“Do you want to be healed?” The first time I read this passage I thought what a dumb question! Was Jesus being dense? Of course he wants to be healed! He has been sick for thirty-eight years, beside a pool believed to heal anyone who can be the first to enter it after the waters move. Why would he be there if he didn’t want to be healed? What a strange question. So often when we cry out to God and are denied, we complain, like the man in the story did.
Read More prayer, trust
Wow – what is happening in this psalm? Has the psalmist done something so terrible that God is furious? What’s this discipline thing about? Is the Psalmist dying of some illness – or what?
Well, we are not told. What we do read is that the psalmist feels rebuked and disciplined and is crying out for help and for mercy . . . again. But this time there is a cry for healing, for release from pain and sleeplessness.
Read More suffering, prayer, healing
Skeletons left in our closets will ultimately haunt us. Our good deeds and benevolence will not erase the giants of our unfinished messes.
Twenty years after deceiving his father Isaac, Jacob was about to come face to face with his brother Esau from whom he had robbed the family blessing.
Read More prayer, fear, consequences, guiltPsalm 43 opens with a desperate cry. “Vindicate me, O God and plead my cause” (v1, NIV). While it is not clear who wrote this psalm or what the exact troubling situation was, the message is clear.
Something has gone terribly wrong. An injustice has been done
Read More prayer, disappointment, God’s presenceThe ancient Israelites were storytellers. They were given a God-directive to keep their history alive by sharing their stories. “These are things we learned from our ancestors and we will tell them to the next generation.”
Read More pain, prayer, faithfulnessDo you have days when you would just love to let loose with a rant? Yell randomly about stuff that you don’t think anybody but you cares about? I do.
Most of the time I do it inside my head. Sometimes it’s the way that I pray.
Read More prayer, inner turmoil