piety

In Matthew 5:9, Jesus preached, Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God, proclaiming that God’s children are shown to be His by extending their Father’s peace to others as something they enjoy, often by exertion. Peacemaking is not keeping the peace at all costs,...
Introduction In late December 1943, a young American pilot of a B-17 bomber found himself in flight during the throes of World War 2. Alone in the skies over Germany, his plane had been shot to pieces by enemy fighters, and his crew were either badly wounded or dead. In a moment, he and his co-...
Solomon, in wanting his son to pursue and know wisdom, instructs him to “consider the ant” (Proverbs 6:6). The command is to observe and learn the ways of this small but impressive creature. What impressive wisdom does the ant teach us? Diligent. Hard. work. In short, the ant is productive. And...
Families tell stories. Often they tell the same stories over and over again. They elicit the same laughter at just the right moment. They are familiar. I heard one person even quip that instead of retelling the stories they should number them so at family gatherings they can call out the numbers...
Jonathan and James welcome Caleb Cangelosi. He’s the senior pastor of Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church in Ridgeland, MS, and the director and curator of Log College Press, an online archive of mostly 18th and 19th century documents of American Presbyterian writings. Log College Press is a free...
My bookshelf is lined with prayer journals covering the years of my life beginning with childhood. Rereading them brings both joy and heartache, but most of all an overwhelming sense that I have had the privilege to bow my knees before my heavenly Father and cry out to Him in the midst of sin,...
Francesco and Rosa Madiai In 1853, John Hall Wilton, agent for the famous showman Phineas Taylor Barnum, wrote Lord Shaftesbury requesting the presence of an Italian Protestant couple who had been imprisoned and exiled because of their religion. The purpose of the trip was for “these interesting...
Two of some of the biggest questions that many Christians ask relate to prayer. On one hand, Christians want to know how they should pray. On the other hand, they want to know what they should be praying for. According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, “Prayer is an offering up of our desires...
In First Kings 8 we see King Solomon lead in corporate prayer and what stands out about his prayer is that it is Solomon pleading for what the Lord has already promised. He uses language like “keep for your servant David my father what you have promised” (verse 25) and “let your word be confirmed,...
They had one job to do: stay awake and pray. Peter, James, and John, often like the rest of us, failed to accomplish the one simple task they had. Christ took his most trusted inner apostolic circle deeper into the garden with Him as He went a stone’s throw further to spend time in prayer. He...