Mark

The Girl is Asleep: Salvation in Luke 8

Until this morning, in my reading of Luke 8:40-56 I’d focused on Jesus’s two miracles in isolation. I’ve written already, for example, about the symbolic meaning of the colours in Jesus’s healing of the woman with the flow of blood. And in the story of Jairus’s daughter, I have previously reflected on striking parallels betweenContinue reading “The Girl is Asleep: Salvation in Luke 8”

Breath like Apples

In Genesis 4, Cain, tiller of the earth, offers fruit to the LORD and murders his brother Abel. This act comes hot on the heels of Adam and Eve’s lost paradise, where Satan too had offered fruit to God’s people and ushered in a reign of death across the earth. Just as He had doneContinue reading “Breath like Apples”

Hezekiah and the Thing That Came About Suddenly

I have been reading and rereading the two books of Chronicles, somewhat reluctantly, if I’m being honest. Isn’t Chronicles just a summary of the books of Kings? Harrumph. Yet here I am reading along, minding my own business, being rather sulky and whatnot, when just like that, in 2 Chronicles 29, “the people rejoiced overContinue reading “Hezekiah and the Thing That Came About Suddenly”

“Go up, you baldhead:” Elisha and the Bears

Recently, I wrote about a story about a boy who mocks God’s people and His promises. This took my mind to a similar story in 2 Kings 2, the story of Elisha, some young men, and some bears. This is a violent story, one that I need to handle with care. So to make senseContinue reading ““Go up, you baldhead:” Elisha and the Bears”

Heights of Earth, Heights of Heaven

Perhaps one of the reasons that God allows so much time to pass between the last book of the Old Testament (Malachi, written in the 400s B.C.) and the first events of the New Testament is because God’s people needed to feel fully the weight of waiting. And as we know, what God had inContinue reading “Heights of Earth, Heights of Heaven”

Saul and the Lost Donkeys

Saul was never the king Israel needed, and the clues begin, quite powerfully, at the very moment he pops onto the scene. And the first piece of bad news is Saul’s father, Kish (1 Sam 9:1-2). Though some think that the name Kish means ‘bow’ or ‘power’, more convincing is evidence that the name comesContinue reading “Saul and the Lost Donkeys”