Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better It has happened to me several times. I am working on a home project and mysterious footprints start appearing around the house. There is not an intruder. Rather I have again inadvertently stepped in paint or wet mortar and tracked it all over the home. No matter how hard I try to stay clean while I am working I always seem to ...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better In the fall as the weather cools, my wife Elke and I enjoy sitting on our back patio with opportunities to talk, read, work, and rest. My rest often includes gazing into the trees and observing color and motion. Sometimes, the trees stand in silence with little motion apart from the occasional squirrel moving from limb to limb...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better The sight of blood makes some people queasy. A couple I know had to have a blood test prior to being married. They were both a little underweight and were both sensitive to the sight of blood. You can imagine the scene in the lab when both had to give a blood sample. First, the young lady began to faint as she saw the blood dr...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better One of my favorite movies growing up was Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this movie, Archeologist, Indiana Jones played by Harrison Ford, is seeking to stop a Nazi-led archeological expedition from finding the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the golden box that carried the Ten Commandments. It was adorned with two...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better Why is the New Covenant a better covenant? Throughout the book of Hebrews, the author has continually explained the superior nature of Christ's ministry. His ministry is superior to the angels, to Moses, to Joshua, to Aaron, and to the Levites. In chapter eight the author transitions to speak of the superior nature of the cove...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better In our digital era, it is hard to understand the power of place. More and more people are working remotely. We can watch live events on TV without having to be at the stadium or in a concert hall. We can speak with friends who are on the other side of the world through Zoom. The advent of digital media has in many ways collaps...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better This past week athletes from all around the world gathered in Madison, Wisconsin to compete for the title "Fittest on Earth!" Started in 2008 the Crossfit games are a test of strength, speed, balance, and agility. Each of the competitors are put through a series of workouts. If one is the first to finish, hits the heaviest lif...

In J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit, the following riddle is posed by Gollum to Bilbo, A thing that all things devours;Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;Gnaws iron, bites steel;Grinds hard stones to meal;Slays king, ruins town,And beats mountain down. What is the answer? Time, of course. Ovid put it a little more concisely when he wrote, "Time is the devourer of everything" ...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better Sometimes I am slow in making connections to things. For example, I've known two different people who are related. They even looked alike and had the same last name, but I was slow to make the connection that they were related. The signs were there, but it just didn't occur to me. As we've been working our way through Hebrews...

Preparing for the Lord's Day Jesus is Better Christian writer, Steven Lawson, shares the following illustration to explain how Christians are prone to live apart from the power of God: We are like the man who went into a hardware store one Saturday morning to buy a saw. Seeing an easy mark, the salesman showed him a fancy chainsaw. He commented that it was their best se...