These are my favorite albums released in 2024:
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle)
MoonDial (Pat Metheny)
Earthcycle (Orchestra of the Swan)
Études Mélodiques (Marie Awadis)
Arium (Thom Brennan)
Can I Tell You Something? (Mark Lettieri)
Stay By My Side (Gerard Cousins)
LIFE (Extended) (Mari Samuelsen)
Bach (Alexandre Tharaud)
Brisk - single (Aukai)
Upgraded (soundtrack; Isom Innis)
Solastalgia (Erik Wøllo)
Blurring the Edges (Data Rebel)
Outside the temple there is no peace. You have challenges in your family. You feel arthritis settling in, or some other part of you is aging. Friends turn against you. Irrational people will give you no peace.
But here, in Jesus …
Read MoreIn many and various ways, God spoke to those people of old, sending them prophets and priests, wise men and shepherds, calling them back to Himself. Yet even the most pious and godly of those men and women were sinful at their core. They were afflicted with a mortality no medicine could cure, no science could solve….
Read MoreGlory to God in the Lowest, for God deliberately falls into the low places. Jesus is God, in the flesh. But in entering the world, He sets aside the rights of divinity. He must learn the alphabet. He cannot walk, He cannot crawl. He must be nursed. And swaddled. He has become the lowest. And He goes down, into ditches, into loneliness, into hunger. He knows betrayal. A feeding trough is His crib. …
Read MoreRust ruins metal. Stomach acid burns through your esophagus. Vices do the same to your soul.
Vices are not simply bad habits. Vices signify a state of mind….
Read MoreNon nobis - “not to us [be the glory].” The world is filled with people who say the opposite: “To us be the glory; to me be the glory.” If we’re honest, that’s who we are, deep down. What a gift, to learn from early childhood to sing the opposite: Non nobis - “not to us,” Domine, “Lord” - Sed nomini tuo - “but to Your name” be the glory….
Read More“Drain the swamp” is either a threat or a promise. It depends on which side of the swamp you reside. Turning a swamp into solid ground would require significant upheaval of terrain.
When the prophet Isaiah says the valleys shall be lifted up and the mountains made low, there’s a similar political aggressiveness to it. The explosive power to bring down a mountain is not trifling. The mountains are the rulers – kings and emperors; the valleys are the little people who pay the taxes and are fodder for their masters’ wars. Kings on mountains don’t take kindly to threats….
Read More“Beloved.” That’s how the Apostle Peter addresses his hearers. And it’s how God addresses you. Even when He reproves you—through me, the preacher whom He also reproves—He reproves you as His beloved.
“Beloved, do not forget this one thing.” It would be better to say, “Don’t let this escape your notice.” The Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures is telling us a hidden truth. He’s revealing to us a secret, or a mystery. It is the mystery of how time with God is not at all as we experience time….
Read MoreFrom Adam and the tree, to David with Bathsheba, to Judas grasping his 30 pieces of silver, it’s the entire story of mankind: man desires, and the object of his desire turns and devours him, like Gollum grasping the ring and in so doing falling into the fire. Our desires kill us.
The prodigal son is paradigmatic for man's condition; he leaves his father to satisfy his cravings. Augustine imagines the Lord saying to us, “You were hoping that if you left Me you would have something more.” …
Read MoreThe first thing to note about tonight’s Epistle is that men and women are addressed differently. Men and women are equal in dignity and worth. Men and women are not the same in terms of callings and duties, temperaments and responsibilities. First, the older men are called to actions befitting their station, to love as they lead, and to be patient with those who are led.
The older women are called away from gossip and wine toward the teaching of the younger women. The woman is to be, the NKJ says, a “homemaker.” I don’t think it means a woman cannot have a job; the term literally means “busy at home” or “energetic at home.” The idea is that she is not lazy but working, within her own sphere, for the good of the family. And this is done under the leadership of the man….
Read More