Tag: Hope

Morning Musing: 2 Timothy 3:1

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“But know this: Hard times will come in the last days.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The latest Marvel offering, Secret Invasion, is already in its second week and absolutely fantastic so far. My mind is racing with all the Gospel possibilities of the story. I had thought about writing down some early series reflections today, but I’m going wait a few more weeks until the series ends to offer up my thoughts on it. Instead for today, I recently had a conversation with a good friend who was expressing some spiritual and moral concern with the state of our culture. As he looks around at the world, he sees a nation awash in sin and getting worse. You may see that too. Here are some of the thoughts I shared with him. Perhaps they’ll be helpful for you as well.

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Morning Musing: Romans 3:23

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“For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been late to the party? Usually when that happens you try to slink stealthily into the back and gradually blend into the conversations that are already happening so your belated appearance isn’t quite so painfully obvious as it could be. Today I’m arriving a little late to the party. I have just a couple of comments on a song that is almost 12 years old, was a smash hit when it was released, and has remained remarkably popular as an anthem for the season we are in. I’m late to the party because, honestly, other than hearing it everywhere, I never paid the long the least bit of attention in its first decade-plus of existence. But a recent performance of it on America’s Got Talent brought it freshly to mind. Let’s talk for just a minute today about Lady Gaga’s quadruple Platinum anthem, Born This Way.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 2:21-22

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“Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. She gave birth to a son whom he named Gershom, for he said, ‘I have been a resident alien in a foreign land.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever found yourself stuck somewhere you didn’t plan to be and didn’t necessarily want to be? For many of us, that can easily lead to a season of bitterness. We make do because we don’t have any other choice, but we’re not happy about it. And we make sure everyone knows we’re not happy about it too. But what if there’s another perspective on things? Sometimes seeing someone else’s story – like Moses’ here – can give us a glimpse through another lens that can be truly transformative if we’ll let it.

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Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

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For the past two weeks, we have been talking about how to find peace in a world that is insane with sin. We’ve talked about the importance of reorienting our thinking on God through prayer and of engaging more intentionally and consistently with the Scriptures to give us the path we need to be following. In this last part, we are going to talk about one more essential thing that is all about putting these first two into practice. When we want to find a path through the messiness of the world around us, here’s what we should be doing.

Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

As smart as the good folks in Hollywood are when it comes to producing entertainment, they really never know when a particular film is going to be a smashing success and when it will totally flop. For instance, there was a movie last year called Babylon that featured the A-list talent of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie along with a budget of north of $100 million. It was perhaps the single biggest box office bomb of the last several years. A few years ago, though, Disney struck absolute gold with its smash hit, Frozen. A fun story combined with tremendous music made it the single most successful Disney animated film ever…right up until Frozen 2 came out, which beat it by almost $200 million. By most accounts and in spite of the box office numbers, Frozen 2 wasn’t ever quite as good as the original (sequels almost never are), but there was one song that really caught my attention. 

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Digging in Deeper: Revelation 21:4

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“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What would you do if you could suddenly go back in time at a point some of your biggest tragedies in life unfolded? The answer to that seems fairly obvious: you’d do whatever you could do to change them so they didn’t ever happen. We all have things from the past we would change if we got the chance. This is an awareness that can become a desire which, if we’re not careful, can become a fixation that keeps us from moving forward in the present. Dwelling in the past turns out to be far more dangerous than it seems. A recent series from the Hallmark Channel explores all of this and more. Let’s talk today about The Way Home.

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