Category: Digging in Deeper

Digging in Deeper: John 17:22

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“I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve argued before that all of our best stories are always ultimately rooted in the Gospel. The connections aren’t always obvious, but if you look and think a bit, you’ll find them. They’re all over the place. I recently watched the latest offering from the Predator Universe, Predator: Badlands, and was pretty impressed with just how many Gospel touch points there were. Let’s talk about what made this a much better film than I expected it to be. And just to be fair, I’ll go ahead and issue a spoiler alert.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 John 1:5-10

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“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. If we say, ‘We have fellowship with him,’ and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus the Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say, ‘We have not sinned,’ we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The world is broken. People are broken. They do what’s wrong at least as often as they do what is right…sometimes more often. They are selfish. They do what they want and don’t think too much about how getting what they want will affect the people around them. And nobody seems to be able to do much about it. What if there was a way, though, to fix it? What if there was a way to make everybody do the right thing, to make them be decent people? What it be worth it? The second season of Amazon Prime’s, Fallout, ponders that very question. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Philippians 1:20-21

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“My eager expectation and hope is that I will not be ashamed about anything, but that now as always, with all courage, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Humans have always been on a search for the fountain of youth. Sometimes this search has taken the form of looking for a literal source of water with magical powers. Other times it has been more figurative than that. The point is that we are always on the lookout for something that will extend not only the amount of time we have in this life, but the quality of that time as well. We want to live, yes, but we want to live in good enough shape to be able to enjoy it to the fullest. This desire in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But when it becomes the primary desire of our life, we can be drawn off the track that actually leads to life in pursuit of one of a variety of things that don’t. Starting here and running through the next few verses, Paul offers us a better way. Let’s take a look.

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Digging in Deeper: Philippians 1:9-11

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“And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the slogans that came out of the Sexual Revolution was, “Love is love.” That notion is ridiculous on its face and was never about anything more than trying to give moral cover to a variety of sexual practices that had been rightly judged aberrant by pretty much every human culture up to that point in history. A significant part of the problem is the imprecision of the English language itself. We throw the word love around for all kinds of different situations where the emotion or feeling (and we are almost always referring to one or the other) that is actually appropriate to the setting ranges rather widely such that conflating one kind of love for another is foolish at best. The authors of the New Testament took a word in Greek that meant love, agape, and redefined it in a whole new way based on the character of Jesus. The result is that when we are talking about biblical love, if we get love right, we get a whole lot of other things right as well. Let’s take a look at this with Paul in these three verses.

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Honor for Two Lives Well Lived: 2 Timothy 4:6-8

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“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only me, but to all those who have loved his appearing.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I will do my second funeral in as many weeks tomorrow. To say it has been a busy couple of weeks is to put it rather mildly. But that’s nothing compared with what these two families have been through. And that’s not because the passing of these two great ladies was itself unexpected or particularly difficult. Both were expected and blessedly peaceful. Rather, it is because the days between a loved one’s passing and the funeral service are exceedingly busy. This is especially true when a loved one has spent their life pouring into others as Mae Brooks and Judy Tucker did. You have to manage all of the various details of working with the funeral home to put together the service on top of all of the outpourings of love and care from friends and family and neighbors. You wouldn’t necessarily trade any of that away, but it’s a lot. The real process of grieving doesn’t really begin until after the funeral is over. What has me writing this morning is the fact that these two funerals are almost like carbon copies of each other. Let me tell you about why and why that’s such a good thing.

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