March 25 should be considered a great holy and happy day! Called “Annunciation” for the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, it comes nine months to the day before Christmas. If on Christmas we celebrate the birth of our Savior, on Annunciation we celebrate His conception. “Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary” […]
How would you like to be John 3:15? You’re right there all the time next to the great John 3:16. But nobody has you memorized from childhood. Nobody holds you up at a football game. You aren’t called “the Gospel in a nutshell.” How many sermons have been given on John 3:16? How many on […]
“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away” (Matt. 5:29). These words of Jesus move us to avoid temptations to sexual sin, many of which enter through the eye. Remove and resist visual stimuli that would appeal to a sinful heart. But the eleventh-century Archbishop of Bulgaria, Theophylact, […]
“Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage” (Ps. 84:5). Wanda was a pilgrim, but is a pilgrim no more. She died early this morning in Texas after a most courageous battle with cancer. She was 72. And I said to my mother who knew her well, “Her […]
“…six stone water jars…each holding twenty or thirty gallons” (John 2:6). At the wedding in Cana our Lord turned water into wine. It was His first miracle. But what I never really realized is just how much wine He made. The Gospel is inviting us to do the math: 6 x 20 or 30 = […]