The Bittersweetness of Advent & Genesis 3

"Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. The more bitterness we taste in sin, the more sweetness we shall taste in Christ." - Thomas Watson in The Doctrine of Repentance This Advent season our church has been tasting the bitterness of the beginnings of sin in Genesis 3. Why all this focus on the …

The Most Wonderful Time

Don’t you just hate to wait?  If you do, then you’re American through and through.  We Americans seem to have little patience for waiting. Can you remember life without microwave ovens? We have acquired a distaste for delay. Why waste all that time at the video store when you can get your movies “On Demand”? …

Hearing and Believing the Words We Sing

My friend Elizabeth wants us to hear and believe the words we're singing this Christmas: In these next days, many of us will join to sing familiar carols and hymns, such as "Hark the Herald" (for short). Perhaps you, like me and my kids, began to listen to the All-Christmas stations the day after Thanksgiving. …

Jesus Didn’t Come To Admire My Beauty

"She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus." Matthew 1:21 "The first link between my soul and Christ is, not my goodness, but my badness; not my merit, but my misery, not my standing, but my falling; not my riches, but my need. He comes to visit his people, yet not …