The famous Sermon on the Mount begins with the following verse; Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3 NIV)
It sounds so odd, doesn’t it? That the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit. I mean, does it seem to you that many people think it doesn’t include them because they aren’t very strong in spirit? And doesn’t…..
The full passage is Matthew 3:1-12.
It seems we sometimes prefer to think that some of us are wheat and some of us are chaff. But if we are honest, we all have a little chaff on our souls.
When John was talking to the Pharisees and Sadducees he mentions ‘the wrath to come.’ Typically when we think of wrath, we think of a severe, out of control anger. If this wrath to come is from God, we should…..
While deciding how I wanted to crop the above photo I almost cropped it to leave off the broken flower on the bottom left and the broken flower and leaves on the top right. When I looked at it though, it seemed the fragile nature of life was no longer visible. Isn’t that often how we…..
Yesterday I gave a presentation to a small gathering of women. I had prepared a presentation and the week before the Lord led me to discard what I had prepared and start over. I love these reminders from God that He’s the one in control of things and messages he wants shared. Today I received an email from the organizer thanking me and said, “I now know more about the subtleties of evangelism.”
That’s the twist that God put into…..
This is a prayer for conversion from hatred of the church to love for it. I wrote it many years ago when I learned about the persecuted church and how many people hate the Christian church. It’s not included in my book “Praying Our Way Through Stress: Drawing Wisdom from the Lord’s Life and Prayer” but I think that is what Saul did for three years before his name was changed to Paul.
“Heavenly Father, In your will and with…..
Years ago a young woman whom I worked with asked me why it was that the women in Jesus’ life went to the tomb so soon after Jesus died. Her question took me off guard and I could only answer that it must have been their grief. This young woman had come to my…..
There are three Gospel readings for Holy Saturday. I’m being drawn to write briefly about Matthew 27:63. The Chief Priest and Pharisees call Jesus an ‘imposter’ and then tell Pilate they remember what Jesus said about rising in three days.
These are enemies of his and they remember some of the same things Jesus’…..
The reading today is from John 18:1-19,42 What stands out to me is a six word sentence. “I find no case against him.” (18:13)
Pilate finds no case against Jesus and yet he follows the custom of asking the people who to release instead of releasing Jesus himself. There are some hard things to read in this…..
Today’s Gospel Reading is John 13:21-32, Jesus is having the Passover dinner in the upper room with his disciples. It’s a little bittersweet and sometimes I would just like to avoid this passage. But we can’t, there are too many lessons for us to learn. Lessons about love and friendship, lessons about choices, lessons about love and…..
