“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 128 “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard” (Prov. 21:13). This proverb teaches that what goes around comes around, and particularly in the realm of charity and …
Medieval and Protestant
“In that way the Arcadia is a kind of touchstone. What a man thinks of it, far more than what he thinks of Shakespeare or Spenser or Donne, tests the depth of his sympathy with the sixteenth century . . . It gathers up what a whole generation wanted to say. The very gallimaufry that …
From God’s Supply
“The stewardship metaphor indicated the content of the preacher’s message. Indeed, if the metaphor teaches anything, it teaches that the preacher does not supply his own message; he is supplied with it. If the steward is not expected to feed the household out of his own pocket, the preacher is not to provide his own …
By Killing or By Dying
“So now we have both Jesus and Muhammad at the end of their lives returning to the cities that housed the center of spiritual life for their peoples. Muhammad returned as a conqueror. As we shall see, Jesus returned as a sacrifice” (Mark Gabriel, Jesus and Muhammad, p. 62).
Can’t Have It Both Ways
“A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham’s law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 52).
A Bragging Fog
“I am married now, but have no idea whether or not it is God’s will for me to be married tomorrow. How would a mist know something like that? This is why James tells people not to boast, saying that they will go here and there, making big bucks as they go. he says that …
Men and Bees
“When the bee stings, she leaves her sting behind her and never gathers honey more. Men, but by stinging one another, do not lose their stings, but they lose their honey” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 274).
Scraping Paint Off a Gun Turret
Well, I now have the deep privilege of being a scarecrow in local politics. There are many individuals that I would like to thank for this peculiar honor . . . But first, for those who are from out of town, here is the sitch. The Greater Moscow Alliance, a group that had gotten themselves …
A Baptism That Cleansed the Water
We will certainly stumble in reading this Gospel if we attempt to understand it as a stand-alone biography. The wonderful story told here cannot be comprehended apart from the backdrop of the entire narrative of God’s purposes for Israel given in the Old Testament. This section shows us the richness of scriptural allusion found in …
A Dazzling Figure
“Even at this distance Sidney is dazzling. He is that rare thing, the aristocrat in whom the aristocratic ideal is really embodied . . . poet and patron of poets, statesman, knight, captain — fate has dealt such hands before, but they have very seldom been so well played” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the …