Read Reflect Your body is incredibly important to God – he made it, after all; Jesus redeemed it and the Holy Spirit lives within it. Consider the two powerful images presented here, and ask yourself how your treatment and use of your own body might change if the truth of them really got a hold […]

Read Reflect The Greco-Roman world, like ours, was full of sexual adventurism and the confusion and destruction to which it leads. Already within the Corinthian church we’ve seen a kind of triumphant incest, and participation in religious prostitution; no wonder some were wondering if it was better just to do away with sex altogether. But […]

Read Reflect The idea that brackets this passage – that one should remain in the situation or place in life to which God has called him or her – has been used often and shamefully to justify actual slavery in former times, and effective racial, economic or social slavery to this very day. Powerful people […]

Read Reflect As far as I’m aware, there’s no other passage in Scripture that begins with the disclaimer that what follows is only the author’s opinion, and is not a word from the Lord. Paul underscores that by also making it clear that what he has to say is specific to “the present crisis” – […]

Read Reflect Very conservative Christians are notorious for their harsh judgment of those whose spiritual or moral (or, alas, political) convictions differ from their own. Perhaps their only rivals for prideful exclusivity are those very liberal Christians whose tolerance extends to everyone – except those whose convictions are rigorous and clearly defined. Paul points out […]

Read Reflect In case you missed last Sunday, Psalm 10 is the second half of an alphabetic psalm, in which each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It would be a good idea to go back and read Psalm 9 to get the whole picture. I’ll repeat what I said last […]

Read Reflect We sometimes hear the expression, “the eyes are the mirror of the soul,” the soul, as we understand it, being the seat of our emotions and our reflective capability. It goes without saying that it is often our eyes that transmit to others our true feelings and attitudes. Love or scorn, acceptance or rejection, approval […]