The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter is not mentioned in the Bible. We have to speculate about what the Disciples and the world were doing between the day of judgments and punishments, and the day of wonder and power. We might be shocked at how similar our current situation is.
Continue reading “Locked Inside between Good Friday and Easter”
I still haven’t figured why, but “The Walking Dead” is one of the most popular shows on television. Even Christians get a rush from a program filled with diseased, hungry, undead zombies and the fight to stay alive in a world filled with them.
No, I’m not a fan, and I’m not living in fear or anticipation of a coming zombie apocalypse (though I do believe something terrible will come one day). The pictures and commercials I see are enough to know that as a person already susceptible to images, I don’t need those ones stuck in my head.
Recently, though, I thought of those rotting undead as the perfect example of a gruesome sight. Maybe you heard something over the recent Easter season, or from some preacher over the years. It makes me think of what God might see when He loks upon us in our sin.
This weekend we celebrate Palm Sunday, a remembrance of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. It was the first day of a significant week in human history. But the people didn’t know it was the week Jesus would die. For them, it was a time of celebration.
When Jesus rode a donkey into the city, people were excited, joyful, and basically threw a city-wide party. All of the commotion even got the attention of the city’s big wigs. No one, other than Jesus, was looking to the cross and tomb. They were ready for a new reality, a new King and Kingdom.
The gospels tell us about the crowd who lined the streets, the branches and cloaks thrown on the ground, and the shouts of “Hosanna” and praises. Despite all the events of the end of the week, the people gladly welcomed Jesus. I wonder if He would be so gladly welcomed into our cities.
Continue reading “5 Ways to Encourage Our World to Want Jesus Again”
My wife and I recently watched The Martian again. Having read the book after seeing it last, I wanted to see what was missing, and fill her in on some of those gaps. It’s an incredible tale of survival, hope, and the decision to continue. (If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, be warned there is a degree of language in both.)
At one point, Astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is on a long journey to another landing site on the planet. Along the way, he describes how he is the first to do so many things on Mars. He even states, “I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet.”
Considering all that just one planet can contain, and having in mind the unfathomable number of stars and planets floating around out there, my wife made an interesting comment. “It makes you wonder why God made so much.”
When I went to our prayer meeting at church Sunday night, I hadn’t yet taken the time to think about what she said. But as I was walking and praying, I found an answer. God created all of that we see around us and dream about in the great, wide universe. But why?
The Bible is the single most important book every written. It describes how God created a universe to be the home for a people He made and gave life to, so He could forever live in relationship with them.
I could rattle off a bunch of statistics of how the Bible was written, has survived centuries, and its spread through languages, people groups, and nations. But many books have traversed the world with their stories and messages.
I’m not here to convince you of the uniqueness of the Bible. I’m not writing to convince you of its place in the world or the truth of its message. Chances are high that if you’ve read this far, you already own a Bible and believe at least some of what it says.
The Bible is more than a story. Its message is beyond “inspirational”. But when we open the Bible to read “a good book” or even to feel better about ourselves or life because we read a few lines or pages, we end up putting it down in disappointment.
It’s a popular tag line this time of year, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” It falls in line with another I see on billboards around the city I live in, “Keep Christ in Christmas.” These are some of the ways we try to remind the world about Jesus at the time when so many other messages distract them from the message of Jesus’ coming.
Unfortunately, it comes across as a bunch of hokey semantics and religious nuttiness. And I don’t if you’ve heard, but a lot of people are allergic to nuts.
According to Google, a cliche is “a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.” Do you think these apply?
After all, even Christians get tired of hearing these things. But it also betrays how little we understand about the coming of God’s Son. Jesus is not the reason for the season. We are.
Continue reading “Do you know the REAL reason for the season?”
Chris MacKinnon 