Bible

  Dear Friends, I’ve decided to add some of my Facebook posts to this blog. These are shorter than my typical blog posts, and probably won’t have any embedded artwork. But, since I did the work to write the Facebook posts, I might as well make them available in blog […]

Wait for it…

 in Bible
8
Dear Friends, Sitting in a waiting room about 5 years ago, I pulled out my laptop and started a blog called The Form of the Fourth. Recently, I’ve been writing about fear, and so my blog’s namesake Bible story has been calling out to me ever more insistently. God willing, […]

The Form of the Fourth

 in Bible
4
Dear friends on both sides of this issue, Stop shivering in the shadows and start standing in the sunshine. . Y’all need to stop with the morbid fear This post goes out to people on **both** sides of the issue, especially Christians, who have allowed their COVID-related fears to reach […]

Covered, not COVID

 in Bible
5
  Dear Friends, It’s time to set aside your fears, march out in the name of Jesus Christ onto the battlefield of life, and fight! . Give fear a chance But wait! We all know some fear is good. In fact, “fear-” and “afraid” appear a combined 717 times in […]

Conquer!

 in Bible
4
Dear Friends, If we were standing at the foot of the cross, looking up at Jesus’s savagely beaten, punctured, bloodstained body, would we stop demanding to know “How could a loving God allow XYZ suffering?” and start saying, in a spirit of peaceful humility, “I’ll understand it farther along”? . […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6g)

 in Bible
  Dear Friends, Does God love us? Well, God decided to come down here and suffer our nonsense for 3 1/2 years (and then was brutally killed). So, despite our deepest traumas and those burning, unanswered questions, I believe the answer is yes! . Suffering nonsense for love  Jesus could […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6f)

 in Bible
Dear Friends, When they are hunting for your reputation, your livelihood, or your soul, Jesus whispers, “I know, my child. They hunted me too.” . Temptation as a form of suffering Today, God willing, I’ll present yet another category of the sufferings of Christ. I hope with every post, we […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6e)

 in Bible
Dear Friends, Does God love us or not? In the storms of life, and when we watch the news, it sometimes feels unlikely. By God’s power, I hope today’s story…a story about someone who was alone…can help us, in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, eliminate the impossible. . We weren’t […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6d)

 in Bible
2
Dear Friends, God was starving to the point of death. God was beaten. God’s very bones were exposed. There must have been a reason. . I don’t believe in that God either There’s an atheist meme that shows God sitting in a La-Z-Boy up in heaven, watching human suffering on […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6c)

 in Bible
1
  Dear Friends, What could motivate the Lion to suffer the hyenas? Only an otherworldly love. . Mouth abuse The crucifixion of Jesus Christ makes it clear to me that “God doesn’t love me” is not the right explanation for our suffering. However…the sufferings of Jesus began long before the […]

Yes, but the cross (Part 6b)

 in Bible