The concept of idolatry may or may not be familiar to you, so let’s make sure we have the same understanding of what the words idol and idolatry mean. Unlike the Israelites bowing down to worship a golden calf or carved image of wood or stone, in our culture an idol is not typically a statue. However, today’s idols are similar to the idols in ancient biblical times in that they are still...
When I was a sophomore in high school, I was on the cross-country team. For that one season only. It happened by mistake—it’s a long story. I was not very good. I usually finished the race somewhere in the middle of the pack. But I learned a lesson in my one year of cross-country that I’ve never forgotten. The course we ran for our home meets was in a local park. The path was a figure eight. We...
Some people start the new year with resolutions—hoping that the new year will give them an opportunity for a reset. You know—new year, new me. I’ve narrowed that down to just one word—and not really an aspirational word—just a word to describe what I expect the year to hold. The year after our son died the word was “arduous.” And that year lived up to its word—every day was a painful slog. The...
If you had to guess, how many prayers do you think are included throughout the Bible? Although sources vary, in his book All the Prayers of the Bible, Herbert Lockyer listed 650. Some say there are 450 recorded answers to prayer. Depending on the translation you read, the number of times forms of the word pray/prayer are used differ as well, but the English Standard Version (ESV) has more than...
In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge begins with a humbug attitude toward Christmas, too disinterested and miserly to invest in even a small contribution to the holiday cheer. His attitude threatens to ruin Christmas. By the end of the story, a fresh generosity overcomes his scroogie-ness, and Christmas is saved. Yay! The same kind of thing happens in The Gift of the Magi. A...
