Jeremiah 36 tells the story of something that happened around 604 B.C., after Jeremiah had been prophesying for over two decades. The...
Your hands are two personal valets that wait on you with absolute commitment. They perform all of your mundane tasks with tender care. Tying shoes, buttoning shirts, brushing your teeth, and fixing...
During the forty years of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry, the Lord spoke through his prophet in various ways in an effort to communicate his will to the Jewish people. Jeremiah 35 contains an...
A few years back I was advised by a mentor to toughen up, to challenge people more. ...
Jeremiah 33 begins with bad news for Jerusalem: the Babylonians will soon defeat and destroy the city because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. But the chapter progresses quickly from bad to...
In the fall of 2000 I started writing a novel. The only creative writing I had done up to that point in my life was angst-ridden teenage poems and journal entries. I don’t...
Psalm 117 is a simple, short call to worship. It is directed, not only at the people of Israel, but at “all you nations” (117:1). It calls all people on earth to worship...
I don't know what is true or noble or pure or lovely about zombies, but I love zombies.
The early chapters of Jeremiah featured warnings for the Israelites to stop their idolatrous rejection of God, lest he judge them in a devastating way. Then, the prophecies of Jeremiah became even...
In Jeremiah 31, the prophet reveals God’s vision for the future of his people. This vision peers beyond their immediate circumstances and exile in Babylon. It foresees the time when the Lord will...
For today's family/parenting post, we invited HCB member Mary E. DeMuth, author of Thin Places, to write about the sensitive issue of abuse... ...
Jeremiah 31 is a vision of the future day when the Lord restores his people, bringing them back to Israel. Not one of God’s people will be excluded from this return from exile...
A farmer's mule once fell into a broad well. "It's all over," thought the farmer; and, figuring the best thing was to bury the mule right there, he gathered extra workers and began...
When I was younger, verses like Jeremiah 30:11 perplexed and disturbed me. Of course, I felt encouraged by the fact that God was with his people and would save them. But I wasn't...
My dad told me the story.My husband told me the story.A friend of mine told me the story.In other words, I've heard...
Recently I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Not dramatically bad. Just persistently bad.First my two boys sluiced through the slushy snow and in two minutes flat managed to soak...
As an avid gardener, I’ve often pondered the difference between flowers and weeds. How does one define the term "weed"? Is it a relative designation? What distinguishes a desirable annual or...
I work for a nonprofit organization and have spent many years of my adult life hovering around the U.S. poverty level. Despite the apparent hardship for a family of four, we are wealthy...
I am sitting on the back porch looking out over the meadow behind our house. The sun is high in the sky, its heat tempered by a light breeze. A couple of Grackles...
Because, for centuries, the Jews had consistently disobeyed the Lord, worshiping idols and rejecting justice, he finally sent the Babylonians to sack Jerusalem and take the finest of her people...
