Category: Uncategorized

MORNING— At the Scent of Water 🌳 “For there is hope for a tree, when it is cut down, that it will sprout again… at the scent of water it will flourish.” Suffering has a way of turning our thoughts toward mortality. Job looks at the natural world and notices something unsettling. A tree can…

MORNING— Cursing the Day You Were Born “Afterward Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.” Job does not curse God.He curses the day. That matters. Satan’s objective was never simply to make Job suffer—it was to provoke him into renouncing God. And here, in what may be the darkest chapter of…

MORNING— Will We Accept Good Only? “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” Job’s suffering is not finished. Job 2 opens with a scene that feels painfully familiar. Once again, the sons of God present themselves before the LORD. Once again, Satan appears. Once again, God points to Job. Job has…

MORNING— A Good Man, A Hard Test “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Years ago, I was standing in a checkout line at the grocery store. The man in front of me had only two…

MORNING— Wisdom at the Banquet “Then Queen Esther replied, ‘If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request; for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed…

MORNING— Knowledge Becomes Responsibility “When Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and wailed loudly and bitterly.” In 2021, Frances Haugen, a data scientist at Facebook, released internal documents showing the company knew its platform was harming…

MORNING— Positioned Without Knowing Why “The king loved Esther more than all the women… so he set the royal crown on her head…Now when Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate… he learned of a plot… and the king’s life was spared.” By this point in the story of Israel, the people are still living…

MORNING – A Time to Mourn “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in sackcloth and with dirt upon them… They read from the book of the law of the LORD their God for a fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped…

MORNING— A Hungry People Gather “And all the people gathered as one man at the square which was in front of the Water Gate… Then Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly… and he read from it… from early morning until midday… and all the people were attentive to the book of the…

MORNING— Opposition from the Outside “Do not be afraid of them; remember the Lord who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your houses… Then all of us returned to the wall, each one to his work.’” Advancement rarely goes unnoticed—and it is rarely welcomed by…