He hurt her, he knew. He tore out her heart, it was true. After the tears dried up, she walked away with a clear message still ringing in his ears, “Leave me alone! I don’t want to have anything to do with you!” He knew he would have to respect her wishes or all hope would be completely lost. It was barely limping along as it was. But there was a weak, pale hope; a hope he clung to with everything he had. Continue reading →

What do you do when the person or people you are in relationship with are so stiff necked; so downright stubborn; that they cannot feel your pain? No amount of explaining wakes them up to your reality. No amount of pleading penetrates their hearts. Continue reading →

Sometimes I wonder if we have somehow lost a sense of the seriousness of sin. Or maybe it is that our concept of grace has made sin too light a thing to be bothered with or worried over. We often view the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee praying in the temple to defend our view. On the one hand we don’t want to be like the Pharisee patting ourselves on the back for how wonderful we are. Continue reading →

I heard this mother yelling at her children, “If you don’t get in here this instant I will spank you!” The children kept playing. She yelled, “I mean it!” The children kept playing. And low and behold those children never did get a spanking.Whatever your views are on spanking, you can probably see that threatening any consequence without follow through is futile. It trains the exact opposite of what you are attempting. And imposed consequences are necessary for training. Continue reading →

What is the worst thing you can imagine? Try this one: you have been gone from your city for quite some time. When you return you hear the sound of a battle taking place. Smoke lingers in the air and buildings lie in ruins. This is where your family and friends live and apparently they are under attack by some random army. Continue reading →

What if someone wrote a biography about you and got it all wrong? And I’m not talking about a biography written long after you are dead. Nope! You are still alive and almost everything in the biography is false. It doesn’t represent you at all. Continue reading →

A small group of believers decided that they wanted to build an edifice dedicated to the worship of God. They worked hard at raising the necessary money. They worked hard at construction to keep the cost down. They worked for three years. When it was all done, they had a beautiful building. But somewhere in the process they forgot the why. They had built a monument; a work of art really. Continue reading →

Every holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas) my wife makes this wonderful peanut butter pie. Now this pie is not an everyday pie. It is not even an every holiday pie. We don’t eat it on birthdays; it’s not for Easter consumption; the Fourth of July is right out. If we had this pie every day or even every holiday, it would become less special. We would stop anticipating the pie every year. It would become mundane; you know, everyday. Continue reading →

The ancient rabbis taught that when you hold the word of God in your hands, your hands should feel filthy. I wonder if that even makes sense to us. Do we have a sense of the terrible holiness of God? Can we grasp our complete lack of purity without crumbling in ourselves? Can the holiness and purity of God still char our conscience? Continue reading →

Years ago there was a preacher who worked with a congregation in a small Midwestern city. Now, one of the members of this congregation was a wealthy woman who regularly contributed a large sum to the church; more than anyone else. This, she thought, gave her the right to tell the preacher what his topics should be. Continue reading →