Category: First Principles

  • Within Reach

    Growing up in a Pentecostal church, I learned about heaven from a very young age. One of the earliest hymns I remember was “Mansion Over The Hilltop,” which describes the ultimate in delayed gratification. I have very little now, but once I die and go to heaven, I’ll have a mansion, “a gold one that’s…

  • Repent…

    I think for many Americans, the word repent conjures up images of a wild-eyed, disheveled man yelling and threatening damnation and hellfire. Of course, we don’t have any audio or video from the first century, and John the Baptist certainly comes close to the stereotypical street preacher, but I doubt that the exhortations of John…

  • The Kingdom of God

    When Jesus traveled throughout Judea, wherever he went he talked about the kingdom of God. In fact, it was his main message, and the message he committed to his followers—the good news about the kingdom of God. Nowadays if you were to ask 100 people what the main message of the church is, I doubt…

  • Grief and Grievance

    Grief and grievance are both responses to loss, and when loss occurs both responses often occur. There is no hard line between them, but there are distinguishing marks that separate them. Grief tends to focus on the sadness of a loss, missing the person or thing that was lost. That sadness can appear as anger,…

  • The Hero Of Your Story

    Every life is a story, and we take for granted that each of us is the hero of our own story. But what does that mean? And what might it mean for someone else to be the hero of our story? We all know who the hero (or heroine) is. That’s the person who gets…

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