You arrive early at the restaurant and order an iced tea while waiting for a friend whose advice you desperately need. One refill comes, then another, until the condensation has left the table damp and the agreed time is long past. An hour and a half later, you leave more dejected than when you arrived. Psalm 13 asks the same question that fills that silence: How long, O Lord?
A folding map only works if you already know where you are. Enough wrong turns, and you217;re stuck staring at it with no idea how to find yourself—let alone get back on course. Psalm 89 asks what God217;s promises do for those of us who aren217;t the Hannahs and Davids, who look at the map and go the wrong way.
We may think it217;d be nice if there were a device where we could make people tell the truth. But, what about ourselves? We take credit that belongs to someone else, withhold truth when it could help, or pass along a claim we have not checked. How out of control are our own words everyday?
We’re always drawn to the new and the shiny. In Genesis 3, the serpent made the one tree God forbade look irresistable. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything we shouldn’t do just clearly didn’t look right?
When you217;re in a wilderness season—the kind that doesn217;t feel like a season at all—the doubt that creeps in isn217;t usually about theology; it217;s simpler and sharper than that: Is God really with me? That217;s precisely the question hanging over Exodus 3, where God meets Moses in the wilderness and answers it not with reassurance alone, but with His name.
We217;ve all found ways to look faithful without being faithful—the outward gesture that signals piety while the heart is somewhere else entirely. That217;s exactly the trap Isaiah 7 sets in plain sight: a king who quotes the law of God to refuse the sign God himself is offering, and whose very piety is the problem.
You can confess Jesus as Lord, cast out demons, do mighty works—and still hear him say, 220;I never knew you.221; Matthew 7:21–23 cuts past everything we think proves we217;re his followers, asking instead the question that actually matters: Does he know you?
Bold faith can feel clearest in a crisis; the harder question is how to live when the rush is over and ordinary life must begin again. Matthew 2:19–23 meets Joseph at precisely that point: Herod is dead, God calls his family home from Egypt, and the road ahead still demands careful listening. What does faithfulness look like when obedience is clear, but the next step is not?
How do we come before God when our prayers so easily become empty phrases, desperate demands, or distant formalities? In Matthew 6, Jesus says our Father knows what we need before we ask, then gives His disciples words for approaching Him: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Christmas can arrive wrapped in lights and joy while grief, loss, and the sense that this world is deeply broken remain close at hand. The Gospel of Mark opens with “the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ,” echoing creation itself and pressing an Advent question beneath all the decorations: What kind of beginning can Jesus bring to lives that do not feel whole?