God made us so that we might work in his creation, tending it and being fruitful within it. In various ways, we continue to live out that purpose through our work. Yet because...
Memories are fleeting things. They are notoriously inexact, and yet they ...
A few years ago, I faced cancer surgery and my level of anxiety was high. Two of my best friends flew across the country to be with me in the surgical waiting room...
My mother loved birthdays. As a child, I felt wrapped in love by the flowers, the gifts selected with care, and my favorite meal. It's the "birthday questions" I remember most though. The person...
Throughout the ages, Christian commentators have seen in Genesis 3:15 the first hint of the Savior. There will be hostility between the serpent (an image of Satan) and the offspring of the woman ...
Here we see the first excuse. The man has been caught red-handed, having eaten the forbidden fruit. He does not try to lie to God. But he does avoid taking responsibility for his...
Do you remember your teachers? Do you remember thinking that they were ...
I remember playing hide and seek with my children when they were very young. Their hiding places were ineffective, to say the least. I could usually see or hear them right as I...
As soon as the man and woman sin by doing that which God has prohibited, they feel shame. The Hebrew literally reads: "they knew that they were naked." But this isn't simply a...
Temptation rarely comes in obvious, in-your-face ways. We're rarely tempted to do that which we know to be horribly wrong. Rather, temptation sneaks up on us and tries to catch us unaware. It asks,...
The word for competition in the New Testament is the Greek word athleo, from which we have the English word athletic. St...
I like to win. I hate to lose. When the Oakland A’s (my favorite baseball team) win, I feel giddy. When they get beat in the first round of the playoffs (as has...
In polite speech, we sometimes speak of people "being intimate" rather than using the blunt phrase "having sex." Intimacy can involve our bodies, to be sure. In fact, the original Hebrew for...
You and I are unique. I can't prove this, but I believe it. We hear phrases like "very unique" and "more unique," but we cannot in fact compare uniqueness. To be unique is...
When you're lying on your deathbed, you're not likely to wish you'd spent more time at the office and less time at...
Here we see a striking image of the kind of relationship God intends for marriage. The man and woman are "united into one." The Hebrew original, with its vividness, say that they are...
What an amazing act of delegation! God made a perfect, beautiful world, and then turned it over to the man. Here's the beginning of human management over God's creation, or to use more theological...
If God wanted his created beings, including humans, to survive, then he would have to provide some means of nourishment. So the fact that trees produced fruit makes practical sense. We might even...
Maybe you haven't seen the wonderful interviews over at Spaghettipie yet. But her recent interview with Brenda Nixon takes things to a...
Human beings come from the dust of the ground. We are of this earth, made from the gritty stuff of creation. Yet we are also a product of God's own breath, the breath...
