Purpose: God uses Amos to give a summons for justice. His purpose is to hold up the plumb line of His own righteousness against the crookedness of the people of God and shame … More Beginning to Study the Book of Amos
Read Psalm 35 The ESV editors provide a very simple title/description of this psalm, “Great is the Lord.” Unfortunately, the title might work for a dozen other psalms. So I read it again and I began to take notes to better understand the central themes of the psalm. (There are no better interpretive tools then … More (Psalm 35) The Poor Mean Little to the Rich
Read Psalm 41 Read to the accompaniment of Aubre’s Gift (black bar to the right of this post) Part of the Poetry Project An attempt to write a “poetic reflection” on each of the psalms in the Psalter. Don’t think of these as high art, (that won’t be hard); but as one man’s attempt to … More If With the Poor and Rejected I Would Dwell
At the time of Amos’ prophecy, Israel was a rich and powerful nation. Yet, Amos took them to task for ignoring the poor, failing to exercise justice, and reducing their religion to mere ritual. How can we avoid these pitfalls which seem to periodically haunt God’s people throughout history? Come hear the challenge and to … More God Judges Nations for Their Brutality Against the Unborn
Reading with the Pastor Acts 7 and Psalm 10-11 I struggle with both halves of Psalm 10. The first half (verses 1-11) lays out the wickedness of the oppression of the poor and the godlessness of a lifestyle that is driven purely by the profit motive, and the second half (verses 12-18), calls for the … More Vexation: When the Heart Struggles with Justice
My life’s purpose is “to live passionately for and like Jesus.” I am a long way from my goal. But one thing is absolutely certain. I will never make any progress if I am not constantly examining the gospel record for how Jesus lived. Last night before dropping off to sleep I was reading in … More The Jesus Model: Association with Sinners
I mentioned this in Sunday’s message. Why is Paris all over the news and Nigeria isn’t? Don’t get me wrong. The tragedy and what is behind it going on in Paris and the lives lost and the issues at stake are important for the entire world. The lives lost there are important. And the losses … More Why Paris and Not Nigeria?
Continued from Yesterday Yesterday, I posted (read it here) the first part of an excerpt from Dorothy Day’s essay on Luke 2:7. Here is part 2 of the very convicting and challenging meditation on the what it means to serve Christ in the world today. I have added a few links to give some information on … More Christ is Disguised (Part 2)
Christmas Eve 2014 Yesterday, while working on one of the Christmas messages, I refound a wonderful devotional in my files. For the next few days I am going to edit and excerpt it here. The source that I have is itself adapted from the book Little by Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day. Day … More Christ is Disguised Under Every Type of Humanity that Treads the Earth
Monday After Thoughts Last week I posted a great quote by Ann Voskamp on giving. This week I have another great quote from the same article in which I found last week’s quote. The article was written by Kristen Welch and was provocatively titled “Dear World: Let’s Stop Giving Our Crap to the Poor.” I’ve provided … More “No-one has ever become poor by giving.” Anne Frank
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