. Having fallen from riches to poverty, this prodigal son was now in the most desperate of straights—working hard, eating little, spiraling ever downward. But on one brutal day, when he was as low as low could be,…
This week I found myself pondering some powerful words from the pen of J.C. Ryle: “Satan knows well the power of true holiness and the immense injury which increased attention to it will do to his kingdom.” We are called to God so we can become holy like God. He means for us to be…
I recently shared a message for young men. Having done that, I asked my friend Melissa Edgington if she would write an equivalent letter for young women. She kindly did so and allowed me to share it here. Somewhere out there in the great, wide world, someone is praying for you. She probably doesn’t know…
One quiet evening many years ago, I was sitting on the screened-in porch of our old family cottage when I heard the music of bagpipes. Curious, I followed the sound, which me led as far as I could go, down to the shore of the lake. Somewhere across the water, I could hear the piper…
We are nothing if not rash—nothing if not prone to making vows that are impulsive, promises we cannot keep. Sometimes we deliver on them only partially and at other times we fail altogether. “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay,” says the Sage. But too often…
There is a sense in which we are less familiar with death than our forebears, more insulated from its horrors. Of course the death rate in the twenty-first century is identical to every century before and every century to come—“it is appointed for [each and every] man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”…