The Reality of Our Present World

Some people have the wrong idea about the Christian life. Once they become believers, they expect smooth sailing. However, Jesus made it clear that we’ll all face troubles. His own life was no exception—He endured false accusation, rejection, betrayal, and separation from His Father. As His followers, we too can expect difficulty. Some problems arise from the fallen nature of the world, while others result from spiritual warfare. And we can cause our own…

I set my phone down, weary of the constant bombardment of images, ideas, and notifications that the little screen broadcasted. Then, I picked it up and turned it on again. Why? In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr describes how the internet has shaped our relationship with stillness: “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way…

Scientists now believe that the Earth may have had all the elements needed for life within it all along, contrary to prior theories that these elements came from meteorites. For many years, scientists have predicted that many of the elements that are crucial ingredients for life, like sulfur and nitrogen, first came to Earth when asteroid-type objects carrying them crashed into our planet’s surface. I have a different theory. God created the heavens and the earth with…

The story of Bernie Madoff is a sad one. He was addicted to adulation—and money was his way of earning that praise. Throughout his life he elbowed and clawed his way to the top of the mountain . . . only to discover its peak was slippery and crowded. Madoff masterminded a twenty-year-long shell game, the largest financial crime in U.S. history. At seventy-one years of age, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life as prisoner number 61727-054 in a Federal…

All 41 workers who were trapped in a collapsed Himalayan tunnel for 17 days were successfully rescued last week. The men were tunneling through a mountain as part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway project, which aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites, when a landslide trapped them nearly 3 miles from freedom. The workers were provided oxygen, food, and water through a narrow pipe, even as rescue efforts faced numerous setbacks. After the complete breakdown of…

Do you remember the playground game King of the Hill? My buddies and I would fight tooth and nail, arms and legs flailing to get to the top of that dirt pile, taking no prisoners. My only goal was to get to the top and hold that position under any circumstances. Bruised limbs, scuffed knees, makes no never mind. Win at all costs. Does that sound familiar? I took that same doggedness into my early career and life. Why? I’d need a hundred pages to explain. The simplest…

Now, rest is just one of the ways we receive the life of God. We stop, set all of our busyness down, and allow ourselves to be replenished. This is supposed to happen regularly. The original prescription was weekly. So why does rest feel like a luxury? Seriously, it feels irresponsible. We think we can drive ourselves like oxen fifty weeks a year, resurrect in a two-week vacation, then go back and do it all again. That is madness. My pushing and striving cut me off from the…

If you want to improve your life, improve your choices. If you want to improve your choices, improve your emotional health. If you want to improve your emotional health, improve the stories you tell yourself. If you want to improve the stories you tell yourself, learn to pay close attention to your thoughts. Ask, 'Why am I having this thought?' It doesn't matter whether you win or not if the game you're playing is the wrong game. Amassing power in your…

The biblical authors explore more of the relational consequences of sin with the Hebrew word pesha, often translated as “transgression.” Pesha refers to ways that people violate the trust of others, like the betrayal of a relationship.Take for instance a law in the Hebrew Bible about theft (Exodus 22:7-9). If people are away on a trip and somebody sneaks into their house to steal, that’s robbery. But if the thief is your neighbor, that’s pesha. Why?…