Monthly Archives: September 2011

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death

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No one goes looking for hard times to go through, but no one escapes them, either. David described encountering and overcoming the valley of the shadow of death. What kind of hardship is your valley of the shadow of death? A path in a valley might wind through a dense forest. In David’s time, there might not even have been a real path. It might be impossible to see very far ahead. In this metaphorical valley, when we don’t know quite where we’re going, I can attest from personal experience how easy it is to be afraid. How can we come to David’s boldness in claiming to fear no evil?… Read the rest

On finding contradictions in Scripture, or not

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Some people say that the Bible is full of contradictions. If they’re articulate enough, secular society considers them intellectually superior to people who simply believe the Bible as it is. And they certainly do, whether society does or not. I ought to know. I used to be one of them. Funny thing, though: the more I have studied the Bible, the harder it has become to find the contradictions. As much as I strive to be humble, I can’t help thinking that if everyone else studied the Bible in enough detail to understand what each author wanted to convey and the exact meaning of the words he used, they, too, would find it harder and harder to locate contradictions.… Read the rest

Lamps for our feet: gaining godly wisdom

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Psalm 119:105 reminds us that God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. Let’s not let the familiarity of that verse turn it into a cliché. What is a lamp for? To chase away darkness. Wherever it’s dark, we need a lamp, or maybe more than one, to see well. Perhaps we’re trying to find something, trying to see something, or just trying to avoid obstacles as we move.

No matter how many lamps we have, none will do us any goodin the dark until we turn one of them on. In Bible times, lamps were made of clay to contain oil.… Read the rest

Keep watch, because you do not know . . .

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I got back from the gym one recent morning and found the garage door open. Some dry leaves hung from the bottom of it and must have persuaded the automatic mechanism that it was unsafe to close it. Fortunately, I live in a neighborhood with hardly any burglaries. I have two “watch dogs,” but the biggest weighs 12 pounds. I understand that little yappy dogs more effectively discourage burglars that big ones, but if a thief had come, I would have been totally unprepared.

Some time earlier, I was sitting at my computer and felt a bump. It was as if something very heavy had fallen on the ground nearby, or something heavy had bumped into the house.… Read the rest