Daily Reading
September 2, 2023
Certainly storytelling is one of the great pleasures in the kingdom. God clearly takes it very seriously—he made reality in the shape of a story. Would you like to write? Illustrate? Act? Produce? Perhaps we get to take workshops from the great artis...
Daily Reading
September 1, 2023
The gospel says that we, who are God's beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When...
Daily Reading
August 31, 2023
This is the world [God] has made. This is the world that is still going on. And he doesn't walk away from the mess we've made of it. Now he lives, almost cheerfully, certainly heroically, in a dynamic relationship with us and with our world. "Then th...
Daily Reading
August 30, 2023
According to the Scriptures, the heart can be troubled, wounded, pierced, grieved, even broken. How well we all know that. Thankfully, it can also be cheerful, glad, merry, joyful, rejoicing. The heart can be whole or divided—as in that phrase we oft...
Daily Reading
August 29, 2023
What will we do in heaven? The Sunday comics picture saints lying about on clouds, strumming harps. It hardly takes your breath away. The fact that most Christians have a gut sense that earth is more exciting than heaven points to the deceptive power...
Daily Reading
August 28, 2023
The biblical canon ends with Jesus making this final statement: Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. (Revelation 22:12) Reward, reward, reward — it fills the pages of both Test...
Daily Reading
August 27, 2023
Warfare prayer is not a “back-up” category when all else fails. It is not a specialty form of prayer for the uniquely called or gifted. Yes — there are some who become “experts” in this field, just as there are some who become especially trained to h...
Daily Reading
August 26, 2023
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 ...
Daily Reading
August 25, 2023
What Jesus primarily models for us is how to draw our life from the Father. This passage from Philippians — one of the earliest hymns of the faith — says that Jesus more than humbled himself when he came to earth. He emptied himself: Who, being in v...
Daily Reading
August 24, 2023
I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far – I will find you. —Nathaniel to Cora in The Last of the Mohicans One of my favorite games growing up was "kidnapped and rescued." I know many little girls who played this — or wished t...
Daily Reading
August 23, 2023
Mary broke the neck of the jar open and slowly poured some of the perfume on Jesus’s head and then poured the rest on his feet. Then she did something extremely intimate and scandalous. She unbound her hair and wiped his feet with it, even though a r...
Daily Reading
August 22, 2023
That strength so essential to men is also what makes them heroes. If a neighborhood is safe, it's because of the strength of men. Slavery was stopped by the strength of men, at a terrible price to them and their families. The Nazis were stopped by me...
Daily Reading
August 21, 2023
Everything in you may be saying, “But you don’t understand. I want to eat that whole box of chocolates (or sleep with my boyfriend, or let my anger really fly). That’s what really seems like life to me right now.” God says, “I know you do, but it’ll ...
Daily Reading
August 20, 2023
“I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep lis...
Daily Reading
August 18, 2023
The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way. (J. R. R. Tolkien) The Sacred Romance calls to us every m...
Daily Reading
August 17, 2023
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] One of the best feelings I had as a young man was cutting the ties I had to you and Mom financially. I mean, I was grateful for your help...
Daily Reading
August 16, 2023
Look at the life of Jesus. Notice what he did. When Jesus touched the blind, they could see; all the beauty of the world opened before them. When he touched the deaf, they were able to hear; for the first time in their lives they heard laughter and m...
Daily Reading
August 15, 2023
Flames are licking all around us, aren’t they? All the time. Saint Peter describes our life here on this earth as a “fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). Tragedies and heartache and pressures and illnesses and irritations grand and small show up indiscrimin...
Daily Reading
August 14, 2023
The secret of happiness is this: God is the love you are longing for. We live in a love story. We are created for romance and we have an insatiable capacity for it. Now, God gave us such a heart; it was one of his first gifts to us. (You have to h...
Daily Reading
August 13, 2023
Jesus kept coming back to this central issue, over and over, driving at it in his teachings, his parables, his penetrating questions. If you look again, through the lens that most of us feel fundamentally fatherless, I think you’ll find it very close...
Daily Reading
August 12, 2023
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 someon...
Daily Reading
August 11, 2023
Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered — to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. (Revelation 5:12 NLT) Pilate dares to ask Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus doesn’t even bother answering. You know how the St...
Daily Reading
August 10, 2023
Well, he created laughter. And think of the crowd he dined with. These rabble-rousers quickly earned Jesus a reputation as a drunkard and a glutton, and it wasn’t because they served water and crackers. This was a wild group, and surely such a crowd ...
Daily Reading
August 9, 2023
We hold on to hope, and belief, by remembering what is true and setting our hopes on a Person — on the utter goodness and reliability of our God who intervened in Bethlehem, when all was hopeless. And who has promised to intervene again, in an even m...
Daily Reading
August 8, 2023
We need what Beauty speaks. What it says is hard to put into words. But part of its message is, all is well. All will be well. Beauty invites. Recall what it is like to hear a truly beautiful piece of music. It captures you; you want to sit down and ...
Daily Reading
August 7, 2023
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] I hate money. But I like to eat. I want a cell phone so people can get in touch with me. I want to take Susie out on a date. I’d really...
Daily Reading
August 6, 2023
Caring for your heart is how you protect your relationship with God. Now there’s a new thought. But isn’t our heart the new dwelling place of God? It is where we commune with him. It is where we hear his voice. Most of the folks I know who have neve...
Daily Reading
August 5, 2023
I’ve always wondered why Jesus, having healed someone, would immediately tell them to keep quiet about it. After giving two blind men perfect vision, “Jesus warned them sternly, ‘See that no one knows about this’” (Matt. 9:30). Warned them sternly — ...
Daily Reading
August 4, 2023
We need Jesus like we need oxygen. Like we need water. Like the branch needs the vine. Jesus is not merely a figure for devotions. He is the missing essence of your existence. Whether we know it or not, we are desperate for Jesus. To have his life...
Daily Reading
August 3, 2023
Our search for the Golden Moment is not a search in vain; not at all. We've only had the timing wrong. We do not know exactly how God will do it, but we do know this: the kingdom of God brings restoration. The only things destroyed are the things tha...