Two snakes: one in Genesis 3 and one in Numbers 21. Since I’ve spent the last few years knee-deep in the Exodus story, I finally made the connection between these slithery creatures the other day. Aha! I thought, these two snakes are connected. The first snake, the one in Genesis, represents Satan or the Devil […]

There really is only one sin—separation from God. Every other thing that we label sin is merely a manifestation of the state of being separate from God. If we were living in God, with God or in Christ’s mind, how could we hurt someone else, reject another human being, judge someone else? Or do anything […]

The spiritual journey has been described classically in four stages: awakening, purgation, illumination and union. Awakening is the first movement in the journey into God’s world. It can be a direct answer to God’s call to be born again, to surrender your life to him. Or we can be thrown out of our normal life […]

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, I can bring good even out of your mistakes. Your finite mind tends to look backward, longing to undo decisions you have come to regret. This is a waste of time and energy, leading us into frustration. Instead of floundering in the past, release your mistakes to Me. Look […]

We would call him a wastrel or spendthrift or a lazy man or squanderer, but Jesus called him the lost[NIV] or prodigal[NRSV or MSG] son in His parable. In some ways we all feel like that lost son(or daughter) who has “spent” our inheritance from God in bad ways; we are undeserving of God’s love […]

  The time between the mother’s diagnosis of cancer and her death was just about a year, a year that Alyssa Monks, an artist, spent in taking care of her mother. And this is what she learned from this experience: “We’re all going to have big losses in our lives…They bring us to our knees…So […]

One-seventh of an iceberg is visible above the water surface after it breaks off or calves from a glacier and plunges into the northern seas. There it slowly drifts southward into warmer waters than the arctic ones it first encountered. Gradually, as the waters warm the iceberg melts and releases up to 5,000 years of […]

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, honor those who mistreat you.” That quote is from Luke 6. Matthew 5 puts it this way: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” And he goes […]

I am beginning to write a book about the Exodus story being our story, too. My thesis is that it is the template that God left us for how we get out of slavery to the world and into the kingdom of God. As I contemplate the passages in these five books of the Bible—Exodus, […]

If you have sat in church and said the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday and not felt compelled to be a part of those who would usher in the Kingdom here on earth, if you think it is up to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, then I think you are sadly mistaken. Aren’t we Christ’s […]