The Daily Memo

The first chapter of Matthew’s gospel records the lineage of Jesus. Starting with Isaac, the miracle child born to Abraham, there are 42 generations until the universe-altering event of the Savior’s birth. Among the names listed, there are schemers, prostitutes, murderers, kings, and idol worshippers. Many of these men and women had their lives transformed by God and, by His miraculous workings, were given a place of honor in the ancestry of Christ. The same God…

Moses needed to know three things. To truly offer ourselves to the Lord with complete commitment, we also need the answers to these key questions: 1. Who is God? In Exodus 3, God used a burning bush to get Moses’ attention and then introduced Himself as the God of his forefathers (vv. 2, 6). God reiterated His identity four times in this short passage. He knew that Moses couldn’t take even the first step of faith until he knew the One with whom he was speaking.,…

There’s something I’d want to encourage you to consider. Drum roll, please! Invest the first 15 minutes of your day in the presence of the Lord. In silence, in prayer, and in God’s Word. Ask Him to open your heart to what He has for you in those opening moments of your day. If you get bold, you’ll gradually creep up to an hour. That’s what I did today. You’ll be shocked as to how well the rest of the day will materialize, even if it turns…

In Beep Baseball, the players who are blind listen for a beeping ball or buzzing base to know what to do and where to go. The blindfolded batter (to account for various degrees of blindness) and sighted pitcher are on the same team. When a batter swings the bat and hits the beeping ball, he or she runs toward the buzzing base. The batter is out if a fielder “smothers” the ball before the batter makes it to the base; otherwise, the batter scores a run. One player…

In this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play. Of all the Eternal Truths we don't believe, this is the one we doubt most of all. Our days are not extraordinary. They are filled with the mundane, with hassles mostly. And we? We are...a dime a dozen. Nothing special really. Probably a disappointment to God. But as C. S. Lewis wrote, "The value of...myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden…

A busy father was looking for a way to entertain his young daughter. He found a map of the world in a magazine and cut it into pieces. He gave the pieces to his child and suggested she try to piece the map back together. After a very short time, she said she had finished. He was very surprised by how quickly she had done it. He asked her how she had managed to do it so fast. She replied, ‘I noticed when you took the page out of the magazine that on the back of the map…

In his book, “The Vision and The Vow”, Pete Greig tells of how a distinguished art critic was studying an exquisite painting by the Italian Renaissance master Filippino Lippi. He stood in London’s National Gallery gazing at the fifteenth-century depiction of Mary holding the infant Jesus on her lap, with saints Dominic and Jerome kneeling nearby. But the painting troubled him. There could be no doubting Lippi’s skill, his use of color or composition.…

In the era of unlimited information, it’s easy to take the Bible for granted—to forget how rich it is with spiritual insight and understanding. In Scripture, we’ve been given both the revelation of who God is and a practical guide for how to live today and prepare for eternity. Hebrews 4:12 tells us, “The word of God is living and active.” We can observe that the Bible is miraculously complex enough to satisfy both the intellectual and simple;…

And here's where we run into a problem. For most of us, life feels like a movie we've arrived at forty-five minutes late. Something important seems to be going on ... maybe. I mean, good things do happen, sometimes beautiful things. You meet someone, fall in love. You find that work that is yours alone to fulfill. But tragic things happen too. You fall out of love, or perhaps the other person falls out of love with you. Work begins to feel like a punishment.…