by David Anderson
is you at your worst, yet closest to heaven. In Jesus’ famous parable of the Publican (or Tax Collector) and the Pharisee, the Publican is the one Jesus commends. The Pharisee stands in the front row of the temple and offers a “prayer” that is only a formal enumeration of his pious acts, while the […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Change, Conversion, Forgiveness, Grace, Lent, Mercy, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
has decided he wants joy more than he wants order or a clean accounting of things. When the prodigal comes home from his bender, having wasted his early inheritance, the father throws a party. That doesn’t make sense to most of us parents, and it sure didn’t seem right to the elder brother. Why, he […]
by David Anderson 10 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Conflict, Faithfulness, Family, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Lent, Letting Go, Love, Mercy, Surrender
On Saturdays our companions are musicians. I don’t remember when I first heard Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now,” but it went straight to my heart. I couldn’t tell what emotion the music was pressing on, but it felt deep and huge. It’s the only song about mercy I’ve ever heard—plenty on forgiveness, but not the depths […]
by David Anderson 7 Comments Filed Under: Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Healing, Lent, Mercy, Music, Suffering, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
is known as the “weeping prophet” because he had to carry the people of Israel through the worst time in their history. The Babylonians had besieged Jerusalem, pulled down the temple, stone by stone, and exiled Israel’s leaders. It is the most catastrophic moment in the Hebrew Bible. In the midst of the disaster Jeremiah […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Belief, Change, Conversion, Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Grace, Gratitude, grief, Lent, Mercy, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
is the only outed person at the dinner table. Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner, but somehow a “woman of the city” catches wind of the soiree and sneaks in the back door carrying “an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing at Jesus’ feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Intimacy, Lent, Love, Mercy, Uncategorized
used to be Saul, and the name change—signaling a new beginning—may have been the only way he could have gone on, could have lived with himself. We first meet him at a murder. Young Stephen is being stoned for his faith in Jesus, and the accusers who took off their coats to limber up for […]
by David Anderson 2 Comments Filed Under: Change, Character, Conversion, Epiphany, Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Identity, Lent, Mercy, Repentance, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
is one more explosive revelation we have safely turned into a children’s Bible story. When God asks Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites—to repent and find God’s forgiveness—Jonah refuses. He’s afraid God will forget all those passages in the Torah about how gentile nations are anathema, and only Israel is God’s choice. Jonah knows […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Anger, Belief, Change, Conversion, Forgiveness, Grace, Lent, Mercy, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
teaches us how to access and trust the God within. Jesus tells a parable about a vulnerable widow who goes before a jerk of a judge who “neither feared God nor cared what people thought ” (Luke 18:1-8). He brushes her off, again and again. But she keeps after him, until finally he relents and […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, authority, Awareness, Faith in Action, Grace, Lent, Now/ the Present, Patience, Surrender, Transformation