A Prayer to Prepare for Easter
This is a guest post from my good friend and colleague Dr. Randy Millwood, Church Services Consultant for the Maryland/Delaware Baptist Convention, FBC Frederick member, and best Real-Beard Santa Claus in the world. He wrote it as an email to the ministers of BCMD for Maundy Thursday, but it speaks to our situation on this Holy Weekend and so I offer it to you, with the necessary alterations, to help you in your preparation for Resurrection Day. In the Christian calendar, the Thursday of Holy Week is...
A Maundy Thursday Prayer (Psalm 88)
Despair is difficult when the Resurrection hovers nearby. For two millennia the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection have been told and retold, celebrated and feted. Everyone knows how the story ends. It doesn’t end with “It is finished.” Rather, with “”Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here, but has been raised.” It’s difficult, therefore, to read the Passion–the betrayal, the arrest, the beating, the mocking, the...
The Relevant Temptation
The other day our son Austin asked Pam and me if we had ever gone through anything like the COVID-19 pandemic before. The answer, of course, was no. These are unprecedented times. People are fearful, anxious. Angry. Some are complacent. Some are in denial. We are isolating ourselves from each other. If ever we needed a word from God, it is now. As one who weekly speaks to people about God, on behalf of God, and maybe, every once in awhile, delivers a word from God, I feel the weight of that need to hear...
You Don’t Learn Wisdom From a Book Like Proverbs
Let’s talk about the Book of Proverbs. Hey, wait, where are you going? Get back here! Sheesh, hear me out for a second. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but hang on, I’m gonna bring on the excitement in a minute. Well, no, probably not, but hang with me for a second anyway. The Book of Proverbs has been called “God’s Instruction Book for Life,” which sounds awesome. Not content with that pithy title, another person said, “Proverbs is actually a book of instructions on how to live a life pleasing...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 14, 2019 | 0 comments
Going through the wilderness is never fun or easy, but it’s sometimes necessary. I’m not talking about camping in the wilds; some people do find that fun. I’m talking about those times when life is precarious, fraught with danger or uncertainty, when you don’t know what to do or who to turn to. When the Bible speaks about the wilderness it’s not merely talking about deserted areas void of people or...
The Wilderness Experience ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 12, 2019 | 0 comments
A lot of people say they believe the Bible should be read “literally.” Whatever that means. Not everybody reads the Bible literally. What is significant is not whether you or not you believe the Bible should be read literally. It’s whether you actually read it. Actually reading the Bible is transformative, and in significant ways. Those who read the at least Bible weekly, whether literally or not,...
Believing the Bible is &ld...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Feb 5, 2019 | 0 comments
Excavations of ancient Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee The Bible is not all history, but all the Bible is history. That first phrase is pretty much straightforward. The Bible is composed of much more than straight history—what happened, when, by whom, etc. It contains poetry, parables, prophetic proclamations (and almost all of these are written in Hebrew poetry), letters, apocalyptic literature, even a...
How Historical is the Bibl...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 17, 2019 | 0 comments
For my birthday in August Pam bought me one of those DNA tests where you can learn about your heritage by mailing in some spit. I’m not sure she’s as interested in my heritage as wondering, after 37 years of marriage, if there is some genetic mutation that would explain me to her. I have a friend who sent in some spit and found out he’s part Neanderthal. No joke. I told him that he could have just asked...
I’m A Viking! (Sorta...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Jan 15, 2019 | 0 comments
It was the foreigners, they said. They’re to blame. At the time of Jesus the Jews had been blaming foreigners for their own idolatry, and they had been doing it for over four hundred years. So long that it was just accepted wisdom. It’s a familiar narrative, derived for the most part from the Chronicler’s account of Israelite history, supported by the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Solomon’s Wives This...
Blaming Foreigners is not ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 21, 2018 | 0 comments
A couple of years ago I surprised Pam by taking her to one of those do-it-yourself painting studios. This particular session was “Paint Your Pet” I had emailed them a couple of pictures of our beagle Kobi, which they sketched in pencil on a canvas. The instructors showed us how to mix the acrylic paints to achieve the colors we wanted, and we began painting his portrait, using the pictures as guides....
Getting Past Perfect
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Aug 9, 2018 | 0 comments
In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a parable about a man with a wheat field. During the night, some guy with a really, really bad attitude snuck in and sowed some weeds among the wheat. Which is interesting because weeds are the kind of things that don’t need sowing. They just appear. But these aren’t ordinary weeds, they are weeds that look so similar to a young wheat plant as to be indistinguishable to the...
Good and Evil and the Untr...
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I am a lifelong student of the Bible, and have been a pastor for over twenty-five years. My desire through this blog is to help people see things in the intersection of Scripture and real life that they might have missed. The careless handling of the Bible is causing a lot of problems in our churches and our culture--and is literally turning people away from the church, and, sometimes, God. I hope to treat Scripture with the respect it deserves, and, even if you don't agree with what I say, give you some insight.
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