Month: July 2017

I’m Inspired by My Kenyan Friend’s “Agape Touch”

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Baraka Gerryshon started a Agape Touch for the Aged as a ministry to the elderly people of Kenya. Now they’re serving people of all ages in outreach events. I asked him what I would see if I visited one of these events: “Vulnerable people of all ages gathered to be: spiritually encouraged, counseled, treated, and … Read more

G. K. Chesterton on Loving the Sinner and Hating the Sin

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As a Christian, I have often heard that we should “love the sinner and hate the sin,” and I believe it. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. If we are not careful, we will love some sinners more than others and hate some sins more than others, and a lot will depend on our own perception of the seriousness of the sin and the contributions of the sinner.

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“We Have Sinned and Grown Old, and Our Father Is Younger than We”

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Remember how the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk” begins: Jack bought magic beans which, when planted, grew into a giant beanstalk that reached to the sky.

Now, what if Jack found a way to mass produce those beans. Then everyone would have them. They would no longer be magic, they would just be part of the way the world works: apples seeds grow into apple trees and “magic” beans grow into giant beanstalks. If something always happens it’s not seen as magic, it’s seen as a natural law.

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G. K. Chesterton’s “Adventures in Pursuit of the Obvious”

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In the beginning of his 1908 book, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton compared himself to an English adventurer who set out by sea to discover new land, and thought he did just that—until he discovered that he had accidentally returned to England.

In addition to feeling embarrassed by his mistake, the sailor would also feel fortunate, Chesterton speculated, to have experienced both the adventure of discovery and the comfort of the familiar:

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Are There Really Streets of Gold? — C. S. Lewis on Believing in a Down-to-Earth Heaven

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John saw the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. It included a street of pure gold (Revelation 21:21).

The question is, does the New Jerusalem look the same to everyone, or did God show it to John in a way that he could understand?

Was the golden street actually a symbol of something much greater, of a splendor and luxury that John could not have imagined, much less communicated?

Will it limit our imaginations to think of heaven in terms of earthly wealth, or will it help?

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“The Quest of the Inner Ring Will Break Your Hearts Unless You Break It”

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C. S. Lewis gave this warning to a class of college students in an address in 1944. The message was included in the book, The Weight of Glory. The students Lewis addressed were preparing for a variety of careers, and he gave general advice that he thought would be helpful in whatever their eventual jobs were to be.

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4 Things You Might Not Realize about the Old Testament Concept of Judgment

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If we understood what the Biblical word “judgment” meant, we would probably use it a lot more. If we focus on just one aspect of the word, we miss the fullness of its Biblical meaning. If the word “judgment” makes us think only of condemnation and punishment, we are using it much more narrowly than the Biblical writers did.

Leon Morris, in his 1960 study, The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, did much to unpack the word, both as it is used in the Old Testament and the New. Below are four lessons we can learn from Morris’ study of the Old Testament word shaphat, and the related word, mishpat.

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