Psalm 138 opens with a defiant celebration. The psalmist looks at all other “gods” and sings grateful praise to Yahweh alone. Idols are the darlings of kings who devour the earth...

Israel has disappointed Samuel. To him, the problems with elevating one person to the rank of king should be obvious enough to everyone. And as we noted yesterday, when he outlines...

In ancient cultures, it was customary for children to follow in the vocational footsteps of their parents. As the call stories of people from Joshua to Jeremiah to Jesus demonstrate, though,...

Our mortality is charged with God’s infinity. The psalmist sings of the unfathomable sum of God’s thoughts, as many as the grains of sand that cover the landscape of Israel. Here...

As a former English teacher, I occasionally diagram Paul’s sentences just to see how he does it. Nobody but Paul subordinates clauses within clauses like that and consistently hooks readers for...

Holy humility is what the Pharisees lack as they try to trip up Jesus with their questions about the sabbath. When they harangue him about harvesting and healing on the day...

Every night, millions of us can’t sleep. Stressed, unsettled, excited, wired, texted, and blue-screened beyond our limits, we might lie awake for hours. If this isn’t you, be grateful. But the...

Perhaps this passage is not only about Jesus’ ongoing tension with the Pharisees and their recrimination for disregarding proper sabbath protocol, but also an invitation to consider ways that our clay-jar...

I always read this story with compassion for the man with the withered hand. Not only because he has been incapacitated for some time, but because he was just minding his...

How easy it is to focus on the “fearful” aspects of our incarnation. True, the word originally meant “awesome” but to contemporary ears, the word fearful casts an anxious light. Accidents...