As current events go, the past week has been quite eventful. Racist murders in South Carolina, coordinated terrorist attacks in three different countries, two escaped convicts on the run, a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on gay marriage. I found myself recalling today the words of a letter written about 100 years after Jesus, a follower of Jesus explaining to someone else the distinctive lifestyle, beliefs, and attitudes of believers. The document is called The Epistle to Diognetus. We don’t know the author or the recipient, but the poignant description of what it means to be a believer in a worldly world is worth pondering during these eventful days. It is a wonderful description of living in the world, but not being of the world. See how you think it may apply today

I still cherish my boyhood memories of going fishing with my grandfather. It seems like it was yesterday. One day while I was sorting through the wide variety of tackle I had collected, fidgeting with lures and sinkers and bobbers and the rest in my fancy tackle box, my grandfather looked at me and said:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matt.7:15-16). When I was young in the faith, I had a deep hunger to find the truth of God because I had tasted it, it was deeply satisfying, and I

It is dangerous to understand the Bible better. It is all too easy for us to feel just a bit of pride about pulling out the meaning of biblical texts, as if we were beginning to master the Scriptures when, of course, exactly the opposite is the whole point. The temptation may come from the

Some years back, I did a survey of our church’s congregation with the simple question: “If you could ask God one thing, what would it be?” I was not surprised that the most frequent response had to do with the problem of evil in the world, but I was struck by the next most common