Articles

Proverbs is not a “churchy” book—at least not in the way many of us conceive of church. Its wisdom isn’t prim and proper and fit for afternoon tea. Rather, Proverbs calls us to the street, to everyday life, to matters that affect us all in some way. Derek Kidner has said that Proverbs puts “godliness into working clothes.”¹ It is godly wisdom for everyday living.

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Today, we are living through what is arguably the most rapid change in family structure in human history. Standards and principles that were once commonplace now seem on the verge of extinction. As David Brooks puts it, “The sexual revolution has come and gone, and it’s left us with no governing norms of family life, no guiding values, no articulated ideals.”¹ In such a cultural climate, it is absolutely vital for us to know what we believe about the role of the family, where we belong in relation to the family, and how, as outposts of God’s kingdom, our families ought to operate.

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A true friend is a real treasure. To have someone in whom you can confide, someone who knows the best and worst about you without making you feel like a fool, is to have found something precious. We could all use someone like Jonathan, who strengthened David “in God” (1 Sam. 23:16). We all need someone like Timothy, who was intensely committed to the good of others (Phil. 2:20).

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Who among us could have imagined that the World Trade Center towers, those symbols of prosperity and freedom, could so quickly be reduced to rubble and dust against the blue-sky beauty of a Manhattan morning? Who would have thought that planes meant to carry families to Grandma’s house or businesspeople to their next venture could be turned into weapons of mass destruction?

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It has never been easy to be a college student. You face pressure from every side to answer the perennial question: So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? That’s not to mention the social stressors of figuring out where you belong, and perhaps of being away from home for the first time. Your years at university can be thrilling, yes, but they can also be daunting.

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The Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction—more like a marathon than a sprint.¹ It’s not a series of hundred-yard bursts after which you can catch your breath on the grass and rest up until the next one.

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Not all who profess faith in Christ actually follow Him. Not all who give lip service to Christianity necessarily know its truth. Various warning passages (e.g., Heb. 2:1–4; 3:7–4:13; 1 John 2:19), along with Jesus’ own words in the Gospels (e.g., Matt. 7:23; 25:41; Luke 13:27), alert us to the possibility that we can appear to have a relationship with Jesus and even enjoy the fellowship of close Christian community without finding a home in heaven in the end.

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The entirety of the Bible is inspired Scripture—every book, every paragraph, every sentence, every word. But while all Scripture is equally inspired, some parts of it exceed the others in being inspiring.

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Though we use it sparingly, bereavement is a word most of us have heard—perhaps at least in the context of the bereavement leave that many workplaces grant. The word comes from the verb to reave, which means to forcibly deprive, to take captive, to plunder. And that is what happens in the experience of bereavement. In being bereaved, we are broken up, we are ravished. What we once had is lost, and we are invaded with grief.

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Too often, we regard the book of Revelation as if it were a collection of riddles—some kind of theological Rubik’s Cube that must be deciphered by making all the colors match on every side. But this shouldn’t be the case.

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