Pastor's Blog

In Surprised by Joy , C. S. Lewis describes his journey by stages from materialism, to idealism, to theism, and finally to Christianity. The account is too long to reproduce here; but I quote below what I find to be some of his most powerful observations along the way. The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up to Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew...

I love these observations by Matthew Henry on the creation of Adam and Eve:  "Creation of Eve" Wiligelmus*Modena Cathedral “Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve ’ s being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honour upon that sex, as the glory of the man (1 Co. 11:7). If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth.... The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

We find a rather peculiar thing in the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel. The chapter recounts the incident of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. In the first few verses we’re told that Mary and Martha sent messengers to tell Jesus that their brother, who was very dear to him, was ill. And then we read the following: The Raising of Lazarus by Juan de Flandes (1465-1519) Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.   John 11:5-6 What a very odd thing to say. We would have expected something quite different. After saying, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” we would have expected John to have said, “So, Jesus hurried off to their home to heal him.” But, no, it says, “He loved them, so he stayed two days longer where he was.” What’s going on here? Because Jesus loved them, he wanted to teach them something that would prove to be an immeasurable comfort...

Some wit once observed, “In the beginning God created man in his own image; and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” [1] This is a humorous way of making the point that Calvin made in his Institutes :  “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” [2]   The advantage the first saying has over the second is the addition of the fact that the idols men forge tend to look an awful lot like their forgers.   This is true, not only with respect to the false conceptions people have of the Father, but also of the Son. Not finding the real Jesus (the one presented to us in the pages of Scripture) much to their liking, they refashion him into their own image. They don’t like Jesus as he is , and so they imagine him to be what he is not. This imaginary Jesus, not surprisingly, is one who happens to agree with them and endorse their agenda. Thus, we find Jesus re-imagined as a woman, as a homosexual, as an animal rights activist, as a card-carrying Democr...

Graduates, I very much appreciate being given the opportunity to speak to you today, and I hope that you might be able to find some hope and encouragement in what I have to say. It is customary for commencement speakers to challenge the graduates to go out and do extraordinary things; to go out and be world-changers; to dream big and aspire to do great things. But I’m going to issue you a challenge that is a bit different. I’m not going to challenge you to do extraordinary things, but rather to do ordinary things in an extra -ordinary way—or to put it somewhat differently, to do common things uncommonly well. This , it seems to me, is what the world needs more than anything else. Far too many people are satisfied with mediocrity. Far too many people are satisfied with doing just enough to get by. Too few strive to do what they do with excellence . But I would suggest to you that if something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well . Solomon tells us that a commitment t...