For a person who had been ill for thirty-eight years, the question: Do you want to be well, seems an odd, if not cruel question. Nevertheless, it is the same question that is repeatedly addressed to us, not necessarily because we are physically ill, but because of our spiritually-sick state. This repeated question is necessary […]

As we know, it is a great deal easier to speak of virtue and spiritual ideals than to actually practice or achieve them. However, it signals a still greater rupture between ideals and practice when even talk of such ideals ceases. For, speaking of virtue and holiness—even though we may not live this out—suggests some […]

Although the prophet Micah appeals to the Lord for a return to an earlier period of Israel’s history as in the days when you came from the land of Egypt, this desire is obviously something symbolic and is not a desire to literally return to some earlier period in Israel’s history of a period of […]

Sin’s destructive power to divide, isolate, and alienate us from God, from ourselves, and from one another is vividly illustrated in the rich man who suffers in the flames of the netherworld—utterly alone, with not even a demon to torment him. Strikingly, he does not ask to be freed from the flames or to be […]