The Hope of Healing

A Times columnist Bernard Levin spoke of how there is a hole inside each of us. However much you try to fill it with food, drink, relationships, possessions, ‘it aches’. You were created for a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Without that relationship we ache.People try to fill this hole with different things. For some, it is alcohol, and although there is nothing wrong with drinking wine, it does not satisfy the deep inner thirst we have in our hearts…

We long for beauty, and when the biblical writers speak of heaven, they use the most beautiful imagery they can. You can almost hear the agony of the writer trying to get it right while knowing he falls far short of what he sees. In the book of Revelation, John uses the word like again and again. “And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance ... Before the throne…

A modern poet described the time we live in as an “age of anxiety.” Our lives have only become more anxious, in part because the world has become characterized by the need for “more.” Advertising and information flood our senses and emotions, so when it comes to material goods, enough seems to be just out of reach. We may think this is unique to our lifetime, but is it? In Luke 12, Jesus’ assessment of His audience could have been written.…

Let’s face it, there’s nothing like marriage to allure us and at the same time make us spontaneously combust with fear or anger at a moment’s notice. In the middle years of marriage, youthful fantasies can give way to painful realities. Mike Mason spoke some of my favorite words on the disruptive power of marriage. A marriage, or a marriage partner, may be compared to a great tree growing right up through the center of one’s living room. It is…

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…

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.…

In 2nd Timothy 3, it’s disheartening to read this list Paul makes of what people will be like in the last days, yet it shows us that as society gets darker, we as Christians have an amazing opportunity to shine brighter. “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not…

“I measure every Grief I meet,” the nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “With narrow, probing, eyes – / I wonder if It weighs like Mine – / Or has an Easier size.” The poem is a moving reflection on how people carry the unique ways they’ve been wounded throughout their lives. Dickinson concludes, almost hesitantly, with her only solace: the “piercing Comfort” of seeing at Calvary her own wounds reflected in…

Women are image bearers of God. Women are co-heirs with Christ. Women are valued, worthy, powerful, and needed. There is a reason the Enemy fears women and has poured his hatred onto our very existence. Let him be afraid, then. For “we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). We are more than conquerors through Christ who strengthens,…