Hebrews and the gospel this week! Read them again when you get home. Then read them again and again – maybe every day this week – because if we could really understand and then take to heart these two passages, we just might be convicted enough to open ourselves to the fire of the Spirit…

A young man decided to plant a church in a southern suburb of Seattle. The neighborhood was marked by lower income and lower educational attainment than the suburbs to the north. His plan was simple: gather, share, explore. Gathered around a table, around a hearth, his small band of friends and neighborhood acquaintances shared their…

There is a popular saying for church signs, “Too Blessed to Be Depressed.” It’s a nice idea, isn’t it? Think about being so blessed by God and knowing it, that you can’t possibly be depressed. That is a wonderful thought. Unfortunately, it’s not scriptural. Very seldom does theology do well condensed to bumper-sticker length. And…

There was a little girl who lived on a street right next to a cemetery. Her school was straight across, on the other side of the cemetery. That cemetery frightened all the children who lived on her street. In fact, they took great pains to avoid the cemetery, walking all the way around it to…

There is an old vaudeville joke about a man and woman dancing in the Catskills, at a singles resort. “I’m only here for the weekend,” the man says. “I’m dancing as fast as I can,” responds the woman. Martha is that kind of a woman, dancing around her house as fast as she can, trying…