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Good News: God’s Enemies Are Defeated In her book The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge says we are usually “queasy” to talk about the wrath of God: “If we are resistant to the idea of the wrath of God, we might pause to reflect the next time we are outraged at something.” Rutledge goes on to describe how God’s wrath (always against sin and evil)...

A Second Eden Hurricane Harvey made landfall in the United States in late August 2017, and the Category 4 storm turned the streets of Houston into waterways. Bible teacher Beth Moore, a resident of the deluged city, wrote in Christianity Today shortly after the storm: “We are devastated. They say it will take many months and perhaps even...

A Prophet’s Visions Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he was standing in grove of trees in western New York State when God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him. From this vision, Smith taught that God the Father had a physical body and that the Mormon religion was the only path to salvation.

A Curse (and Blessing) In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer explored the distinction between “cheap” and “costly” grace. Cheap grace requires no real contrition or repentance. It says that people will be forgiven regardless of their desire to be delivered from sin. Costly grace, on the other hand, “is costly because it condemns...

A Coming King In the 1930s, the Southern Plains region suffered an ecological disaster now called the “Dust Bowl.” Homesteading legislation had brought inexperienced farmers, incentivized by land ownership, into the region, and they had responded to the demand for European grain by plowing up the grasslands to use for farming. But without...

God: Father, Master, King When he was a high-school junior in Phoenix, Arizona, Jacob Staudenmeier created an elaborate “prom-posal,” Staudenmeier decided to remake the opening scene of the movie La La Land in order to ask the film’s star, Emma Stone, to go to prom with him. (Despite his efforts, Stone declined graciously.) The trend of “prom-posals”...

Consequence of Unforgiveness Perhaps you remember a classmate in elementary school who bullied you. Or you might recall a family member who failed to keep a promise. Maybe you were treated unfairly by your employer or cheated when making a purchase. Most of us could easily make a lengthy list of the specific ways others have wronged us. Our...

Results of Disobedience Dr. James Dobson became well known for his parenting advice in the 1970s, especially in helping parents deal with willful or disobedient children. His book Dare to Discipline, first published in 1976, became a guidebook for many parents as they tried to practice godly discipline in a way that raised their children...

Power of Forgiveness In his book A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis said, “Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask—half our great theological and metaphysical problems—are...

Forgive Your Brother and Sister In the television series The Brady Bunch, the six siblings would often squabble, but there was a particular rivalry between Jan and Marcia. At one point, Jan explodes to her parents in frustration and jealousy: “All I hear, all day long at school, is how great Marcia is, or how wonderful that Marcia did that...