We Revere Jesus’s Death So We Can Celebrate His Resurrection I’m never sure of what verb to attach to Good Friday. It’s a Christian holiday, a holy day. Though I do sometimes say celebrate Good Friday, it doesn’t seem like the right word. Neither does happy Good Friday, even though the outcome for us is […]
When Job’s Friends Try to Comfort Him, Their Words Only Deepen His Distress The Bible tells the story of Job, how Satan took everything from him: his possessions, his children, and his health. Left in deep pain with an unsupportive wife, four of Job’s friends come to offer comfort, but they fail. They should say […]
We Need to Learn to Worship God in Silence, Doing Nothing but Standing in Awe of Him The Book of Revelation is an amazing book. However, I fear that many people miss the point of it. The intent of Revelation isn’t to give us a detailed map of the future. Instead, Revelation provides us with […]
A Thought-Provoking Look at Faith, Persecution, and Navigating Right and Wrong Reviewed by Peter DeHaan The movie Silence is a fictional account of two Jesuit priests from Portugal who seek permission to travel to Japan in 1639. They desire to investigate what happened to their mentor. His written communication had stopped, and a rumor circulated […]
Be Careful What You Say Many people today—too many—feel they have a right to say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it. What they forget is that this privilege also comes with a responsibility to not say some things, to at times keep quiet. Just because we can say something, doesn’t […]
Remaining Silent Is Not an Option The book of Leviticus in the Bible gives us a lot of instructions about things to do and to not do. It’s a challenging read and many readers skip it. Yet there are bits of truth scattered throughout it that are relevant in our world today. Here’s one example. […]
Remove Worldly Distractions to Make More Space for God We live in a world of clutter. We’re surrounded by things that constantly demand our attention, if only for a fraction of a second. Some of it is our own doing, such as our technology with its 24/7 beeps and incessant call for our attention. Other […]
In Today’s Noisy World We Need to Reclaim the Ability to Deeply Listen We live in a noisy world, with too many things vying for our attention. Though we can’t help some of it, much of the noise that permeates our existence is the distractions we create. We can’t stand silence, not even for a […]
Spiritual disciplines are things we do to draw us closer to God or to honor him. But if we do it out of obligation or in response to guilt, we miss the point. To be of real value a spiritual discipline is something we enter into willingly, with joy and anticipation. Unlike spiritual gifts, which […]
Silence Is Golden We live in a world where it’s hard to sit still and even more challenging to be silent. We are conditioned to be moving, active and physically engaged. And as we do so, we expect to be surrounded with sound, to be constantly exposed to an auditory stimulus. To be still can […]