Do we feel like aliens and exiles, with our citizenship elsewhere?

“My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king…”

“We are all brothers!” has been a frequent cry of both Russians and Ukrainians. History, ethnicity, culture, and language proves this to be true.

“O YHWH, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”  Thus begins, and ends, Psalm 8—one of the loveliest passages in scripture. 

It’s all very well loving those we get along with – our friends, family, people who are on our social level. That’s easy. But loving the unlovely – that’s what God is looking for, because that’s God’s love toward us.

In the midst of the Law, here is this picture of the shining, smiling face of God.  Smiling toward His people. 

When Peter talks about the signs of Christ’s coming, he says we should be “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:12). What does it mean for us to be “hastening” for the coming day?

God justifies people.  This is amazing, and is arguably the most powerful expression of His might.  But what do we make of it when we encounter people justifying God?

If we’re facing pressures, we are in the company of the finest women and men of faith ever.  And in the company of all humanity.

There is power around us, a windy day reminds us.

I can remember every word he spoke; I hear them when I wake up, and before I go to sleep again. Each day, he talks to me, and each day I listen—even now that I am an old man.

Much evil has been committed in the name of religion when people are obsessed with spiritual purity and set up an authoritarian system to prevent spiritual contamination.