Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do wicked people seem to thrive? These are just two of the hard questions people ask when they are hurting. It often seems that faithful servants of God are hurting while wicked people of the world are enjoying all the pleasures of sin. This has been a question for hundreds of years. Consider that even the psalmist in Psalm 94:3 asked, “Lord, how long will the wicked, How long will the wicked triumph?” As I was recently reading 2 Peter it struck me anew that while our human perspective frames these situations this way, nothing that happens surprises God and He is fully aware of who deserves…

I am writing this shortly after the death of President George H. W. Bush. As one might expect, people whose names are easily recognizable are remembering him. World leaders, family members, people who worked for him in his various roles in government, people from the various news media, and others are sharing their memories of a man who one prominent news reporter regarded, until Mr. Bush’s death, as (in his words) “the greatest living American.” I am, in no way, a prominent person. As far as I know, the closest I ever got to president Bush was a few feet away from a television screen – and there was no telling where he…

Everybody comes to resolution time on January 1, and according to polls recently taken, the same basic resolutions remain the most popular: exercise, eat better, lose weight, quit smoking, get a new job, be happier – et cetera. I guess this goes to show that we struggle in certain areas on a regular basis. But I came across a passage in the Old Testament that I believe can supply an alternative to the typical resolutions we all make. In Leviticus 25 you can read about the “Sabbath year” and the year of Jubilee. The Sabbath year was the 7th year in which the Israelites were to allow the field to…

I’m sentimental and nostalgic by nature. I think about the meaning of life on a regular basis and I tend to look back on everything I have experienced up to this point almost daily. Life is an incredible gift from God and we need to keep that fact at the forefront of our minds. But I suppose that a greater portion of the world’s people come to the end of the year and they celebrate Christmas and New Year’s and quickly just go on to the next thing. After all, this is what we have been programmed to do in this fever-pitched, fast-paced 21st-century world. But I want you to…