Our Lighted Path

This post is a boiler plate for a longer article, later on. I want to look at how some early Bible translators devoted heartfelt days, some working deep in the night, to give God's word to people in their native tongues — be their language French, German, English, or so on. Writing in the Night Early translations of the Bible were done by men of deep devotion. They burned midnight oil, or they rose very early, under apparent lead of the Holy Spirit. Some of the texts they translated were first written by the Apostle Paul, who, hundreds of years earlier, also had worked day and night (1 Thessalonians 2:9). It's true that Paul wrote about night as in natural nighttime; but he also wrote about night as in spiritual darkness. When he said that, as Christians, we don't sleep in night, he didn't mean we don't get a good night's rest. He meant that we keep aware of what's going on in this world, that we keep vigilant in prayer, that we avoid doing evil, t...

There is a way of understanding that's worse than atheism. It's called the occult. And it hates everything the love of Jesus is, and wants to make that love over in its own image (Matthew 24:15). It wants even the Sabbath, which is Sunday for many people, to be sick, vile, filthy, beastly. On some Sabbaths, it wakes up thinking of everything except the love of Jesus. It wakes up thinking things like How can I make this person's living a waste? How can I rearrange this face? How can I batter down and rape? How can I make everything about this soul seem untrue and unsaved? How can I turn all things of faith in this life, even the blood of Christ, into a horror and an undertaking in uncleanness? How can I demonstrate that not even the vilest of filth stops the most evil of assailants? How can I make this life like the hell in my heart? Jesus, deliver us from evil.

When our nation's founding fathers gave us our Declaration of Independence, they weren't disavowing all ties to England, you all! England, today, remains foundational to working together as a whole church. Kind of like Paul said: The hand can't say I have no need of the foot. So, we would do well to remember England as like our sister, or mother, or aunt, or grandmom. Amen?

It's a comfort to think my dad wasn't altogether clueless about Heaven. He tried to teach us, at grace over meals, "Blessed are the pure in heart." And it never would have occurred to me to ask him a question like, "Daddy, are we going to Heaven," like in a cute advertisement by a Christian group. My dad was clueless about working works by faith. He wasn't altogether faithful in the work that he wanted to do. But he did know a thing or two about faith. And he said we're each accountable to God. We each give an account to Heaven. Our personal decisions in life are between each person and Heaven. That's true. So, when we say "liberty and justice for all" in our nation, it would be good if we could each agree that justice, in Jesus, isn't about retribution or vengeance. What's just, in Heaven, is being right with Heaven. So the saints rejoice over each one who repents. Each of us getting right with Heaven is called Chri...

Life in Christ isn't found in empty spaces. Life in our Savior is found through "hearing" His word and having faith about His word. It's the faith we bring to an empty space that blesses the Holy Spirit to rejoice there. And it's the faith that we bring to a space that dedicates it to Heaven for as long as we are there. a church in Tombstone, Arizona Maybe the history of faith in a place sometimes makes the place more ready, in our hearts, for faith to return there. And maybe that's a little like the human soul. Just think how even souls broken by dementia can sometimes commune with life again through the memory of a shared and sacred song. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," Jesus says in Matthew 22:37, reminding us of the need to be soulful, whole, and faithful: in prayer, in heart, in soul, in our places of meeting, in those places of communion we each have in the Holy S...