After they listened to the devil’s sweet nothings, all nature groaned. “How can it be? These God-bearers fall from a cliff when they can hide in the cleft. In a bite, in a whisper, they plot out how to unwrap dependence.
the smell of ants
A scientist observed several ants discarding one of their own dead. "How do they know?" he asked himself, and began mixing concoctions until he could fake an ant's death. He placed a smelly substance that marked out death on the back of an ant and put her inside the colony. Immediately drone soldier ants came and carried her off.
o come, o come...
ghosts
I like the Orthodox. They have ghosts. Catholics do too. They roam about and remind the living that death is not conclusive. Many also say that ghosts revenge the deeds not done while dragging skin and bone around. But, when Protestants entered, they killed off the haunts by theologizing souls springing to heaven, a presumptuous and boring end.
this thing that has happened
a new inerrancy
The Bible hosts inerrant truth, something dismissed, berated, belittled, or severely downgraded by so many church denominations. Inerrancy forces you to fall under the authority of God and his Word. You understand better that you are not special or unique; the law that accuses you of sin is the same for everyone. There are zero exceptions. Inerrancy also instructs you on the one and only way out: Jesus. One of my long-in-the-tooth seminary professors took me into his office one day and said this: “The only thing I learned – amid all this learning and studying and preparation – is Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Keep close to that because it’s the most important Truth.”
how will this be?
The desert of unprophetic years turns on a moment. It catches stars and pulls them in close like a surgeon caring for a dying patient. An angel descends looking for a certain teenage girl named Mary. When he locates her, she is startled by his appearance and his announcement. The nature of the news invites her to question…
skyscrapers
Reflection on the Suffering
It’s heavy; I don’t know if I can bear it; the whips are driving into my back; my feet are sore; beneath me the riveting rocks press in; my eyes sting from the sweat; I am hot; I am cold. “Why don’t you save yourself?” jeers someone close to me from the lynch mob that has surrounded me. Father even now forgive them.
herodium and bethlehem
the holy spirit, a wild goose
in the name of jesus christ
In Acts, we hear a new phrase: “in the name of Jesus Christ.” Peter uses it twice at the beginning of the book. He says to the crowd*, “Repent and be baptized… in the name of Jesus Christ…” 2:38. A little later, while walking with John to the Temple, he says it again, ordering the lame man to get up and walk, “in the name of Jesus Christ” (3:6).
sovereign lord
In Acts 4:24, we hear a word for Lord that graduates the normal word used. In the New Testament, the word κύριος is used to refer to someone in authority, a term a servant would use to address his master, a word that appears in the text some 600 times, depending on your translation. But here, in Acts 4:24, a different word is used: δεσπότης.
where the holy spirit moved
The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, along with persecution and geographical changes, quickly reshapes the world for Jesus’ followers. Before Acts 10, the disciples generally understood Jesus’ message to be exclusive for the Jewish people in spite of Jesus’ clear directive to make disciples of all nations. But a challenge arrives in Acts 10.
song of hannah
gods and mini-gods
Who started looking up anyhow? If gods are to be found, wouldn’t they be closer in? Sustenance makes leveled sense. Survival is intimate with what the winds bring in or what they keep away. And who moves these winds? Who strings up the clouds and thickens their skins to hold in the sun’s greed? Is the sky’s vastness reason for our inferiority?
