It was 1791 when in one his sermons John Wesley said “Slovenliness is no part of religion. And cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”
It’s the first recorded use of the proverb as we phrase it today, but the “cleanliness is next to godliness” theme is actually an ancient Hebrew one that integrates personal hygiene with spiritual health to acknowledge a God who is interested in us as holistic beings.
Read More justice, cleansing, mercyIn this brief three-verse passage, Jesus has just had it out with his opponents, the religious obtuse, the scholars of appearance, the powerful men who he knows will have him killed before long.
He has told them the facts, that they’re liars and murderers, and that, in his omniscience and ability to see over the sweep of history, he sees the blood on their hands and will hold them accountable.
Read More comfort, freedom, loving parentIt was bedtime when the children asked the big one. ‘Daddy, when is the end of the world?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘You might get hit by a milk truck tomorrow, and so, for any one of us the end of the world can come at any time.’
My seven-year-old, Jon, didn’t buy this. He excitedly said that he can’t wait for it, the fireworks and glory and power of Jesus’ return.
Read More Temple, end times, permanenceDelivering a child is painful enough even if all goes well. But one of the great tragedies of modern times is that, according to world health officials, more than 300,000 women die in childbirth every year.
Poor women in places like sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia still perish today largely because they don’t have a skilled attendant, a trained professional to handle emergencies that inevitably arise during childbirth.
Read More pain, joy, end times, childbirthIn Uganda, where my family and I have lived for some years, night guards are commonly hired. Institutions, businesses or even private residences hire guards for protection from thieves who otherwise would carry out their business without resistance or fear.
Everyone needs to be alert. And nobody wants a guard who just wants to sleep the night away.
Read More vigilance, end times, today‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ is how Franklin D. Roosevelt put it when marshaling his nation for the hardships of the Second World War.
Roosevelt understood that the battle is not only out there in the world, but inside, in a deeper place in the individual spirit. If the battle can be won ‘in here,’ it can then be won in the trenches and skies and waters of ‘out there.’
Read More security, confidence, fear, authorityThere’s a joke of a future scientist who approaches God with the claim that he can make a human. He challenges God to a contest on who can make the best one. God agrees. The scientist bends down to scoop some dust to make his person. “No, no,” God says. “You go and make your own dust.”
It’s a comical reminder that there is nothing in this world that is not our Creator’s: not the dust of the earth or anything on it.
Read More stewardship, PossessionsIs there ever a time to disobey government? It was Rev. Martin Luther King who said that the one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty. He knew the only way Afro-Americans could change unjust laws on segregation in the 1960s was to lay down their safety and bodies and sometimes even their lives.
On the other hand, Paul exhorted early Christians under the thumb of an emperor as corrupt as Nero to, ‘Obey the rulers who have authority over you.
Read More discernment, honour, obediencePopular culture offers various views of what may happen to our spirits after we die. Many are entertaining even to the comical point of a cartoon-like image of the dearly departed floating upward to settle on a cloud with cherubs playing harps.
The Sadducees didn’t believe that people would rise to any new life.
Read More resurrection, Sadducees, divinityDavid was just the second king Israel, a fledgling nation that still had birthmarks of being set apart for God. But when David set up the Ark of the Covenant and made Jerusalem Israel’s centre of religious worship and political power, it became Israel’s golden age.
Israel’s so-called shepherd-king was far from perfect.
Read More humility, religious scholars