"Freely you have received; freely give." (Matthew 10:8 NIV)For the first time in ten days the clouds cleared, the blue sky appeared, and the sun came out this morning. It rose over the trees and kissed the world with its light. The snow and frost on the ground...
"Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come." (1 Tim. 4:6 NLT) Almost every morning for the last 25 years I have exercised my body. It is nothing too strenuous. It is just a light...
"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him." (1 John 3:1 ESV)It was evening time. The sky had already gone dark and my eyes were...
"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith...
"I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys." (Song of Solomon 2:1 NIV) I had to do a double take when I read this the other day. I mean, we are told to be humble, right? To not flaunt ourselves? But this woman, whoever it is that Solomon is writing about in the...
I couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. It was a hot, Summer afternoon and I decided to cool off by taking a swim in the river that ran down the hill from our home. The water was cold and my dog jumped in to splash around with me. After a while I...
"Come near to God, and he will come near to you." (James 4:8 NIV) Out of the mouths of babes! At the park, while watching Bubble Man move his apparatus so that the wind would blow hundreds of iridescent bubbles at a time, my great-granddaughter patted the grass, and...
"O love, how deep, how broad, how high, Beyond all thought and fantasy, That God, the Son of God, should take, Our mortal form for mortals' sake!"He sent no angel to our race, Of higher or of lower place, But wore the robe of human frame, And to this world Himself He...
"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."...
"...He is first in everything..." (Col 1:18 TLB) Speaking about the pre-eminence of worship in a Christian's life, a Biblical scholar put it wisely: "If prayer and praise are a preoccupation about our needs and blessings respectively, then worship is a preoccupation...