There were giants in those days: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea. Which one of these did Jesus nominate to be the greatest born of women? Not one. In stead he singled out a hairy, harassed desert preacher - John the Baptizer. Why? The clue is found in the fragment of the Baptizer’s teaching which Luke preserved for posterity. It revealed John as the pione...
There are times when honesty demands that we "spiritualize" a teaching of Jesus. He did not mean steel swords when in those last hours he told his disciples, "let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one" (Luke 22:36). He meant, as Paul meant in Ephesians 6, "the sword of the Spirit." His dazed disciples did not translate the striking figure that he used into the Master’s intended meaning....
Paul wrote this appeal under great emotion. Word had come to him of the joyous sacrifices made by the impoverished churches of Macedonia when they learned that their beloved leader Paul was collecting money for the persecuted mother church in Jerusalem.
With justifiable paternal pride, Paul overflows with joy at the free initiative of love exhibited by his "children" in the infant churches of Mac...
A while ago I wrote this piece about a dialogue between your typical (thoroughly Christian) American housewife, and her garbage can. I called the latter Mr. Chompo, Your Friendly Garbage Can. The thorough Christian was named Mrs. Americus, or Mrs. A to Chompo.
It seems Mr. Chompo was getting fed up with pondering how really Christian Mrs. A was. "I’ve had it right up to my lid," he was heard to m...
"There is nothing more beautiful than the golden sea which spreads in all directions from my cupola. And best of all, it’s mine, all mine."
The speaker was the seated Mr. Barnes, high up in the cupola of his farm manor. His golden fields of wheat stretched out toward every horizon. The only other objects in sight were his barns; massive barns, bulging with the grain of past harvests.
A frown cre...
