Tag Archives: understanding
Getting to Know Your “Sheepiness”
I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and they know me. –John 10:14 The shepherds of Israel have a custom of marking their sheep to make them distinct from each other. Each bears a unique notch or brand that makes them distinguishable from their companions. It is not done for aesthetics, but recognition. Christ gives [...]
God’s Strange University
No book, nor tutor will give us the education we need. We must patiently go through seasons of difficulty and temptation before we can understand what our brother or sister is facing. Furthermore, we must advance through different levels; sickness, injury, loss and discouragement. On top of this, we must be tutored in the language [...]
Kissing Twisted Lips
God accommodates Himself to our ‘sickness’. We find that He has this beautiful quality about Him, that He becomes quite tender and gentle around any spiritual disease. In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face: [...]
Christian, Where is Your Umbrella?
Sometime ago there was a town which had experienced a prolonged and difficult drought. There was no water to be found for crops and livestock, and hardly enough for the people of this once prosperous village. There was nothing to be done, and is often the case the town fathers finally turned to the churches [...]
Sunday Funnies: The Gift of Caffeine
My blood type is Folgers. ~Author Unknown All the coffee in Columbia won’t make me a morning person. ~Author Unknown Do I like my coffee black? There are other colors? ~Author Unknown Caffeine is my shepherd; I shall not doze. It maketh me to wake in green pastures: It leadeth me beyond the sleeping [...]
Let Him Take All
Jesus answered, ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Matt. 22:37 Love is the exact thing God is looking for. It is the currency of Heaven. The Kingdom’s economy is ‘the gold standard’ of love. It’s the way business is done in eternity. Love! Without love, we [...]
My Imagination Isn’t Enough
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” Eph. 3:20 God has given us a gift, it is called ‘imagination’ (at least that is the word we use). This gift allows us to grasp concepts and trust the [...]
Vessel to Vessel: What is God Doing to Me?
Being Poured from Vessel to Vessel “Moab has been at ease from his youth, and he has settled on his lees, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed.” Jeremiah 48:11 The expression, “emptied from vessel [...]
The Scary Part of Depression
“Must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you All through my life? –sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing–oh, worst of things!–the same head?– And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too?” Edna St. Vincent Millay The critical issue we face is the reality of living with ourselves through an acute episode of depression or mania. I [...]