Month: March 2025

Bigger

2 Comments

When life gets hard, we often want to know where God is. When we hurt, we want to know why God didn’t stop it. When circumstances threaten to completely overwhelm us, we want to know if God is big enough to really help. As we continue our journey through the seven signs the apostle John identifies in his Gospel as helping us to better understand who Jesus is, we are looking today at a sign that didn’t seem to benefit anybody when it happened. But when we look past the miracle itself to the thing at which it is pointing, we find reason for great hope in hard times. Let’s dive in and see what happens next.

Bigger

About fifty years ago, a man named Harold Kushner lost his fourteen-year-old son to a rare disease. It was a tragedy. All such losses are tragic. Parents should never have to bury their children. That they do is a symptom of the brokenness of sin in the world. Kushner happened to be a Jewish rabbi. As part of his efforts to deal with his grief, he channeled his emotions into writing a book. The book, released in 1981, had a major and immediate cultural impact. The title promised an insightful look into a challenging question that people have been asking for a very long time. It was called, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The question of course is why. Why do bad things happen to good people? We’ve all seen it happen. We’ve seen people who seem to us to be good and faithful, kind and generous with others, conscientious citizens, and so on and so forth, but who nonetheless face tragic situations that their character seems like it should preclude as far as we reckon such things. How can there be a good and just God presiding over creation if things like this happen to people like that? 

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 6:4

1 Comment

“Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve long been a numbers guy. Numbers just stick in my head. Random numbers. And they don’t go away. Sometimes it’s pretty handy like at my former church, before I was really using a cell phone all that much, when I had almost half the phone numbers of the members memorized. Because I’m a numbers guy, I love looking at data. It doesn’t matter too much what the data is, but sociological research data is some of my favorite to digest, especially when it’s on a topic I care about and from a research outfit whose methodology I trust. I’ve had the chance recently to review some research from the Barna organization into the world of people who are spiritually curious. Let me highlight a couple of things I’ve noticed along the way.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 5:9-11

3 Comments

“How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The first step in wrapping our hearts and minds around the Gospel is accepting our need for salvation. That’s why Paul spends what we know of as the first two and a half chapters of the letter here making the case for the just condemnation of all people regardless of any distinctions (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). Because sin and judgment are without distinction, so is salvation. The salvation in Christ is for all those who put their faith in Him as Lord (for we are all Abraham’s children). But what does it mean that we are saved in Christ? Paul tells us some pretty incredible benefits here. Let’s marvel at this together.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 5:6-8

3 Comments

“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us  in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When someone gives you a gift, you often feel a certain amount of loyalty to them. A very small gift yields a very small amount of loyalty, but a very large gift garners much more. To not give any kind of loyalty is to either not actually receive the gift, or else to walk a path of ingratitude which is generally a pretty terrible look. Well, in Christ, God gave us the ultimate gift. Let’s talk about what He gave, and what we should give in return.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Romans 5:3-5

Leave a comment

“And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The Gospel isn’t just one thing. It is many things, and all of them are good. It’s the sort of thing where the more you explore it and the deeper you understand it, the more you come to find is there; the more you come to find just how comprehensive it truly is. Paul here has started unpacking the benefits of the Gospel. He started with peace, went to grace and glory, and now he takes us into territory it doesn’t seem like the Gospel should touch. Let’s talk about what the Gospel has to say about our hard times.

Read the rest…