I wrote this story about four years ago to tell the children at Bethlehem's Christmas Eve service.

The Poor Man and His Cow
And the Rich Man and His Wall

Based (very loosely) on a story in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King.

Once upon a time there was a very wise old man named Job. In his old age God gave to him a daughter whom he named Jemima, which means little dove. He loved his little girl and she loved her daddy.

One day Job decided to go on journey and asked Jemima if she would like to go along. “Oh, yes,” Jemima said. “I would love to go along.”

But Job said, “It will be a journey that takes us several days. So we will be staying each night wherever people wil…

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Noël and I mark our 39th wedding anniversary today. As you can see from the pictures, some things change. As you can see from the poem, some things don’t.

None But You

For Noël on our 39th Wedding Anniversary

Whose lips have mine with kisses met?
None but yours, no, none but yours.
Whose kisses can I not forget?
None but yours, no, none but yours.

Whose arms have wound me to her soul?
None but yours, no, none but yours.
Whose wings enfold, caress, console?
None but yours, no, none but yours.

Whose hands have touched my aching heart?
None but yours, no, none but yours.
Whose touch is healing, counsel, art?
None but yours, no, none but yours.

Whose feet have found the…

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Today is the 200th anniversary of John Newton’s death.

• John Newton wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace.” (The words, not the music.)
• He counseled William Wilberforce to stay in politics to fight the slave trade.
• He never gave up on the suicidal William Cowper who gave us “There Is A Fountain Filled with Blood” and “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” and “O For a Closer Walk with God.”
• He partnered with Cowper in writing a collection of Olney Hymns for their people. Cowper could not carry it through. Of the 300 hymns we have today 233 are from Newton.
• When Henry Martyn came to him for counsel before entering on his mission to Persia (a…

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Just before the first service at the north campus last Sunday, the little band of praying saints was hard at work fighting for the faith of our people and for the churches of the Twin Cities and for the nations as they prayed. At one point Jim Tomaszewski prayed the words of John 1:14-16:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

It was one of those epiphany moments for me...

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In my final Advent Poem on Nicodemus, I concluded with lines about Christian courage in the face of the Colorado shootings:

So, Bethlehem, with candle three,
Are you afraid? Or are you free?
Do Christian-killers in the news
Make you a slave? Or do you choose
With Christ that they will make you brave?
What do you fear the most? The grave?
Did Jesus die and rise for this?
Or that the certain hope of bliss
Beyond the bullets and the blood
Would bless this planet with a flood
Of fearless sacrifice? What gun
Can cut us off from Jesus? None!
Nor tribulation or distress,
Nor danger, sword, or nakedness.
Though we were killed like…

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The likelihood of dying because you are a Christian is closer than it used to be for Americans. The freedom from such threats has generally existed in this country for a tiny portion of history (about 400 years). We have gotten used to it. It seems like the way things must be. So our first reaction to the threat that things might be otherwise is often anger.

But that anger may be a sign that we have lost our sense of being aliens and exiles (“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles . . .” 1 Peter 2:11). Perhaps we have settled in too much to this world and this country in particular. We don’t feel as homesick for Christ as Paul did:

“But our citizenship is in heaven…

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As long as I am lingering over the value of Jonathan Edwards’ essay on the Divine Decrees, here is one more quote that is worthy of extended biblical reflection. It comes from Section 19.

Objectors may say, God cannot always prevent men’s sins, unless he act contrary to the free nature of the subject, or without destroying men’s liberty. But will they deny, that an omnipotent and infinitely wise God could not possibly invent, and set before men, such strong motives to obedience, and have kept them before them in such a manner, as should have influenced all mankind to continue in their obedience, as the elect angels have done, without destroying their liberty? God will order it so, th

…

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Oshea Davis just published in a self-standing volume (for the first time that I am aware of ) Jonathan Edwards’ Dissertation Concerning the Divine Decrees in General and Election in Particular. I am thankful for this service to the church. This 75 -page essay (in Davis’s work) proved enormously helpful to me along the way in my thinking about God’s sovereignty.

Here is one excerpt from that essay (quoted from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to save me having to type the excerpt from Davis’s book). It will give you a taste for the depth and complexity of Edwards' book, and the seriousness of his effort to tackle the hardest questions.

It is a proper and excellent …

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Everywhere Paul preached some believed and some did not. How are we to understand why some of those who are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5) believed and some did not?

The answer why some did not believe is that they “thrust it aside” (Acts 13:46) because the message of the gospel was “folly to them, and they [were] not able to understand” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The mind of the flesh “is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). Those who hear and reject the gospel “hate the light” and do not come to the light lest their deeds should be exposed (John 3:20). They remain “darkened in their understanding . . . because of the ignora…

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Very, very few Christian writers are being read widely 100 years after their death. J. C. Ryle, the first Bishop of Liverpool, died in 1900. He wrote the foreword to his book, Are You Ready for the End of Time?, in 1867. One of the reasons for his relevance today is that his work is Bible-saturated, careful, clear, and urgent.

Here is one of those paragraphs that rings clear and true like a bell in our time.

I believe that the widespread unbelief, indifference, formalism and wickedness, which are to be seen throughout Christendom, are only what we are taught to expect in God’s Word. Troublous times, departures from the faith, evil men waxing worse and worse, love waxing co…

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