Death

I've been thinking a lot about self-deception and the lies we tell ourselves. Sometimes we lie to others so that we can advance ourselves. Sometimes we lie to others so that we can gain a foothold to a place where the truth wouldn't, perhaps, get us. But self-deception is odd. Self-deception is...
2016 was a sobering year for our celebrity-driven culture. A recent CNN article reminded us of the many well known individuals that we lost over the course of the last year. More names have been added just in this past week. More than usual, it seems that many of these celebrities and artists lost...
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...
Think about the job of the Old Testament priest. As if he didn't have enough to do he had to do the occasional skin inspection. We read about it in Leviticus 13. The first thing that the priest had to do was figure out what he was dealing with, had the hair on the skin turned white and how deep was...
I have great admiration for non-Christians who have contributed to the improvement of society through their inventions, production, leadership, literature and art. My wife and I were recently reflecting on the remarkable ways in which Steve Jobs' labors helped changed the world in which we live. I...
I always see the fresh flowers, hanging by the roadside in the fleeting dark of the morning—mostly red and white roses. They raise and lower their heads with each passing car as if to keep the time for us. The picture, too, they have replaced—a boy no more than sixteen, wearing a yellow and green-...
Let us meditate on what Jesus said to the thief next to Him on the cross, as recorded in Luke 23:43: “Verily … Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise”. [1] In union with Christ by faith, we will go immediately to a blissful place upon our death. We will leave this world of sin and misery behind us...
Calvin apparently lived with a profound awareness of the potential for death that constantly accompanies us as human beings. In 1.17.10 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion , the Reformer provided a rather sobering catalog of the "innumerable ... deaths that threaten" us in our day to day...
I have the privilege of ministering mainly to saints in their golden years. So as I preach through Leviticus 19, I am eager to reach verse 32 and lead my fellow greener brethren in reverencing our senior saints with these words: Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the...
Strange, that as I drove to the ultrasound for our second child, I received news that my ninety-two-year-old grandmother would begin hospice care. As I sat in a hospital room with my wife, watching life thrive and flicker in shades of black, white, and grey, I couldn’t help but notice that the baby...