Christian service

Scipione Lentolo – A Firm Hand in Unstable Times John Calvin didn’t have a good opinion of Italians. Basing his judgment on the scholars he had met, he thought they were too skeptical, too eager to get embroiled in convoluted discussions, and constantly itching for new ideas. In his writings to...

One of the great sites of Jerusalem is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre . Archaeologists have confidence that this sprawling church is located near the spot of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus likely was buried and therefore emerged from the tomb either within or near the church’s expansive walls. If any...

William Shedd and the Genocide of Assyrian Christians William Ambrose Shedd was born January 24, 1865, in the mountain village of Seir, near Urmia, in today’s Northwestern Iran, near Turkey. About one quarter of the population at that time was Assyrian, and predominantly Christian. According to...

In our last post we considered Paul’s warning to believers in the Galatian churches, ‘If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another’ (Ga 5.15). And we noted that, sadly, this warning needs to be repeated to every church in every generation. The family of God...

Samuel Crowther – The First African Anglican Bishop When a visiting missionary reunited with his mother in 1848, she must have hardly believed her eyes. It had been about 26 years since she had seen him. She had left him a young teenager named Ajayi. Now he was an ordained minister in the Church of...

Matilde Calandrini – Fighting for Education and Religious Freedom In 1831, 37-year old Matilde Calandrini moved from Geneva to Pisa for health reasons. Tuscany, the enchanting Italian region where Pisa was located, had been the home of her ancestors at the time of the Protestant Reformation. They...

Now here is a Psalm that will keep your soul from getting pummeled by conspiracy theories, media melees, cancel culture, soft totalitarianism, and fifty other social causes of depression. Psalm 73 is medicine. Like many prescriptions, it targets a specific problem, envy: “For I was envious of the...

Motivation is what moves us to do something. For some, the reason for being at the gym is the ten or twenty pounds they need to lose. Some study for grades. Some study to get beyond the poverty in which they grew up. Motivation is the thing that moves us. So let me ask you a question. What...

Every Day Matters Brandon Crowe is the associate professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, and the author of several books—most of them on the theology of the Old Testament. This time, he’s written a book on productivity, which piqued our curiosity. In the past decade or so,...

Anne Ross Cundell Cousin – A Compassionate Friend The name of Anne Cousin is largely unknown today. It might sound familiar only to people to take the time to read the names of the authors of the hymns they sing. To most of them, Anne Cousin is known for one of her hymns: “The Sands of Time Are...