The Lord Will Fight for You
We have to reckon with the destruction caused by the complex interplay of divine intention and the desires of humans in the Exodus story. And we also have to reckon with something else: Jesus ultimately entered this story. He ultimately answered the violence of the way things happen in this world by submitting to it.
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The Golden Calf
In a story woven through with appearances of the glory and majesty of God, have we thrown a party for any golden calves instead?
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Miriam and Moses
Every superhero and super-shero has an origin story. An origin story often includes a flashback that tells us how that person acquired his or her powers as well as purpose in fighting crime. When I think of Moses I have visions of that old Charlton Heston movie “The Ten Commandments” where Moses faces the burning bush or is standing before the parting of the Red Sea. However, I am captivated by his origin story and the critical role of his older sister Miriam. Miriam’s curiosity and creativity may have seemed small, but they were of biblical proportions.
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Midwifing the Kingdom
Our work is a witness not so much in what we do, but in how we go about doing it. The midwives are exemplars of agents of life that God sets into motion to usher the life of the Kingdom. Work is the womb where that life is nourished and birthed. They knew the policies that affected people rested in their hands. They did the next right thing. The next right thing is usually the hard thing.
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Dignify Labor Day with Intervention
Labor Day. Labor Day. Labor Day. Why do we celebrate it? What should we do to mark the holiday? For me, the holiday is…
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Go Down, Moses
The Exodus story forms the way so many of us tell of our own journey from enslavement to sin through a wilderness of struggle to the Promised Land of a relationship with Christ. But I have been convicted of the fact that, in our national story, as a white person, I am Pharaoh. Will I harden my heart or let Christ soften it?
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What is God Like? Abounding in Faithfulness
The God who made our universe is unchangingly reliable, “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” That’s good news in a harsh and unreliable world. We have a divine counterclaim and divine counterexample to the world around us. In a world that is regularly ruthless and self-absorbed, God is always “compassionate and gracious.” In a culture increasingly ready to do and say anything, God continues to act consistently and overflows with “love and faithfulness.”
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What is God Like? Abounding in Love
Today’s text suggests that God is not a distant deity with vague warm feelings toward his creatures. Instead, the Lord’s compassion and grace overflow in action with an abundance of steadfast love and faithfulness. God’s heart, God’s word and God’s actions are all congruent with one another. So it should be for all of us who claim to follow and lead in God’s Way.
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Seeing life as a gift and seeing our redemption as a gift shapes the kind of leaders we become. Biblical hope is irresistibly resilient not because we are great leaders who are relentlessly determined to overcome all obstacles, but because the LORD is “the compassionate and gracious God.”
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What is God Like? – Compassionate
Is there a personal God and what might such a God be like? One of the problems with the way the Bible describes God is that God cannot be manipulated. In other words, no scientific experimentation is possible. If we are to know anything about God, it would require God’s self-revelation. That’s why the Bible is the essential book of human culture, since it claims to be the unique record of God’s self-revelation in human history. So, what is this God of the Bible like?
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Darkness into Light
I find myself on the other side of the worst six years of my life. I’m not exaggerating, and I hope you’ll take my word for it. In the middle of those six years, someone asked me how in the world I was surviving it all. We were standing next to my car… I remember that I leaned my left hip against the car and said to her, “The thing that surprises me is that I haven’t lost my faith.” It still surprises me.
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A Misunderstanding of the Work/Life Balance
Moses didn’t have a smart watch but he did have a smart mentor. Jethro, his father-in-law, spoke clearly about Moses’s leadership so that he could have a much healthier work/life balance.
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Is Your Current Pace Sustainable?
Moses was overly stretched trying to single-handedly shepherd the tens of thousands of Hebrews who had fled Egypt (some scholars think the number could have been in the millions). Moses realized that the way he was leading wasn’t sustainable and, thankfully, he had a mentor, Jethro, who could speak some sense into him!
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Work as Ministry (Faith & Work Integration, Part 3)
Like Moses, we must all assess the various ministry tools at our disposal. Are you a wordsmith, who uses the tools of communication? Perhaps you are an athlete, actor, writer, lawyer, doctor, politician, engineer, or artist. No matter what the tools, when you function in these roles as a way to glorify God, you are a marketplace minister.
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Did Joseph Ultimately Fail? Part 5
For several days we have been working together on the question: Did Joseph ultimately fail? We know that his plan and execution of this plan kept thousands of people alive through years of famine. But, his plan also led to the enslavement of these thousands to Pharaoh.
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