I have written before on the ideal relationship of church and kingdom, comparing it to the church at the center of town, and life in the kingdom fanning out into the parish from that center. Word and sacrament are at the center, and they shape and form the lives of believers outside the sanctuary, but …
What Mardi Gras Has for Breakfast
This is happening in lots of different areas, so I don’t want to pick on Rand Paul. But for the sake of convenience, let us start with him. He recently called for a “truce” within the Republican Party on “social issues,” but what such a truce would actually amount to is total capitulation on the …
Derek and Laura
As we prepare ourselves to hear the marriage vows exchanged just a few moments from now, everyone here in the congregation should make a point to reflect on several important aspects of this solemn and joyful occasion. The first aspect is that many of us here in this sanctuary are married, and so this is …
Put an Egg in Their Shoe
In just a moment I would like to interact with a post by Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt, which you can read here if you haven’t already. In one sense, I wish they hadn’t written that thing together, because I have some respect for Kirsten Powers. She has done some very fine against-the-tide work on …
A Slack Hand
Scripture takes a dim view of a slack hand. “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: But the hand of the diligent maketh rich” (Prov. 10:4). This applies to all of us—men and women, boy and girls. It applies to every station of life—job holder, housekeeper, or student. One of the plain indicators …
Apologetics and the Heart
This article was originally published in Antithesis (July/August 1990). I still agree with all of this, but I must say that reading stuff of mine that is over twenty years old gives me the feeling that I used to compose my prose with flattened cardboard boxes and tin snips. Just so you know. In preparing …
Not That Kind of Blessing . . .
A few years ago, I wrote eleven theses on birth control, which you can read here. But the fact that a certain line of discussion broke out in the comments of another recent post made me want to develop my eighth and ninth points, which is that children are covenant blessing, not an automatic blessing. …
Domestic Mussolinis
This last October I put up a post called Bitterness and the Unsubmissive Wife. This generated some comment at the time, not to mention since then, and because there are some aspects of this that really are difficult for some to grasp, I thought I should make just a few more points about the whole …
Fear, Shame, and Guilt at Lunch
My friend Toby Sumpter has written a series of posts on food here (starting with his Free Range post), and this has generated some back and forth in various places, both online and off, and I thought I should join the discussion. But first some exegetical background. In John 6, the Lord fed the five …
What Mary Knew
Introduction Last week we considered what Joseph knew, and obviously Mary knew all the same things, and for the same reason. But she had more direct experience with the marvels that came to earth through her. For example, the angelic communication with Joseph came through dreams, but came to her directly. The Text: “And the …