View this email in your browser The Journey: The Price of the Bride Well, with the last two posts, I fed you a couple of appeteasers to prepare you for this illuminating journey. If you missed them, we saw that the Church is chosen and is the Bride of Christ. (You can read them here and here.) We’re going to stroll through the great field of God’s Word, gathering grains of inspiration and seeking the remarkable parallel between the Christian life and the ancient, Hebrew twelve steps of...
10 days ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser The Bride of Choice The bride of choice. Called shiddukhin, or the match, a pre-arranged agreement, it is the first step of the Jewish/Hebrew betrothal custom. According to this tradition, when a son came of age to marry, the father, or sometimes the father and mother, chose a bride for their son from their own clan. Now and again, the father would send a trusted servant, known as the agent of the father, as a type of best man, to search for the prospective...
17 days ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser Come, I will show you the Bride! “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”(Rev. 21:9 NIV) Over the next few weeks, I thought I’d share some posts with you that evolved from my book. That book has been sitting on the shelf for years. Why? I don’t know. I just felt like the Lord held it back for some reason. Many years ago, the Lord led me to research and write on the ancient Hebrew betrothal custom. If you will allow me, I will take you on a...
24 days ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser The Horizontal Life Reclining every day of his life, this man lay flat out on his mat, the mat of his past, present, and future. Paralysis had not only left this man’s body atrophied but also left his soul feeble. Tired of his immobilized, horizontal mat-life, tired of the bedsores, tired of his burdens, tired of focusing on the ceiling or others’ feet…he wanted to see the Healer. In the flesh. And not just His feet. News spread quickly and this man heard it:...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser The Great Field of Labor In a few days, the country will be celebrating Labor Day. But why is there a special day for most of the whole nation to take off work to celebrate this day? Have you ever wondered what the origin of Labor Day is? What is said about the original purpose of Labor Day... The U.S. Department of Labor says that Labor Day “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser Pearls from Perils? What is a natural pearl? Most of us know how pearls are made. When a foreign substance invades an oyster, the intruder slips into the mantle tissue of the mollusk, causing irritation. It is somewhat like the oyster getting a splinter. “The oyster’s natural reaction is to cover up that irritant to protect itself,” as one source states. As a natural reaction to this, the oyster secretes a substance known as nacre to envelope the foreign...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser Fenced In or Fenced Out? In ancient times, fences did not mark the perimeters of fields. Owners sometimes used rocks to mark boundary lines, which were easily moved and the borders then transgressed. One who moved his neighbor’s landmarks was, by law, cursed. Solomon said, “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers.” (Prov. 22:28 NIV) In some cases, no stones were used and the dividing lines became blurred. In the book of Ruth, we find...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser Where’s the Lone Ranger When You Need Him? I love the old TV program The Lone Ranger. I still watch the reruns. If you’ve been a reader for any ength of time, you know I love old western TV shows and movies. I grew up on them. I guess one reason I enjoy them is the bad guys always get what’s coming to them, and that is justice. On a couple of occasions, the Lone Ranger was called Justice or Mr. Justice. He rode upon his white steed and always arrived at the...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser Outside the Lines School time! Ahh, the smell of pencils, crayons, and stinky gym clothes! When our now-grown darling school-goers were very young, we all, as parents, gave them crayons and coloring looks to teach them their colors, to learn to color within the lines, and to learn structure. Remember those early pictures your babies colored, the ones that ended up on your fridge? They consisted of a multitude of colors or a beautiful monochromatic look of...
2 months ago • 2 min read