It’s hard to accept death and dying, especially when it comes too close to home. Yet death and dying are part of life. No one will stay on earth forever. Yet somehow we still would like to pretend death and dying are not part of our lives. And when death claims one of our own, we might even be angry at God for taking our loved one. We’d like to have cake and eat it too. It’s human to not…
How do you feel about the events of Good Friday? They’d be much harder to take if we did not know what happens next, right? Because we know the death of Jesus is not the end, we can take it. This is how the eternal perspective works. It brings life in the midst of death. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in…
Yesterday, one of my all-time favorite theologians Eugene Peterson died. As Christianity Today wrote, he completed ‘his long obedience into the same direction’ just as one of his most popular books was titled. Most people know him as the author of the Message Bible. I fell in love with the paraphrase of the Bible as well as his other books. But what I loved him most about was his authentic love of Jesus and how he lived that love out. He was…
How do you define prayer? Prayer is communication with God. It is pouring out our soul to God. Also, prayer is as important as breathing for Christians. All these things are great and prayer is really awesome. But I heard yesterday a definition of prayer that led me to look prayer from a new perspective. Pastor Jämsen said yesterday ‘prayer is us turning away from our potential opportunities’. We stop trying to solve everything ourselves and turn to God to…
Life is complicated, isn’t it? When you feel you’re getting hang of it, something happens and everything changes and you’re once again trying to cope. You don’t know how long you will live either. Life sure is unpredictable. When you’re young, life seems endless but the older you get, the shorter life seems to become. What to do then? How do you handle aging? Is death something that will take away all your fun or could it be something more…
Resurrection makes all the difference, folks. Without the resurrection, we’d be without hope. Life would be just life, no hope for broken hearted. No hope for sick and unhappy. And, certainly, no hope for sinners. Blessedly, God knew better. He knew we needed him even when we did not know we needed him. Hence, he sent Jesus to die for us. Jesus came to friend us, teach us, and save us. Because Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected,…
I caught myself in the middle of night asking “God, why do we need to die?” after dreaming of some people I was dearly missing. Instantly, I was reminded of what happened in my childhood. How I had turned from a sunny to sullen child after my grandmother’s death. My mother had asked me what’s wrong and I had told her ‘I hate God’. She asked me why I thought so. And I had told her ‘because he makes people…
Are you looking for Jesus? Good for you. Just know the empty tomb is the only place you can’t find Jesus. You can find Jesus anywhere but in the tomb for he is risen. He is not there for he is indeed risen. Jesus rose victorious. But sin, death, and darkness are still in the tomb. Don’t go after them. We are no more bound to them. Go after Jesus and abundant life. The angel said to the women, “Do…
Are you a citizen of heaven? How does it affect your everyday affairs? Or does it? Maybe it should. Because if Christ is in you, everything changes. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christfrom the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells…
Black Friday is the craziest shopping day in the U.S.A. But no matter how many hours people spend shopping, the best deal ever can’t be bought. Because it is free yet so precious. It was shed and given on Good Friday almost 2000 years ago. It is valid every day until the end of the world. By dying on the cross for our sake Jesus gave us the best deal ever: we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus….
