A friend once said that forgiveness doesn’t simply mean forgetting. Forgiveness also conveys the quality of wishing the other person well. It often takes an extraordinary act of grace to forgive—much...

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we tend to focus on the daring escape of the Hebrew people from Egypt, fast-forwarding through the many adventures of the people during their forty-year wilderness trek....

Icy desert nights bring clarity to the view of the sky. I slept outside one winter’s night at a youth camp in a remote location. Near midnight I awoke, cold and...

In South Africa, news reports recite a litany of stories related to crime, corruption, trade union strikes, political unrest, and other human tragedies. At times the bad news feels so overwhelming...

If the psalmist’s life and words in Psalm 63 illustrate how to approach time in the desert, the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings illustrate how not to. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul...

How easily we take something for granted. Water, for instance. Water is a precious commodity on my continent of Africa. More than 300 million of the 800 million people in sub-Saharan...

Each of us will face seasons in the desert—times of intense hardship and sorrow. You may be in such a place in your life right now. My friend is navigating the...

Our journey in the desert continues as we hear God’s voice calling people to come and drink at the waters. Written almost six hundred years before Christ’s birth, Isaiah’s words point...

Deserts are harsh places. Survival is a daily struggle for plants, animals, and people alike. Deserts figure prominently in the Bible. Cast out of lush Eden, Adam and his descendants lived...

The New Testament refers to the Pharisees almost one hundred times; a vast majority of them are negative. And yet, here in the passage from Luke we find the Pharisees warning...