Bible at Home

The pumpkins testify that the season of celebration is near. Autumn is the waiting room for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Hanukkah, and Christmas. It’s the stirring to prepare, to contact relatives, to make plans, and to stockpile supplies for gatherings. It’s the gatherings that really matter, for it’s in gatherings that we come face to face…

The very first foster child who came to live with us was a five year old girl who had come from a shelter after being taken from her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Victoria and I walked upstairs to her room and she turned to me and said, “Is this where the good people live?”…

Joan of Arc was only about 12 years old, a big help to her mother in their home in Domremy, France, and a help to her father watching their sheep. At that young age Joan began to hear voices talking to her about God and how to please Him. Between twelve and seventeen Joan experienced…

Walking one day on the street of Virginia City, Nevada, young Samuel Clemens (known as Mark Twain) noticed a sheet of paper blowing in the breeze ahead of him. When he reached it he stopped to pick it up and found that it was a page from an account of the life of Joan of…

Unlike much of the rest of humanity, Jesus is never coy or evasive about his identity to his followers.; so, when I read about his walk to the town of Emmaus, disguised as an unrecognizable stranger to two of his own disciples, I wondered why this was so. (Luke 24:13-25) It is a unique story…

“Mimi, you know that thing that’s inside an M&M—that seed?” asked Rosie, my four year old granddaughter. “You mean the peanut inside the M&M?” “Yes! A peanut is a seed, isn’t it?” “Well, yes.” “Well, why don’t we take an M&M and plant it, and have an M&M tree in our yard?” “Because the peanut…

When Jesus told Peter “Feed My Sheep” (John 21:15-17), he was conveying and entirely new life-style to Peter. He wasn’t suggesting an avocation for his disciple, but a radical change that carried infinite implications that Peter couldn’t possibly know I advance. What Peter did know, was that Jesus, once a carpenter, called himself a “shepherd.”…

“I see that you have some nice knives,” said a friend to me when he returned from my kitchen where he had gone to wash his hands. “You left them wet by the sink. It would have been better not to wash them at all, than to lave the blades wet.” Sam worked for the…

Nowhere in the Bible does any Old or New Testament person tell us that we must learn to forgive ourselves. Indeed, if it were possible to forgive ourselves, we wouldn’t need a Savior God. Yet, many times I have heard someone say regretfully, “I know, of course, that God has forgiven me, but I still…

After his resurrection, speaking to his eleven disciples, Jesus said, . . . Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:10) These words have come to be…