Growing Closer to God in All Seasons of Life

The 23rd Psalm is probably the most often quoted passage in the Bible. Our youth minister Joel and I were reflecting on how to teach teens about spirituality. It occurred to me that spirituality is more than just a series of consecutive mountaintop experiences. David writes about times like that with his shepherd but he [...]

Is God Like the IRS?

Tax time is just around the corner. We have been getting all those forms in the mail and I have just started crunching the numbers (thanks to Turbo Tax!). Turbo Tax certainly makes things a lot easier because I used to do it all by hand. Either way there is this feeling as you decipher [...]

Ugarit and the Old Testament

I have recently finished a book called Ugarit and the Old Testament by Peter Craigie. He tells the story of the discovery and translation of thousands of tablets of a culture contemporary with much of the early Old testament. What is so important about this archaeological discovery? The texts they have unearthed at Ugarit are [...]

How Archaeology Helps Us Understand Scripture

Archaeology plays a major role in how we understand the Bible. It is more than Indiana Jones style trips to far away lands in search of lost treasures or the holy grail. In a practical way, archaeology illuminates scripture as we come to understand the culture and language of the time in more precise ways. [...]

Rediscovering God - Hearing it Again for the First Time

Philip Yancey wrote, “Strangely, rediscovery may strike a deeper chord than discovery.” (What’s So Amazing About Grace, 52). There are fewer books in the Bible that is more true of than the Psalms. Written over half a century and read now for three thousand years the psalms are valuable in the process of rediscovering God. [...]

Proverbs 31:10-31

This is an acrostic poem where the 22 verses start with each of the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet which may signify an attempt at a complete A-Z description of the ideal wife.
A few things to consider (to read Proverbs 31, click here).
What stands out the most in this proverb is her diligence. She is [...]

Hebrew Poetry - Acrostics & Psalm 119

While poetry today makes heavy use of lines that end with rhyming words, Hebrew poetry never knew anything like that. However, they did make use of the beginning of their lines of poetry in some instances. They often used acrostics - starting each line with a different letter of the alphabet. Turn to Lamentations and [...]

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stood in the way of sinners
or sat in the assembly of mockers.
2 But from the law of Yahweh is his delight
and on his law he recites day and night.
3 He is like a tree transplanted beside streams of water,
which yields [...]

Reading the Psalms as Poetry

One of the biggest difficulties in reading the Bible is the tendency to read everything as law/command. The only places this does not appear to be a problem are in the sections of the Bible we read the least (e.g. Leviticus) where laws are exactly what we are reading. That is about one of the [...]