This is part 3 in a series of posts based on the manuscript from a 2018 talk on the life of Samson. Parts 1 and 2 provide an overview of the place of Judges in the Bible, and the life of Samson in general. All currently available posts in this series are available here. Ok,…
Samson, Part 2 – Samson’s Life
This is part 2 in a series of posts based on the manuscript from a 2018 talk on the life of Samson. In part 1, I covered how Judges fits into the overarching story of the Bible. All currently available posts in this series are available here. In similarity with the other episodes we’ve considered…
Samson, Part 1 – The Intro
About a year ago, I had the privilege of teaching Judges 13-16, which covers the life of Samson, as part of our mid-week Bible study. (As a brief point of clarification, this was in the morning section, which is open only to women.) Over the next few weeks, as it is far too long for…
Recent Reads, Volume III
A brief summary of what I’m currently reading or have recently finished, why I read it, and whether I’d recommend it. Although really, it’d have to be truly terrible for me to bother writing about a book I wouldn’t recommend…… No Visible Bruises (Rachel Louise Snyder) – don’t pick this up on a lark, but…
Planning
“Planning is just guessing.” So begins a recent post from a homeschool mom, author, and podcaster I follow. How encouraging, right? Your best-laid plans – the ones that took you hours to create and notate and refine and rewrite and think through, yes, those plans – are just guesses. Educated guesses, to be sure. But…
His Bountiful Care
One of the most oft-repeated songs in our house over the last year has been “O Worship the King”, thanks to my 7-year-old and our long-standing bedtime routine of a song of choice for each of the girls and a final from the hymnal. (If you don’t know this hymn, it’s worth a few minutes…
The Idols of Today
What I’m about to say is certainly not new. It’s not ground-breaking or revolutionary by any means, and if you’ve been in church for any lengthy period of time or heard a sermon based on any of the Old Testament narrative, from Judges all the way through to the exilic period, chances are it was…
The Word of the Lord
We’re studying the first half of 1 Samuel in our Wednesday Bible study this semester, and I’ve been stuck on a phrase from 1 Samuel 3:1: “the word of the Lord was rare in those days”. I think that goes far to explain the backdrop of the book, actually. Samuel was the last of the…
Hope in the Midst of Grief
This seems to have been a summer full of loss. There are 5 families close to me – including my own, actually – who have lost loved ones since that’s the beginning of the summer, and whether that’s a coincidence or more a symptom of growing older, I’m not sure. But one of the outworkings…
One Generation to Another
I’ve been meditating on Psalm 145 for several weeks, and particularly verse 4 comes to mind often: “One generation shall commend Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.” This is one aspect of our small group Bible study that I greatly cherish – the cross-generational demographic of each group. There, one generation…