READ: LUKE 1:26-56 At the time of Jesus’s birth, most Jews would have known the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah, including a young virgin from the town of Nazareth named Mary. Then one day, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that God was going to bring the Messiah into the world…through her. [...]

READ: GENESIS 2:2-3; EXODUS 10:8-10; DEUTERONOMY 5:12-15; HEBREWS 4:9-11 Have you ever felt guilty for resting? I know I have. When my body tells me I need to take a break and slow down, I always try to fight it. This world is fast-paced, and I always feel like I can’t keep up—rest isn’t going [...]

READ: NUMBERS 24:17, 19; ISAIAH 42:1-4; MICAH 5:2 The world-famous superhero, the Black Panther, was played by Chadwick Boseman. Every day while filming was in progress, I imagine he would get up, eat breakfast, suit up, and step in front of a camera to thrill us as an action hero. Gal Gadot did the same [...]

READ: MATTHEW 1:18-25; 28:16-20 Recently, I was looking up verses about Jesus being with us, and I noticed something really cool. In Matthew’s Gospel—his account of Jesus’s life— Matthew includes two pointed statements about how Jesus is with us, and he places one of these right at the beginning of his account and the other [...]

READ: JOHN 14:15-31; GALATIANS 5:22-26; PHILIPPIANS 4:4-9 Advent takes place during the four weeks before Christmas, and it’s a time when some Christians prepare to celebrate Jesus’s first coming and look forward to His return. During Advent, many Christians reflect on different themes each week, and one theme is God’s peace. Peace isn’t something we [...]

READ: ROMANS 8:12-17; PHILIPPIANS 2:1-11; COLOSSIANS 1:15-20 Do you have any siblings? And if so, are you the oldest, youngest, or somewhere in the middle? In biblical times, birth order mattered a lot. If you were a firstborn son (sorry daughters) you would inherit the birthright from your father. This could be anything from sheep [...]

READ: PSALM 86; 2 CORINTHIANS 1:3-9 Have you had a very bad day recently? The kind of day when you’re late to school or work, forgot your lunch at home, and realized you didn’t turn in an important assignment? Or worse, the kind of day when you get really bad news, and all the sudden [...]

READ: PSALM 1:1-3; JEREMIAH 17:7-8; JOHN 7:37-39; 15:4-17 Minutes before sunset was my favorite time of day. I sat on an outcropping of rock, dangling my bare feet above a crystalline spring of water. My home, this floating island in the sky, was level with the setting sun precisely at this time. Golden light skimmed [...]

READ: EXODUS 29:38-45; MATTHEW 27:45-53; JOHN 19:30 When I’d hear the bell go off in school, I knew that class was done. Because we heard the bell every day, we were conditioned to react to this particular sound. Something similar happened in ancient Israel. Twice a day, a priest would kill a one-year-old lamb. Some [...]

READ: PSALMS 32:6-8; 86:1-7; 120:1 Lifeguards are pretty amazing. Even when they’re stationed at a crowded beach or a noisy pool, their eyes and ears are trained to see people in trouble. Before anyone can work as a lifeguard, they have to take a lifesaving course where they learn how to rescue struggling swimmers from [...]