Isaiah 5:1–7 paints a vivid picture: God as a vineyard owner who pours time, care, and love into planting, protecting, and nurturing His vineyard only to find it producing wild, bitter grapes. At first glance, this reads like a story of disappointment turning into judgment. God expected sweetness and found bitterness, so He removes the […]

Evil and corruption seem to be the result of chaos and chaos brings more evil and corruption. On the other hand, goodness seems to be the result of order and order seems to lead the way to more goodness. Order Leads To Disorder Isaiah opens his prophetic book with a blunt truth: God’s people have

Is it all really vanity? It could be but it doesn’t have to be. Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven;

Jesus had a way of cutting straight through the noise. In Luke 12:13–21, someone from the crowd asks Jesus to intervene in a family dispute over an inheritance. Sounds reasonable, right? But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he warns everyone listening: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not

Our Feelings Matter I’ve spent most of my life trying not to feel emotions. When I was a kid, I watched the movies. I got the message. Boys don’t cry. Boys don’t get sad. And we sure don’t show weakness, in fact we don’t show any emotion unless it’s anger, and then only in a

Hope In The Midst Of Despair There was a time in my life—right in the middle of my divorce—when I honestly believed I would never feel happy again. It was a darkness so heavy and so thick, I knew it would take a long time to get through it. I know that sounds dramatic but

Before we get into Psalm 42 and how it relates to depression, it gives us a strange heading—“A Maskil of the sons of Korah.” This forgotten intro might be the key to the whole psalm. We usually skip the line at the top. You know the one. That ancient-sounding superscription we brush past to get

Transformation Is Slow After Jesus sends out the seventy in Luke 10 and they return amazed at what they’ve seen, he responds with a moment that feels both celebratory and sobering: “I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven… But don’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you. Rejoice that your names are written in

Jesus tells his disciples after returning from a mission where they healed the sick, cast out demons and preached good news, to not rejoice in the results they got but to rejoice that their names were written in heaven. A message we still need to hear today. When the seventy returned from their mission, they