What consumes your thoughts and heart? A world polarized around conflict? Social media posts? Civil rights? Pandemic news? Or perhaps it is more personal: a loss, a diagnosis, a prodigal, unemployment, or a relationship you can’t make work. Just like us, 1st century Christians lived in a world taut with fear, hate, and uncertainty. Many had to fight for their …
Hope for Depressed Hearts
What would it take to shatter your faith? To drive your emotional, mental, and spiritual life into a pit of depression? Last year, I almost found out. After a suffocating season in the hope-sucking Upside Down, the Spirit presses me to share the story of God’s love, my failure, and the unflickering faithfulness of a God who can be …
Where’s the Hope?
Today we get to hear from author and speaker, Karen Foster, as she shares some timely perspective on what living hope looks like amidst the pain with which our world is dealing this week. “I’m not a very religious person,” said a young man who was interviewed on the street after the horrific shooting in Orlando, Florida. “But whatever religion you are, …
Steady in the Storm
A New Season The leaves on the Japanese Maple outside my office twitched under the falling raindrops. I pulled on a sweatshirt and peered through the mini-blinds. It sure doesn’t look like May, I thought. A thick grey veil lay across the sky threatening a full day of rain. I didn’t mind. No rush for summer to arrive. Summer meant change. …
Finding Mercy in The Face of Judgment
Hope Lives I love the book of Revelation, but it gets heavy, doesn’t it? Like birth pains, God’s judgment rolls in waves, contraction after contraction. Yet if we look closely, the heartbeat of hope still lives even among the boils and blood and fire. See if you can find it: “. . . they refused to repent . . .” Did you catch that? That implies God …
Hold Onto Hope
If ever we needed to hold onto hope, it’s now. Every day the news broadcasts some fresh horror that creeps closer to home. I don’t read every story, but I tune in enough to glimpse the chaos whirling past. It reminds me of a merry-go-round. Do you remember them? Most schoolyards had one and it was the hit of …
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