Of course there will be hard places. What of it? To choose ease rather than effort is to choose slow decay. (Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China and Thailand, 1901–1957)

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

As the bamboo curtain descended over China in 1950, Isobel Kuhn fled her home in the Yunnan province with her six-year-old son. They climbed over the ragged peaks of the Hpi Maw Pass into northern Myanmar [then Burma]. Her beloved Lisu people left behind, Kuhn…

As Easter draws near, the Christian calendar presents us with a sequence of world-altering events—Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and later Pentecost. Each day tells a part of the greatest story ever told, and it begins with Palm Sunday: the moment Jesus Christ enters Jerusalem, hailed as a king, setting into motion the fulfillment of divine promises.

In Luke 19:28–44, we find the account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. But to fully grasp what’s happening, we need to step back and understand the broader picture.

The cosmic civil war

From the beginning of…

Do you have trouble with your mouth?

I do. And I always have. Since birth.

Really.

There are few things worse than saying something that you regret, whether immediately or eventually.

How should we then speak?

I’d like to take a few posts to meditate on that.

And I’d like to begin by considering someone who speaks, and who speaks well.

The Bible begins with a speech act:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ²And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And…