As humans living in a broken world, there are times when someone we love stops being part of our lives. You might be in a dating relationship, only to break up and have your significant other cut themself out of your life. Maybe you have a parent who has abandoned you. Other people in your [...]

The last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, can seem brutal, as if God has lost all his patience and love for Israel. Yet this book is very important, as it would be the last direct words the Israelites would hear from God for over four hundred years. The time of Malachi was grim: the [...]

I'm in my fifties, and one thing I wish I'd known about God when I was a teenager is that He understands perfectly what it is like to be popular and to be unpopular. Jesus experienced both during His ministry. When Jesus was feeding people and healing them, crowds hung on His words and followed [...]

When my two sons were little, I biked all three of us around by pulling them in a small trailer attached to my bicycle. They rode in comfort, safe and shielded from the sun. One afternoon, I pedaled us to the store. After doing our shopping, we started home. But as we were leaving the [...]

When you were young, who did you go to for comfort? Who was strong enough to hold you and carry you? Who made you feel the safest? Who made every hurt go away? As we grow older, we lose some of the bonds we had when we were younger. We don't sit on the laps [...]

It is surprising how we can be so spiritually blind about certain matters. For a long time, there was an area of my life where I was spiritually blind. For years, I acted contrary to the truth of God's word. As a teenager, I had bias against one particular tribe in my country. I disliked [...]

When darkness covers the sunshine When I start to feel anything but fine When I'm too worried to be still Be my peace If I fall down and struggle to stand again If I fear too much to begin If I am consumed with being like everyone else Be my peace When my life feels [...]

Tears fall freely down my face as I stoop to gaze into this hole of death. I came early in the morning because this tomb holds the body of my Lord or did. I let my knees hit the ground at the entrance of the hollowed-out rock, let sobs shake my body. Suddenly, a burning [...]

The comm link buzzed. “Osaka Karaoke?” Command Center's usual check-in code. Sara gave the expected response in a choked whisper, “Apple Osaka Karaoke” (A-OK). What else could she say? They only checked to make sure she was alive and in her right mind. And if she wasn't—well, there wasn't much they could do. The buzz [...]

Lord, my head is full of Your beautiful truths. Knowledge about the gospel, Scriptures, the trinity, the sacraments, salvation, and more are packed into my brain, lovingly placed there by pastors and professors and parents and authors and friends. I marvel at these amazing things. And yet, when these truths make the long trek down [...]