Posts with the category “watching-and-waiting”

A foreman walks up to Carl Fredricksen's house, surrounded by construction equipment and developers who want him gone, and asks plainly: when are you going to give this place up? Carl does not flinch. He says: "When I'm dead." The audience laughs. Then they cry. Because every one of us has something we are holding onto with everything we have. Something the world keeps pressuring us to release. But here is what Peter told people who had already lost most of what they had built: you have an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Reserved in heaven. Beyond the reach of any bulldozer. The question is not whether you will hold on. The question is what you are holding. Read the full post.  Read More

In the movie The Intern, a 70-year-old man who had done everything the world told him to do — retire, travel, take up golf — was miserable. So he applied for an internship, walked in with a briefcase and a pocket square, and said: "Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. Well, I still have music in me." That line did not belong in a movie. It belonged in a sermon. Because Psalm 92 says the righteous will still yield fruit in old age. Full of sap. Very green. And God has never once called anyone to retire. Read the full post.  Read More

Every graduation season somebody reads the Dr. Seuss book. The one with the winding road. And the words land the way they always do: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Beautiful. True. And not enough. Because Jesus did not say follow your dreams. He said follow Me. And the generation standing in cap and gown right now is about to discover that the direction they choose matters more than any commencement speech told them. Read the full post.  Read More

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore. The chair that was always his, always hers. The empty place that represents a meal that is not finished yet. Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it. Because on the night before He was crucified, Jesus did not just start a memorial. He made a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. Read the full post.  Read More

There is a moment in every swimming lesson that nobody talks about honestly. The moment the instructor says let go of the wall. Everything in that child says no. The wall is solid. The water is unpredictable. Baptism is that moment. And it is one of the most prophetically loaded things a believer can do in a world that is desperately afraid of what comes next. Because when you went under that water, you were not just getting wet. You were practicing dying. And when you came back up, you were declaring something that death itself cannot argue with. Read the full post.  Read More

Long before Revelation, the Hebrew prophets were already using the image of a woman in labor to describe the deepest kind of hope. Not the easy kind. The kind that costs something. Mary stepped into that tradition when she said yes to God before she could see how the story would unfold. No plan. No approval from her community. Just a word from God and the decision of what to do with it. She said yes. She stayed through the cross. She was in the upper room when the Spirit fell. That is what your mother has been doing for you. This one is for her. Read the full post.  Read More

I live with five women. My wife and four daughters. And the word in our house lately is delulu. Short for delusional. It means you are holding onto something the rest of the room has already decided is not going to happen. Here is what I did not expect. The longer I sat with that word, the more I realized it is exactly what the world says about the Church. About every believer who still genuinely expects Jesus to come back. Peter warned us this was coming. Mockers would say: where is the promise? Nothing ever changes. Everything just keeps going the way it always has. But the people calling us delulu forgot about the empty tomb. And that changes everything. Read the full post.  Read More

The prophet Ezekiel saw a river flowing out from the Temple in Jerusalem. A trickle at first. Then ankle deep. Then deep enough to swim in. And everywhere it went, things came back to life. Even the Dead Sea turned fresh. Jesus stood at the Temple during the water ceremony and said: that river is Me. And everyone who believes in Me becomes part of it. The question is not whether resurrection power lives inside you. If you belong to Jesus, it does. The question is whether it is moving. Because the river was never designed to stay at the source. Read the full post.  Read More