My Story (in Four Verses)

The weight of a double life

On January 19, 2015, I boarded a plane headed home from West Palm Beach. I boarded that plane a dead man. What I professed with my mouth was in direct contradiction to how I was living. I was lying and deceiving everyone in my life.

For the previous seven years, I had willfully given my heart over to gambling. No one in my life knew anything. And worse still, in order to fund my gambling habit, I stole money from my company.

I was a fraud – in every sense of the word. It was the activity that I was perpetuating at my company. I am a thief. I am a white-collar criminal.

Yet, even in a larger sense, my entire life had become a sham. I was stuck in a Psalm 40 pit of miry clay. I had gotten to where I couldn’t stand to hear anyone praise me, for I knew the real truth about myself. I struggled to accept relational intimacy with my wife, for I was an unworthy husband. I couldn’t even accept the hugs of my four young children (at the time), for I knew who their daddy truly was.

Continue reading Denison Forum – From the Depths of Gambling into the Love of Christ →

The Senate voted early Saturday morning to confirm acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to permanently lead the Department of Justice. The decision was controversial and largely along party lines, as expected.

One aspect that has received less attention, however, was Blanche’s recent statement on a private call hosted by the White House Faith Office. Blanche assured faith leaders that the Justice Department is “working hand-in-hand” with federal health agencies and the White House “to get permanent solutions so the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.”

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, returning abortion legislation to the states, the Biden administration in 2023 permanently ended an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, one of two drugs used for medication abortion. The Trump administration left these regulations in place.

Consequently, mail-in pharmacies have been dispensing abortion medication even in states that have banned or severely limited access to abortion clinics. According to Blanche, the administration is “putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations” cannot send abortion pills to states where they are banned.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Todd Blanche’s DOJ confirmation and the rise in abortion →

Why the fate of the Cuban people will not match the fate of their government

Shortly after US forces removed former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, many began looking closer to Cuba as the Trump administration’s next target for a change in leadership. President Trump even said as much back in March. And while the war with Iran has delayed such a move, recent reports indicate that Cuba’s time may be coming soon.

Earlier this week, news broke that the CIA has established a task force in Cuba in an attempt to pressure the government into accepting a number of political, economic, and social reforms. Should Raúl Castro and others decline, their secondary purpose is to lay the groundwork for a more forceful change in leadership. Coupled with the Justice Department bringing formal charges against Castro back in May, it’s an eerily similar playbook to the one used in the buildup to January’s assault in Venezuela.

A timeline for any such move remains unclear, with conflicting reports on whether the war in Iran would need to be wrapped up first. While fighting on two fronts would be far from ideal, President Trump is said to be “running out of patience with Cuba’s regime,” while the island remains a “huge priority” for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family came from Cuba.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Inside the CIA’s new task force targeting Cuba →

I hope you’re not reading this article on your smartphone. New research shows conclusively that IQ scores have been declining in recent years. Social scientists focused on nearly four hundred thousand people aged eighteen to ninety who completed questions from an open-source intelligence test. Across the thirteen-year study period, they found that cognitive scores declined over time.

This decline began well before AI was commonly available and prior to the pandemic. But it aligns with the time smartphone use began to rise.

One analyst thinks the switch from reading in print to consuming content on smartphones has led to the degradation of intellect. “Print requires us to make a logical case for a subject,” he noted. “You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube.”

He adds, “Print privileges a whole way of thinking and a whole way of processing the world that is logical, that is more rational, that is more dense information, that is more intellectually challenging.”

“We are God’s fellow workers”

Apart from reading content in print, I’m not sure what we can do about this trend. In fact, much of the day’s news, however we consume it, can make us feel impotent.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Are people getting dumber? Are smartphones to blame? →

Iran says an agreement with Oman on a route for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is “in the final stages.” Oil prices held steady this morning, however, as investors remained cautious over the outcome of the talks. The agreement would allow Iran to control ships entering the Persian Gulf through the strait, though such control is yet to be defined.

This deal could ease pressure on the global economy and perhaps help bring an end to the war. “A lot of progress has been made,” President Trump said recently. However, the current agreement represents just one factor with regard to one of the most complicated and conflicted waterways in the world. (For the website article I wrote yesterday explaining the history of the Strait of Hormuz, its global significance, attempts to close and reopen it, and biblical principles for negotiations, please go here.)

The Islamic Republic of Iran poses an ongoing threat to the Middle East and to Americans as well, but it is only one such threat in the news. For example, a new study warns that a major California earthquake could hit sooner rather than later, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. And, according to the Washington Post, a biological attack “could trigger a global pandemic, mass death, widespread insurrection, and ultimately societal breakdown.”

If you’d like your bad news to be a little less catastrophic, consider the toxic caterpillars currently spreading across Europe. As the New Yorker reports, oak processionary caterpillars are covered in “wiry white hairs that look like the whiskers on a witch’s warts.” When threatened, they emit not only these visible hairs but also eight hundred thousand microscopic hairs. Contact with them causes severe rashes, itching, and stinging.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Iran agrees to deal with Oman to reopen Strait of Hormuz →

If you’re like me, the word “socialism” carries connotations of the Soviet Union’s oppression of its people and Cold War nuclear threats. You’re aware that China’s Communist government operates a socialist market economy and that Cuba and North Korea are led by “socialist” dictators. During my frequent visits to Cuba over the years, I often saw billboards proclaiming “¡El socialism vive!” (Socialism Lives!).

Those who call themselves “Democratic Socialists” in America would decry all of that. They are adamant that they are not Communist or in favor of authoritarian dictatorships. The word “Democratic” is important to their self-understanding.

So, what is “Democratic Socialism”? What does it want to do? Why is it growing more popular in the US? And what does the Bible say about its beliefs and cultural relevance today?

What is Democratic Socialism?

As Time reports, “There isn’t one universal definition of democratic socialism.” The writer is correct: it would take many pages for me to describe in detail the various versions of this movement. We can, however, find a succinct description on the website of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA):

Continue reading Denison Forum – What does the Bible say about Democratic Socialism? →

A twenty-four-year-old gunman opened fire in a crowded In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, last Saturday. He killed three people and wounded seven others; two of the injured were in critical condition as of Sunday. He then took his own life after coming under fire from a bystander and an off-duty Idaho state trooper.

At this writing, authorities have not yet established a motive for the shooting. But they are praising thirty-five-year-old Jordan Salinas of Kimberly, Idaho, who returned fire after the shooting began. “He did not like it when bullets started firing both ways,” Salinas said. “There’s a task that needs to be done, and we’re the ones who need to do it,” he added.

Police said Salinas and the off-duty trooper who responded “are true heroes in our community. They diverted the shooter and without a doubt saved many lives.”

If you were at the restaurant last Saturday and the heroism of the two men saved your life, you might be thanking God today for their bravery and his protection. If you love one of the people who was killed or wounded, however, you might be grateful for the men who protected others, but grieving that their protection and God’s providence did not extend to the ones you lost.

We have all been in both groups. I thanked God when our older son and youngest grandson survived cancer, but still grieve that my father died of heart disease at the age of fifty-five. You can cite times when God acted with benevolence in your life and times when it seemed he did not.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Bystander saves lives at In-N-Out Burger shooting in Idaho →

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is one of the best-known players in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and a committed Christian. She was re-baptized as an adult prior to this season and regularly speaks up about her faith on social media.

She has been in the news recently, however, for a subject that is relevant whether we follow women’s basketball or not. In a long profile published by ESPN, a few sentences in a single paragraph caused a cultural uproar. Here’s the quote:

I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, “I never once said that.” I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Sophie Cunningham and the transgender sports controversy →

If someone asked you, “Are you addicted to your phone?” you might feel a bit defensive. “Addicted” sounds like such a strong word and holds many negative connotations. However, when you break it down, the definition of “addiction” is simply “a strong inclination to do, use, or indulge in something repeatedly.” For most people, that is exactly the power their phone holds over them.

The reality is that the average person spends over five hours per day on their phone. Many would likely claim that a lot of those five hours are work-related. Yet, the truth of the situation remains. People are still spending five hours of their day locked in, staring at their phones.

Whether decompressing, doomscrolling on social media, responding to emails, or talking with friends, our relationship with our phones has created a seemingly unbreakable tension between connection and isolation. Our phones provide us with instantaneous connection, yet the mental health crisis of our day rages with more fury than ever. People are feeling lonely, burnt out, anxious, and depressed with no hope of escape.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Lots of people are “Bricking” their phones. Should you? →

“Gen Z loves the spiritual disciplines. But disciplines separated from church community do not create disciples.” That sentiment is how Daniel Kunkel began his recent article on some fascinating trends among Gen Z Christians. From watching clips of Billy Graham on TikTok to embracing spiritual disciplines like silence, solitude, and Sabbath-keeping, the Christianity embraced by young people today has echoes of what previous generations have experienced, but the differences are important to note as well.

As Kunkel—who pastors in New York while also serving as a teaching fellow in New Testament at Fordham University—describes,

Whereas the Emergent Church movement of the previous generation prized a casual and comfortable expression of faith, I find many in Gen Z value a sense of sacredness and have a strong desire for practical change.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Gen Z wants Jesus, but do they want the church? →

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has successfully awakened from nearly a year in hibernation, finding itself 5.9 billion miles from Earth. The craft collected data while in hibernation and will now send that information to us, though it will take nearly nine hours for its signal to reach mission controllers.

Launched in January 2006, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto. It continued into the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune. As it continues its voyage, one scientist remarked, “I have a hunch that we have just scratched the surface of what the entire solar system really looks like.”

Ours is just one of billions of other planetary systems in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is just one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Spacecraft wakes up nearly six billion miles from Earth →

“It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.” This is what Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in his personal diary on May 21, 2020, part of more than a thousand pages of entries published by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) over the weekend.

Dr. Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades. When the coronavirus pandemic began, he became a central figure in America’s response, appearing regularly in television interviews and alongside President Trump in press conferences.

Sen. Paul has long maintained that the virus emerged from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China rather than originating in animals, and he has accused Dr. Fauci and other government officials of misleading the public and Congress about the source of the leak. He heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee and released the journal entries, which date from December 2019 until December 2022, in preparation for Dr. Fauci’s appearance today before his committee.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diaries tell us about him →

Today’s headline is not a theoretical question. A recent Washington Post article reports that “self-described evangelists are seizing the opportunity to share their faith with other passengers, whether fellow travelers asked for the word or not.”

Such passengers constitute the quintessential “captive audience.” As one airplane evangelist explains, “When I have a gift and I have a life raft, if you’re drowning, I want to give you that life raft so you can be saved.”

Jesus said of himself, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18). If everyone on earth has a terminal disease and I have the only cure, shouldn’t I do everything I can to share it? From preaching on airplanes to witnessing to diners in restaurants to knocking on my neighbors’ doors, what could I be doing that is more urgent than sharing Christ with as many people as I can?

And yet, if surveys are to be believed, 80 percent of Christians do not consistently witness, and less than 2 percent are involved in the ministry of evangelism. I think such reticence has something to do with what is in the blockbuster movie The Odyssey. Or, more accurately, what is not in the film.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Should Christians preach the gospel on airplanes? →

The man suspected of carrying out a fatal attack near a Pride celebration in Berlin last Saturday tried to join the Islamic State, local officials have said. He was released from detention in May after he was sentenced to prison for preparing a serious act of violence that could endanger the state.

Now, a heated debate is taking place over why the man, who was killed in a police shootout, was freed on probation.

If you wish I would write on something else, I understand. I had no plans to write on this story, but I was sitting in worship Sunday morning and heard our pastor speak from Psalm 139, where David praises God because he is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (v. 14). In that moment, I knew what I needed to say to you, and to myself, about the Berlin attack.

Let’s begin with some facts, then a personal confession.

Why this story seems irrelevant to us

If you match the demographic profile for the majority of our readership, you are probably an evangelical Christian living in America. This makes an article focusing on a Pride event in Berlin seem less relevant to you on multiple levels.

It is human nature to care more about events that occur closer to people we care about. My wife and I once spent a memorable day in Berlin, but I don’t know that I know anyone there. And I would be even more surprised if I knew anyone who attended the Pride event in the city.

The Bible teaches that God makes us male and female (cf. Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4) and that he intends sexual relations only within a covenant of marriage between one woman and one man (cf. Hebrews 13:4; Matthew 19:5). As a result, Pride events celebrate behavior I consider to be unbiblical and damaging to those who participate in it. They normalize sin and encourage others to celebrate and even participate in it.

To be clear: We are all broken sexually as a result of the Fall. I am just as tempted by heterosexual sin as someone else is by homosexual sin. But heterosexual adulterers do not gather for public events to celebrate their adultery. Nor do those addicted to pornography stage events to celebrate porn and the sex trafficking and child abuse so endemic to the industry.

Accordingly, when I saw the news from Berlin, I was saddened that such terrorism still persists and that innocent people have been its latest victims. But I had no desire to write an article on the tragedy and no idea what I would say if I did.

A personal confession

Now comes the confession: my desire to avoid focusing on the Berlin attack neither mirrors the heart of God nor reflects the fruit of his Spirit.

As Psalm 139 declares so beautifully, God creates each person and loves each person he creates. This is not because we merit such love but because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). I often quote St. Augustine’s observation that God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Consequently, there is nothing those who participate in a Pride event can do to change God’s love for them. LGBTQ behavior is not the unpardonable sin. It is often more visible than “private” heterosexual sin, as I noted, but no more sinful.

If Jesus could love and pray for those who were crucifying him, don’t you think he can love and pray for us all, whatever our sins and failures?

Three practical results

We’ll close this conversation with three consequences.

One: The more a person is living outside God’s will, the more urgently we should offer them the compassionate grace of Christ.

If those attending the Pride event were my children, I would love and grieve for them. The more I loved them, the more I would grieve for them, and the more I grieved for them, the more deeply I would love them. Our Father feels the same way about us all and calls us to be his hands and feet, manifesting his heart to our broken culture.

Two: The more lost the culture, the more urgently we should pray and work for the lost to hear and respond to the gospel.

Only 2.1 percent of Germans are evangelicals. The odds are that many attending the Pride event in Berlin have not heard or responded to the gospel. As a missionary once said to me, if ten people are holding up one end of a log and one person is holding up the other, which end needs my help the most?

Three: We will manifest God’s unconditional love for all people to the degree that we are yielded to the Spirit who produces such love in us (Galatians 5:22).

I assumed that vocational clergy were by nature more godly than the rest of us until I became one. My license, ordination, and seminary degrees did not change my heart. I have no capacity by which to care deeply for those I don’t know or love unconditionally those with whom I disagree. Nor do you.

But Jesus lives in us. He will not enhance our love for others—if we yield our hearts to his Spirit, he will give us his love for them. And his love has changed every heart it encounters.

It will again today.

Denison Forum

A mass shooting last night in Seattle left three people dead and four wounded, including a toddler. A barrage of gunshots rang out around 6 p.m. at Seattle Center, where thousands of people had gathered for a food festival. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said one person had been taken into custody; another suspected shooter remains at large at this writing.

A police official stated that the two appeared to be shooting at each other. Two guns were recovered at the scene, but no apparent motive has been disclosed thus far.

In other news, a crowd of people in Berlin was leaving an LGBTQ festival at the center of the German capital Saturday night when a white van plowed into them. The small van crashed into a tree; authorities said the driver then attacked passersby with what appeared to be a machete. One person was killed, and twenty-nine others were wounded.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Mass shooting in Seattle kills three, injures toddler →

“Burnout” is a term common to Western Civilization’s vernacular. An AI Overview indicates that Google Search displays 150-200 million general web results (News, blogs, and resources) for “burnout”. Google Scholar indexes over 1.9 million academic studies and scholarly publications on the subject, and Google News offers hundreds of continuously updated articles on burnout across a variety of workplaces and lifestyles.

Often associated with endeavors requiring daily discipline, diligence, redundancy, long hours, and measurable production, this pervasive buzzword and endemic condition seemingly expresses itself in every facet of society and has become the catalyst for all of life’s stress, exhaustion, and dissatisfaction. It has become so prevalent that even the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) has seen the need to classify the term not as a medical condition but as an occupational phenomenon.

Not even the faith community is exempt. With the tendency of the Western church to “baptize” as her own the popular trends and maladies of the day, even clergy now utilize the term with great frequency.

Continue reading Denison Forum – BURNOUT: Reorienting our disorientation →

I saw The Odyssey this week. I’m a bit late to the party: The film has made over $322 million as of today. When BBC Culture asked writers around the globe to pick stories that have endured across generations and changed society, Homer’s poem topped the list. The book has been translated into English at least sixty times and rendered in movies more than three dozen times.

Christopher Nolan’s version is truly spectacular. His film required 5,300 costumes and spanned 91 days of filming in six countries. Moving the Trojan horse alone required 250 actors and stunt performers. The movie amazes audiences with its mythical creatures brought to life largely without CGI.

But there’s more to the story behind the movie than many people know.

Giving the audience “reasons to believe”

The Odyssey is a poem comprising 12,109 lines that is thought to have been composed by the Greek poet Homer around three thousand years ago. The poem circulated orally for centuries before it was written down in the mid-sixth century BC for the Panathenaia Festival, likely on rolls of papyrus. More than a thousand ancient copies of The Odyssey and The Iliad have been found, substantiating the accuracy of the manuscripts we possess.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What many people don’t know about “The Odyssey” →

Where I live, Wednesday afternoon felt like 117 degrees outside. Today will be much better: the afternoon high will only feel like 106 degrees. We’re not alone: parts of Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri are as hot as we are in Texas.

Welcome to the “dog days of summer,” when it’s so hot outside that dogs hide in the shade. At least that’s what I assumed the phrase meant. It turns out, it refers to Sirius (the Dog Star), which is part of the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog).

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and literally means “scorching.” When people in ancient Greece and Rome watched it rise with the sun after the summer solstice, they thought the sweltering days were caused by our planet’s proximity to the star. They therefore referred to the period of July 3 to August 11 as dies caniculares, or “dog star days.”

Whatever the origin of the phrase, it seems as though the days it describes are interminable this year. We’re right: if Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer and Labor Day is the unofficial end, we are now in the longest possible unofficial summer. May 25 was the earliest possible Memorial Day, while September 7 is the latest possible Labor Day.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why are these the “dog days of summer”? →

A Delta pilot was spotted helping load luggage into his plane after a flight delay in Atlanta. He clearly didn’t know he was being caught on video and thus did not do this for the attention he is now receiving.

To act with humility and then be rewarded for humility is the best of both worlds, it seems to me.

We’ve probably all been there: someone recognizes us for something we did without expecting to be recognized. If we had sought attention, our ego would have been in control. When we received it unsought, our ego was gratified without being exposed.

This is a fact pattern worthy of some attention today.

Mayor Mamdani cannot arrest Benjamin Netanyahu

I shared with my coffee-drinking wife the news that up to five cups of coffee per day may potentially lower the risk of heart disease. She was glad to learn that she should keep doing what she was going to keep doing anyway.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been calling Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal and claiming that he wanted to arrest the Israeli prime minister when he comes to New York City in September. Now he tells us that his city does not have “independent legal authority” to do so. He gets the affirmation of his antisemitic supporters without having to act on their behalf.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Pilot helps load luggage after flight delay →

I recently read an article with the longest headline I’ve ever seen: “The people who age the best aren’t the ones who fought hardest against getting older, they’re the ones who, somewhere in their late fifties, quietly made peace with becoming a person their twenty-year-old self wouldn’t fully recognize, and stopped apologizing for it.” The article says just what its headline reports, but it includes an insight I found relevant, whatever our season in life.

Lewis Sherrill’s The Struggle of the Soul focuses on the different stages through which we progress in life, identifying “simplification” as the season of older age in which we determine what matters most and center on it. The article on aging described the psychology behind this focus as “socioemotional selectivity theory.” Developed at Stanford in the 1990s, it notes:

As people perceive their time horizon shortening, they do not simply become more anxious. They become more selective. They prune. They prioritize emotionally meaningful relationships over instrumental ones. They stop investing in social currency they no longer need.

Does such “selectivity” appeal to you today? There’s a reason for that, and a practical path into such meaning. In fact, the two are the same.

“My times are in your hand”

Meteorologists are warning that Tropical Storm Bertha could bring heavy rainfall and flooding to parts of the Gulf Coast in the coming days. This threat is just one example of human mortality in the news. From nine mass shootings that left nine people dead last weekend, to a ferry capsizing in Guyana that killed at least fifty-three people, to a fire captain and his wife and three sons who were found dead after a flash flood in a Utah canyon, each day’s news brings new reasons to fear the future.

But there is another way to look at our finitude and frailty.

In Psalm 31, David describes his “affliction,” the “distress” of his soul, and his “grief” over the fact that “my life is spent with sorrow” and he has “become like a broken vessel” (vv. 7–12). But rather than give in to despair, he prays, “I trust in you, O Lᴏʀᴅ; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand” (vv. 14–15). Accordingly, he can close his psalm by encouraging us to “be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lᴏʀᴅ!” (v. 24).

When I doubt whether I can pray in hard times with such reliance on God, I remember the day I saw David’s psalm come to life. A very dear friend and mentor was in the hospital for tests. My wife and I were with him and his wife when the doctors informed him that he had a cancer of the blood and would need to be admitted that day to begin treatments they hoped would save his life.

The doctors left, and my friend turned to us. Rather than focus on the fear we all felt, he smiled and said simply, “Well, my times are in his hands.”

If he could speak these words then, I can speak them today. So can you.

“Then you will find out the use of the world”

The nineteenth-century poet John Keats wrote,

The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is “a vale of tears” from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven—What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please “The vale of Soul-making.” Then you will find out the use of the world.

Later he added, “Do you not see how necessary a world of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

Michelangelo carved his iconic statue of David not by shaping marble into his image but by carving away everything that did not look like David until he was revealed from within the stone. Jesus is doing the same with us, working to make us like himself by removing “the dross from the silver” (Proverbs 25:4) and purifying all our “impurities” (Isaiah 1:25 NIV).

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis described this process metaphorically:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.

What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

Turning a “tin soldier into a live man”

When our “times are in his hands,” every moment of every day becomes an instrument by which our Lord shapes us into his character and manifests himself through us in the world. When we simplify our lives to knowing Jesus and making him known, the pain of our mortality becomes a platform for trusting his providence and depending on his omnipotence. Our fears become invitations to faith and his “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

As Lewis explained, Jesus is working “to turn you into the same kind of thing as himself . . . beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.”

What “tin” will you trust to your Savior today?

NOTE: For more on today’s theme, please see my latest website article, “Wondering if cyclosporiasis is in my future.”

Quote for the day:

“The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.” —Brennan Manning

Our latest website resources:

• Hamas elects new leader: What to expect from Khalil al-Hayya
• NEEDTOBREATHE’s “Last Drink” and a life of Spirit-filled joy
• What makes a hero? A Christian review of “The Odyssey”
• Lindsey Graham dies, Charlie Kirk hearing, Trump’s address, RIP Sam Neill & World Cup Final
• Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home lists for $17 million

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