A few people at my high school really did not like me. One day in biology class, two students started throwing scissors at me. The teacher decided not to do anything, so they continued until class ended. You might imagine that this . . . Continue reading →
When I was younger, a popular slogan people said when they were trying to get away with whatever they wanted was, “Only God can judge me.” They said it to make the point that other people do not get to weigh in . . . Continue reading →
So far in Psalm 35, the poetry has displayed how the psalmist had shown kindness, lamenting his sick enemies as he would have his own mother. He cared for and visited those who were opposing him when they were down. But the . . . Continue reading →
In addition to our five senses, we are born with instinct. Like a sixth sense, instinct is a bit nebulous and mysterious but undeniable. There are different types of instincts; they come in different measures, and you can grow in them. Some . . . Continue reading →
In the opening of Psalm 52, the heinous felonies of Doeg the Edomite struck us with horror, but then the Lord assuaged our grief and stirred up our fear of Yahweh by revealing the judgment of this wicked mercenary. In this psalm, . . . Continue reading →
You have probably taken one. You can go online and find a bunch of them, and some jobs require them. What are they? They are personality tests. You take to learn more about yourself. But they are not all created equal. At . . . Continue reading →
In the first part of our look at Psalm 103, we considered its bookends, gleaning wise counsel from the instruction both at the beginning of the psalm and at the end to command our hearts to worship the Lord. Our hearts are . . . Continue reading →
I would not exactly call myself a fan of censorship; I think the First Amendment happens to be one of the crowning achievements of the democratic experiment that is the United States of America. But if in days to come our culture . . . Continue reading →
Psalm 140 is not a prayer for a person experiencing a mild inconvenience. It is the cry of a man surrounded by violent and deceitful enemies. David is afflicted by men whose hearts devise evil, whose tongues carry venom, and whose hands . . . Continue reading →
Have you no shame? This question usually suggests that we are doing something that ought to shame us. Society has standards, and when we fail to live up to them, people think we should have a sense of guilt and that our . . . Continue reading →
Life is full of tension between the good and the bad. Most of us would like to find a way to resolve these tensions to simplify our experience and understanding of the world. Nonetheless, usually by giving up one side of the . . . Continue reading →
Psalm 53 begins with one of the bluntest diagnoses of the human heart in all of Scripture: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” This does not mean that every sinner becomes a formal atheist. It means something deeper . . . Continue reading →
Psalm 46 is a hymn celebrating the power of God, the mighty defender of his people. It is the psalm that inspired Martin Luther’s Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” This is a fitting connection because . . . Continue reading →
The Pilgrim Waits at the Master’s Hand The psalmist then gives us an image: As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look . . . Continue reading →
Augustine once asked what makes the heart of a Christian heavy. His answer was not simply sorrow, pain, loss, or disappointment. The Christian heart is heavy because the Christian is a pilgrim who longs for his country. Even when the world smiles, . . . Continue reading →
Thus far in Psalm 45, our knees have gone weak with the handsome splendor of the king, standing heroic in righteousness at the head of the wedding hall. A wedding, though, involves many others besides the groom. Who else occupies this grand . . . Continue reading →
There is nothing quite like a good, old-fashioned wedding. And nowadays, we have to emphasize “old-fashioned”—not to be nostalgic per se, as if the weddings of yesteryear were always better— but because so many odd things can be done in a modern . . . Continue reading →
When I was in high school, my family had a somewhat unorthodox Thanksgiving arrangement. My dad and I always had to work Black Friday, and since my mom’s folks were not getting any younger, Pops would insist that she and my brother . . . Continue reading →
Psalm 44 drove us into an uncomfortable corner as the psalmist boldly asserted his upright innocence in opposition to the Lord’s exile judgment. After being confronted by the psalmist’s protest to God, we are unsure of his honesty and lean toward his . . . Continue reading →
Why God, why? This is a familiar question in our Christian experience; we all ask it from time to time. This query, though, can have a variety of different meanings. It can have the tone of wonderment. Why did God save a . . . Continue reading →
