The irony is, the one to whom God first tried to give the Immanuel gift didn’t want it! It was a gift meant for Ahaz, the king of Judah -- albeit a craven and corrupt king -- but God sent him the prophet Isaiah at a time when this king happened to be worried. Ahaz had...

Most of you know that in the great movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s Uncle Billy, his erratic, absent-minded, often tipsy assistant, misplaces $8,000 in the lap of their family nemesis, Henry Potter, as cruel, mean, avaricious and hard-hearted a villain as...

On an ordinary night, amidst an ordinary empire-wide tax census ordered by Caesar Augustus, outside of an insignificant Palestinian hamlet, ordinary young men tending sheep were startled by a heavenly messenger announcing to them that the long-anticipated Messiah had...

Years ago, cruising the periodicals list of the Davidson College library I ran across something called the Illustrated London News. The emphasis of this particular issue was a retrospective on the D-Day invasion, and one particular article caught my eye, a column on...

To begin forming a theology of home, one must begin by acknowledging a biological fact, that human beings share a kinship with much of the natural order when it comes to creating a functional home. A home must enjoy genuine stability for a creature to function within...

I had arisen early so I could take a run. My eye happened to fall upon one of my children’s library books – The Jesse Owens Story. Reflexively, I picked it up and read it quickly, then took off on my run, thinking temporarily about the great track star Jesse Owens....

In Matthew’s account of Easter morning, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went after dawn to see Jesus’ sepulchre. In Mark’s account of Easter, Mary Magdalene, “Mary the mother of Joses” and Salome bought spices with which to annoint the body. In Luke’s account of...

The doctrine of the priesthood of the believer lay like a seed growing secretly in the garden of God’s Holy Word. On this Reformation Sunday we acknowledge that it took a genius – disguised as a priest -- to recognize that God intended all believers to be priests....

“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” We recognize these words as the enduring message of a great man. What generally escapes our notice is that these are also words from one who probed his own psyche...

If you walked in the gymnasium at St. John’s Baptist Church in Charlotte, you would discover a large extension ladder with a huge crow’s nest atop it. You would also notice that it is chained to the wall. That chain is there because of my children. About twenty-five...