Forty days and forty nights Thou wast fasting in the wild; Forty days and forty nights Tempted, and yet undefiled. Forty is a number of significance. As I write, I enter the year in which I will turn forty, Lord willing. Culturally, we consider it the notable age in which one is half way in…
’Twas forty-days of the journey long, long, long; dragging through the desert. Boots worn thin and tired from hurt. Sand between toes tires even the strong as they travel wearily cross the dunes. No food but Words, swirling within. A morsel of water to calm the gullet, and no bed but a mat, covered in…
“Christ our passover lamb is sacrificed for us.” At the heart of the Roman Catholic rejection of Anglican holy orders is the claim that Anglicans relinquished an adequate conception of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. While many have responded to this claim at length (including in my own forthcoming book Null and Void: The Catholic…
During the Trinitarian controversy of the 4th century, the label “Arian” was attached to those who espoused and defended the teaching of Arius of Alexandria. Arius denied that the Son of God was co-eternal with God the Father, and thus taught that the Son had been created by the Father before the creation of the…
Kind maker of the world, O hear The fervent prayers with many a tear Poured forth by all the penitent Who keep this holy fast of Lent! Our call this Ash Wednesday and throughout Holy Lent is to exercise our mouths by confessing our sins. We are beckoned to empty our hearts and our bellies…
Does receiving ashes on the forehead, a custom widely practiced on Ash Wednesday, go against Christ’s command to keep your fasting a secret (Matt. 6:16–18)? This command appears in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ’s teaching there on fasting is the last in a mini-series on spiritual disciplines which includes almsgiving and prayer. He opens this…
Love divine, all loves excelling,joy of heaven, to earth come down,fix in us thy humble dwelling,all thy faithful mercies crown.Jesus, thou art all compassion,pure, unbounded love thou art;visit us with thy salvation,enter every trembling heart. The stage is set. Christ Jesus has set His face towards Jerusalem, where He knows He is journeying towards certain…
One step down, my back turned against pear groves As the perfume of orange blossoms drifts On the breeze, mixed memoirs of when we clove Tightly to each other. An anchor lifts, But casually, skirting the floor and primed To fall in the wake of first resistance, And I don’t know if its weight is…
If “the new birth of the Spirit is closely coupled with new birth by water,” as Browne argues, then a question that follows is how this new birth of the Spirit is applied to infants. The difficulty, as it is often presented, is that whereas “in the case of adults, faith and repentance are necessary…
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in God’s excellent Word! What more can be said than to you God hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Whom do you trust? Our age is a time of distrust. Distrust in government, in corporations, and…