For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. ⁵ Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. (Romans 13.3-5)

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6.8)

Who here already misses the barrage of political smear ads we’ve endured for these last election-season months? Seeing no hands raised, I’m guessing you all feel like I do about these personal attacks on the candidates, trashing of their record. Sometimes, with a deep fake assist from AI, they even invent things their opponent has never said or done. On the day after the election, none of us will miss these!

I did notice a pattern in these ads: a lot of them have swirled around the issue of justice — whether law-abiding and criminal justice (which shows up in Romans 13 above) or social and economic justice which finds a home in Micah 6.

So what is justice? Here’s where the American church gets stymied by our tribal rivalry, because the word justice summons very different pictures from the right and left.

• On the right we tend to favor criminal justice -- a proper enforcement of community-defined codes of behavior.

• The left emphasizes social justice -- a reforming of community structures that gives everyone equal access to thriving.

The term “social justice” is derided in some parts of the right, as Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs have been cut or even outlawed; and “criminal justice” is utterly discredited among some on the left who have, at times, hoped to defund the police. So each tribe chooses one kind or the other.

Here’s news: scripture embraces both sorts.

Our passage from Romans 13 is at home in the first five books of the Bible, which feature a major helping of what we call criminal justice. It is not yet equally enforced in the U.S. -- the racial imbalance in prosecutions and incarcerations is shameful -- but the aspiration to enforce law justly aligns with a biblical sense that ordered community requires covenanted accountability to codes of behavior. Accountability for acts that damage the community is a deep value there.

The prophets speak forth the second kind of justice. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah and the rest chastise their people for their inattention to the poor of the land and for the unjust structures that impede thriving for some. They decry the thumb on the scale that favors the wealthy and disadvantages the poor. Any Christian who scorns social justice needs to spend some time with the prophets. They embody God’s insistence on clearing the path to flourish for all Israel.

Jesus embrace both values: He affirms the lasting authority of Moses’s law, which holds the community accountable to law observance in their treatment of one another (criminal justice - Matthew 5). And he also advocates for the “least of these”, all the way to making their value equal to his own. (Matthew 25)

The Bible likes both sorts of justice, so why does each American tribe choose one? Our tribalism has us shouting a defiant NO! to the comprehensive, generative kind of justice “the Lord requires of us”. That’s an awfully big price to pay to feel superior, don’t you think?

Friends, as we walk this day after voting, let’s drop the tribe-think and do justice, Moses and Micah style — which means Jesus style.

Prayer -- God who moved Micah, open our hearts and our hands and our feet to your call. Give us the humility to lay down our posturing and live into the beloved community you intend to build among us, in Jesus. Amen.

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was one of our number and shared in our ministry…

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. (Acts 1.15-17, 21-26)

“Give us the ballot and we shall no longer have to worry the Federal government
about our basic rights.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lincoln Memorial, 1957)

Good morning, friends, and a happy election day to you all! I don’t know how it looks in your state. There are different levels of urgency depending on whether there’s a heated senate race (Kansas, Michigan, Texas, South Carolina…) or another hot item on the ballot. In Texas, stats indicate that we’ll outvote the turnout for the 2024 presidential year, which is crazy. I actually love to wait in long lines at polls — I’m weird that way — like the ones I faced when I voted on Friday in Austin.

It tells me we’re all in this together. Whether you voted early or are hopping out there on the Big Day itself, God bless your discernment and your vote. If you are eligible and haven’t yet filled out the sheet, I hope you’ll hop out there and get after it before polls close

You may be murmuring, “Very enthusiastic, Allen; but why does this secular democratic act of exercising the franchise show up in a ONE Church devo? Here’s my thought: followers of Jesus ask often why we do the things we do, and how these choices fit into our relationship with God. On this election day, let’s take a moment to ask what our right to vote and the exercise of that right have to do with our faith and theology.

In election years many churches launch initiatives to get their faithful folk to the voting booth. The Moral Majority movement of the 1970s-90s made very public appeals for conservative Christians to use their vote to promote Christian values in this nation; and since well before that, many black churches across the land have had “Souls to the Polls” programs to help their members cast votes, even amid resistance to their doing it. Mainline progressive Christian churches often launch similar programs for their members, and church pastors and lay leaders from various traditions customarily encourage their members and often go beyond this to “get out the vote”.

So what has our faith to do with our franchise?

Let’s start by realizing together that for the church’s first sixteen centuries (and for ancient Israel’s many centuries before that, faith and franchise was not an issue. We sometimes forget that the revolutionary movement hatched in the pubs of colonial America introduced the right to vote into human history, unseen since before Christ’s birth. (The ancient Greeks for 200 years and Romans for 400 years exercised a form of representative democracy in the centuries before that first Christmas. One ended when an outside power seized control, the other, when a dictator rose up and seized power from within.)

This American contribution of the right to vote was revolutionary and formidable. It is absolutely true that it took considerable time for the nation to extend the right to black men (Fifteenth Amendment, 1870) and later all women (19th Amendment, 1920). And it has taken even longer to secure those rights over against voter suppression measures like poll taxes, literacy tests (until the Voting Rights Act in 1965), and a recent handful of other impediments. But even the notion that government could be of, by, and for the people — a plan that requires participation — was a new arrival on planet earth.

To get at the relationship between faith and franchise, we could talk about the moral and spiritual issues intertwined in every election, or the general role of Christianity in a democratic society, or even the question whether there is any advantage to democracy in a Christian value set. But to address all of these would require many more words than a devotional should ever hold.

For now, I’ll limit my focus to a single aspect in faith’s connection to franchise: the dignity of all humans. As the U.S. has expanded the right to vote to people of color and then to women, and as it has addressed additional impediments to the exercise of that right through the Voting Rights Act, it has not just changed a technical aspect of this democracy. Rather, in each case the elected officials who enacted these changes were making a profound statement about the value of each population they newly included.

Let me explain. Rev. Dr. David Anderson Hooker is my friend and colleague in work we do helping Christian denominations work out what it means to thrive in diverse communities of faith. As we do this work, we highlight four elements that Dr. Hooker has identified as indicators of any group’s culture and value system:

1. The nature of relationships between the members;

2. The allocation of resources within the churches;

3. The structure of the organizations; and,

4. Who has testimonial authority (i.e., whose voice will be listened to) in the community.

It’s this last one -- testimonial authority -- that the history of American democracy highlights. When a church formally or informally determines to whom they will listen or when a nation decides whose votes will be counted, each is making a statement about which lives have value.

Example: in the middle of the first century, the apostle Paul introduced the good news of Jesus to the Greek city of Corinth. The people who embraced his message then began worship together and support each other’s faith in other ways. One development in the Corinthian church’s culture that has been under-appreciated through the Christian centuries was the rise of women to positions of leadership in the congregation -- even to Paul’s favorite function of prophets. (1 Corinthians 11). In this setting, Paul planted a practice that established a group norm: “the voices of women will be important among us”. Paul’s value statement to the Corinthian Christians ran against the grain of dominant elements of the Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures that surrounded them.

For Christians, testimonial authority matters for the dignity of every human. When Genesis 1.27 says that all humans are created in the image of God, we listen. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.14 that “Christ died for all people,” we listen. And when we hear that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female,” (Galatians 3.28) we listen. When the Book of Acts (chapter 2) and the Book of Revelation (chapters 4 and 7) picture people from all tribes and nations worshipping together, we listen. And when Jesus dignifies women (John 4 and Matthew 5) and Samaritans (Luke 10) and a range of other marginal groups, we listen.

Politicians and pundits and friends and families debate the question of who will have the testimonial authority of a vote among us. And the conversations will get increasingly louder even after the polls close tonight. Whose voice will be counted? Dr. King undoubtedly knew that rights given could be later rescinded, but he pushes the value question in his impassioned plea of 1957: “Give us the ballot and we shall no longer have to worry the Federal government about our basic rights.”

As this debate rages on, how should the wildly-inclusive biblical value statements above matter in the way Christians participate in our local, state, and national governments? That’s our ONE Church question for this day. How shall Jesus followers around our nation and throughout all nations express the infinite value God places on all peoples as we navigate the way we allot and protect the right to vote?

This is something to ponder on this election day...and beyond! As you do so, have a terrific Tuesday.

Prayer -- God, guide us on this journey into our world through our faith. Help us to reflect the value you place on every person in the way we live, work, play, and vote, in Jesus. Amen.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude
that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people
and language, standing before the throne and
before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes
and were holding palm branches in their hands.
And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits
on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
Revelation 7.9-10

Yesterday, on the first day of November, two days short of a national election day in the U.S., as candidates hammered away at one another with attack ads transmitted through every medium, we Christians could easily lose perspective and presume that this election is the most important thing in the history of the world. Headlines scream it, after all, and the sheer dollar count all those campaigners are spending to persuade us would suggest it.

But if Revelation 7 is to be believed, our preparation for that glory day may even be bigger. This is not to say the issues of this election don’t matter. They do matter a great deal, and faithful people ought take them seriously. Yesterday, on All Saints Sunday, churches around the nation and the world had our annual Revelation 7 rehearsal. If we let it be interrupted by a runaway American tribalism, we won’t be preparing at all well for the day when saints from “every tribe” will sing praise to God together.

Here’s today’s spiritual mind-bender: imagine yourself singing your praise right next to someone from that other tribe – a Red, if you’re a Blue, a Blue if you’re a Red. Make it someone you know -- maybe someone you avoid. Picture that future choir mate and ask yourself a simple question: won’t it be quite a lot harder to sing harmoniously there, if we’ve hated one another here?

We worship and study Bible and pray and sing together. We sing wholeheartedly together with “all the saints who from their labors rest”. We sing wholeheartedly and don’t fret about missing a note. But we also sing knowing that the political opposites we despise now may someday share sheet music with us on heavenly risers.

With that in mind, we really and truly rehearse. In fact, try this: next time you’re in worship sing your praise as if you’re standing next to them; because in the eyes of God you are.

Happy All Saints Monday!

Prayer – Our God, we thank you for this strange collection of saints who are our brothers and sisters, past and present. We most certainly “want to be in that number” and march that glory march. Today of all days, though, as we approach election day, keep preparing us for our place in your all-tribes-and-nations choir, in Jesus. Amen.

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (1 John 4.4)

I first encountered Christians who ranted against Halloween when my undergraduate college hosted a scary speaker called Bob Larson for an Oct 30 chapel session during my sophomore year. The visitor had spent fifteen minutes denouncing the evils of the holiday when, suddenly, the electricity -- and therefore his microphone -- went out (pre-arranged). Mr. Larson assured his audience that demons had sucked the power out of the room precisely to keep him from warning us about them.

He was not convincing.

This Halloween, I ran into it again. A couple years ago a colleague mentioned that Christian friends of hers are troubled about the holiday gaining increasing prominence in our culture -- even that it threatens to eclipse Christmas. So I did a little online look-around and found some serious hot takes. Here’s one from a publication called “Wall Street International” that apparently tries to pick up clickers who intend “WSJ” but mistakenly enter “WSI”. This is a quote from Nila Eslit’s article, “Why Christians should not celebrate Halloween.”

“Anton LaVey, the founder of the church of Satan, himself declared that by dressing up, either by wearing a costume or by coloring oneself in celebration of Halloween, signifies that you allow Satan to own you...LaVey’s statement is corroborated by a former Satanist, John Ramirez, who said that when you dress up even as an angel or a mermaid for Halloween, ‘you give the devil the legal rights to change your identity.’”

Here’s my problem with Ms. Eslit’s logic:

Evidence. Two major satanists say that kids dressing up on Halloween are worshipping satan.

Conclusion. Therefore, kids dressing up on Halloween are worshipping satan.

I’ve got to wonder on how many other topics our Christian author consults satanists to get wise counsel on significant issues. Satanists make up a tiny, tiny portion of the U.S. population, but they’d like to expand their market. On the few occasions that they can get press, they will use it. So I have to wonder about a Christian writer who defers to their judgment in making an assessment of what is going on in children’s (and adults’) souls.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe there is a spiritual battle afoot in our universe. I believe that unseen forces matter in our lives and our world. Christians vary on how we picture those forces. I’ve hosted congregations in Courageous Conversations on the topic: “Is there a powerful spiritual force called the devil?” and there is faithful disagreement. Some devout Christians believe in a devil who masterminds evil strategies to thwart God’s will, then tempts people to help him. Other faithful and devout Christians interpret this evil attempt to thwart human thriving as a product of psychological or sociological dysfunction. And there are a lot of different landing spots between the two. This same variety undoubtedly pertains among the wide range of devout Christian readers of this devotional.

C.S. Lewis famously chose a mediating position:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” (Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters . HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)

This morning’s scripture passage helps me here. In 1 John 4, our author proclaims that this battle between good and evil, however we picture it, is not an equal match. To a Christian group who wondered if the powers that thwart might ultimately win the war, John answers that “the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

We will host variously-clad trick or treaters on Saturday evening — with one eye on the door and the other on a screen casting the Texas Longhorns’ game with Mississippi State. The kids will be cute and funny and “scary” and hungry, like past versions. Most will be young, but a few high schoolers will want in on the sweets. I can pretty much guarantee that not one will be “giving the devil the legal right to change their identity.” They’ll be a Taylor Swift or a Captain America, a Ted Lasso or a puppy. I’ve seen a lot of “Thing One” and “Thing Two” pairings lately as well. Our son Sam once went as a box of movie popcorn, and two of my grown-up friends will jointly dress as a bag salad. They’ll mostly do nothing more menacing than walk the neighborhood on a beautiful October night in Austin, eating more sugar than is good for them.

Friends, I’m all for fighting the real spiritual battles we face in these fraught times. But my very unscientific but not insignificant sample — decades of October 31s -0 tells me that Halloween costuming and candy is probably not where we ought to spend our armed Christian vigilance. There are plenty of real challenges to face. I’d rather not waste my time and energy and fear on the “trick or treat” crowd.

On this Halloween, friends, may God bless you with a confidence that “the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

Prayer -- God, we worship and praise you. We thank you for occasions of joy and levity amid our difficult days. Give us discerning hearts to know what real battles look like, in Jesus. Amen.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. (Romans 15.5-6)

Read more

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. (1 Thessalonians 2.8)

“One for you and one for me. Sharing is God’s way, you see!
And if we all have all will need, God will be so happy!”
Brian Sirchio, “Sharing is Caring”

The “One for you and one for me...” song lyrics I give you above quickly became one of those beautiful ear worms in my life. Fifteen years ago, my boys came home from Vacation Bible School sessions singing it over and over at the top of their lungs, so there was no way for me not to memorize it. Their song pictures everyone everywhere having enough food and clothing and shelter and all the other basic human needs. I remember my boys wondering out loud, “What would be so hard about that, Daddy?” The song stuck with me, and here I am a decade later giving it to you. It’s nice to share.

The apostle Paul walked into the large city of Thessaloniki right after being jailed and roughed up in Philippi, a couple days’ journey to the east. To help us understand what he might have felt, go to the last time you felt wrung out and rejected, wondered about your safety, or had any other kind of not-so-secure experience. Paul was resilient, but he was also human. He surely lost sleep over what might be next.

In the midst of these fears or anxieties he brought with him, it must have felt especially satisfying when, with the first few Thessalonians he met, and then a few more after that, “our message of the gospel came to you not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” (1 Thess 1.5) What seller doesn’t like it when people buy? And what person doesn’t like being liked?

Generally, when we’re reading the letters of Paul, it’s tempting to see him as a sort of indestructible Robo-Apostle. The catalog of his imprisonments and harsh treatment would fill pages all by itself, and he always seems to respond with “the joy of the Lord.” But surely this fond connection with the Thessalonians and the relief it was to Paul must lie behind his remarkable language in today’s passage. “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

This verse stops me in my tracks. In the words of one of my students in a 1 Thessalonians class I taught last year, “This is a church I want to be a part of!” As contemporary culture fragments, as suspicion and distrust rise, we’re often tempted to stay at a safe distance, Paul and the Thessalonians break through distance to form a vivid, real friendship lived out in community. They’re so dear to one another that they share their very lives.

I’m certain Paul would love the catchy VBS song that became an ear worm to me. But the apostle has a different, more comprehensive kind of sharing in mind in this morning’s passage. He believes in sharing stuff, but his sort of sharing also goes beyond material goods to all of life. This is about a fondness and connection so strong that it compels us to share all we are with one another. How ‘bout you? Isn’t the sharing Thessalonian church a church you’d want to be a part of? Here’s the good news: we can be that church! And “God would be so happy”!

Have a wonder-filled Wednesday!

Prayer -- God of love, we crave the closeness you create, in Jesus. Amen.

“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you; but do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach, and everything they do is done for people to see. (Matthew 23.1-5)

Read more

Jesus said, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them...So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.” (Matthew 6.1-2)

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” (Matthew 23..27-28)

Good morning, friends. Here’s challenge for you as you begin your week: spend a minute or two trying to concoct a sentence that uses the word “hypocrite” positively. Here are a couple quick stabs at it.

• That old Larry has his flaws, as you know, but at least he’s a hypocrite.

• I’m tired of your constant badgering! Could you show me a little hypocrisy, please?!

• A lot of people are just plain boring. What you see is what you get. But with me you get two different faces for the price of one: a public face, and a private face. You can count on me to be a hypocrite.

There may be someone out there who can give this word a positive spin, but I’ve not yet run into one. Dante’s “Inferno” epitomizes the case: Hypocrites are banished to the second-lowest circle of Hell, together with “everything that fits / The definition of sheer filth.” So we can love hypocrites -- in fact, we should! -- but we’d have to love them despite, rather than because of, their hypocrisy.

So what is hypocrisy? In his Jesus describes two ways to incur the ignominy of the word.

1. Do Good Deeds for Show. For this sort of hypocrite, no good deed goes unpublished, because the motive is to curry human admiration. As Jesus has it in Matthew 6, they do their good deeds “to be seen by people.”

2. Say One Thing, Do Another. Hypocrites of this kind care about what people think, but they can’t be bothered actually to do the good deed that draws admiration, so they talk a good game and hope no one will notice the discrepancy.

For both varieties of hypocrisy, seeming is more important than being. You’ve heard Bishop Berkeley’s famous question: “If a tree falls in the forest with no one to witness it, does it make a sound?” For these folks, if there are no witnesses, there’s no reason to do good things.

We usually pronounce the word “hypocrite” with tones of disdain or even contempt. It is obviously not a word we want etched on our tombstone. And that’s what makes it hard for us to admit that we’re occasionally tempted to be hypocrites ourselves. We long to be esteemed by others, so we make sure there’s an audience for our benefaction or we embellish our record for public consumption.

But...why? What makes us so keen on currying our neighbor’s favor? I believe that the origin of hypocrisy is far upstream from blowing trumpets about our alms or talking more than we walk. I believe the problem is spiritual. We don’t entirely trust that God will love us without condition -- and God sees EVERYTHING -- so we seek our affirmation from human audiences; but then we don’t trust those people to love us just as we are either, so we airbrush and embellish the picture. The headwaters of hypocrisy, the source of the stream, is a basic inability to trust that God loves us unconditionally.

In other words, hypocrisy is part of the human condition, and it’s not at all easy to stop. But a while back, in a meditation about the harm that Christian hypocrisy does to young adults even considering a life with Christ, I actually had the gall to close with these words:

“There’s a solution, friends. To open Generation Z to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to reach people born between 1996 and 2010, all we have to do is live Jesus’ Way...[So] let’s walk the Way on this Tuesday. Our kids’, nieces’ and nephews’, Godkids’, and grandkids’ faith depends on it.”

Cheeky, eh?! “All we have to do to solve the future of Christianity is be as authentic as Jesus was and behave the way he behaved.” That’s a bit of a high bar. But here’s what we’ve learned today: the problem starts well before we lift (or don’t lift) a finger, imitate (or don’t imitate) Christ and the solution is actually pleasant. Today, take a moment to ponder the sheer magnitude of God’s love -- the love that prompted God to create the starfish (Genesis 1) and Secretariat (Job 39), that drove Esau to forgive and embrace his duplicitous brother Jacob (Genesis 33), that gave Ruth the persistence to care for widowed Naomi (The Book of Ruth), that prompted Mary’s “YES!” to her big role in the divine drama (Luke 1), that drew fisherman out of their boats (Mark 1), that healed blind men (Mark 10), that forgave an adulterous woman (John 4), that offered a Last Supper to inconstant disciples (Luke 22), and that endured even death on a Roman cross (Mark 15). Want a remedy for hypocrisy? Ponder that love more often, and see if your need to impress people with a false face subsides just a bit.

My dear brothers and sisters, you and I are playing with house money. We don’t have to wear masks, because God loves our face, blemishes and all. We are known AND we are loved.

Go, then, and live this October Monday in light of God’s magnificent love!

Prayer -- God of love, we thank you for loving us, in Jesus. Amen.

Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. ² And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. ³ And they sang a new song bef…

Read more

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
Psalm 133

Read more

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Read more

He Qi, “The Magi” (www.heqiart.com)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” (Matthew 2.1-2)

Read more

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, b…

Read more

Read more

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5.6-8)

Read more

My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn,
and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
Jeremiah 8.18, 21-22

Read more

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15.4)

Subscribe now

Read more

Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.’”“ (Exodus 5.1)

Subscribe now

Read more

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth…

Read more

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. (Romans 12.14-16)

Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humbl…

Read more