Christ & Culture

The Puritans not only preached to comfort the weary and wounded, but admonished those who had close relations with such saints in how to help them. So Timothy Rogers gave instructions to those who had to deal with those under a sense of God’s desertion: Speak kindly and compassionately to those...
Catherine Marsh – Loving the Unloved In 1853, thousands of men arrived on the quiet Sydenham hills to build an ambitious structure: the Crystal Palace, where Charles Spurgeon later preached to a crowd of 23,654 people. Building such a capable compound, surrounded by gardens and fountains, took an...
Ambrose of Milan – The Reluctant Bishop Who Called Emperors to Task If you visit downtown Milan, Italy, besides viewing the most popular monuments, such as the Duomo and the Sforza Castle, you may want to walk a mile out of the way to explore an older church named after a fourth-century bishop,...
Who Needs the Church? “I’m a Christian, but I don’t need a church. Nature is where I find God.” Whatever the stated reasoning, those who avoid church attendance and membership often do so without understanding why believers need the Church and the Church needs them. Guest Terry Johnson has written...
“They’re trying to get me” is the catch phrase of the paranoid mind. The question it raises, is the identity of “they”. But the leading declaration of Psalm 129 is quite different. It is not a statement of fears but of memory: “Many time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say.” (1...
That Psalm 126 bears the heading “A Song of Ascents,” and is within the grouping of the Psalms of Ascent is a providential grace of God. Likely penned later than most other Psalms, it offers a great degree of hope and comfort to those weary saints who, like the Israelites of the Babylonian exile,...
Psalm 125 is about those who have faith in the Lord. For Old Testament believers, like New Testament believers, their trust or faith was in the Lord and no where else. The image in the text is how the Old Testament believer understood union with Christ. The believer whose faith is in God is...
As I think about my church family, so many older and younger men and women, as well as covenant children, come to mind. I have come to know and love them, and pray for them often. Just like in families, there ’ s a lot that can happen in church families. Behavior isn ’ t always the best, and...
Young children love family reunions more than the adults who host them. Children are focused on who will be there, who will they play with, who will tell the best story, who will remember their name, who will lift them high off the ground to say, “Look how big you are!” It is good we start life as...
Jennie Faulding Taylor and Her Team of Brave Women In 1875, a serious drought in the north of China gave way to a dreadful four-year famine, with millions of deaths and a huge migration of people. Most casualties were in the province of Shanxi (an estimated 5.5 million deaths in four years)...