By Jonathan Kopke. Genesis 22 is one of those hard-to-love Bible passages. It’s the story of how God tests Abraham’s faith by ordering him to go to a hilltop in the wilderness and sacrifice his only son Isaac. At the last minute, right when Abraham is all set to follow through, an angel calls out…
– By Jonathan Kopke. The second verse of Amazing Grace starts out like this: ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. What an odd thing to sing about! We can see how God’s wrath would make us fearful. But why is it that his grace — his favor undeservedly shown to us — would…
– By Jonathan Kopke. Pundits are telling us that the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 may be a major “hinge event” when things that we always thought were unchangeable will be permanently changed. For one example, now that millions of people have been working from home for a few months, many of them may never be…
– By Jonathan Kopke. For a few years during my career at the UC Medical Center, my assigned parking lot was out behind the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, and when I’d walk from my car to my office every morning, it wasn’t unusual for me to see another big black hearse backed up to the…
– By Jonathan Kopke. I wonder if Solomon was in the seventh week of a pandemic stay-at-home order when he wrote the opening paragraph of Ecclesiastes: The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. …
– By Jonathan Kopke. “If God is so good, and he’s so powerful, why is he allowing this coronavirus pandemic to happen?” We’ve all heard that question by now. Maybe we’ve asked it ourselves. And, no doubt, there are solid, biblical answers available for that question. In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis…
– By Jonathan Kopke. Don’t you sometimes wish you could pull a blanket over your head and not come out until the whole coronavirus pandemic is over? When you’ve read one story too many about what it’s like to struggle for breath when the virus strikes. When you’ve been scrupulous for weeks about staying six…
– By Jonathan Kopke A couple blocks from our home, one family has graced their porch with a new banner that says simply, “Be Still.” That’s good advice for all of us in the neighborhood during our coronavirus stay-at-home orders. But for those of us who’ve grown up with the Scriptures, that expression is also…
You’ve seen it a hundred times on TV cop shows; the suspect is being arrested, and the officer says, “You have the right to remain silent … you have the right to an attorney.” As human beings, we have many more rights than just our Miranda Rights. If you had to make a list, what…
(NOTE: During Lent our adult “Discovery Hour” class was based on the book Were You There: Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals, by Luke A. Powery which was made up of short but powerful devotions based on 40 different African American Spirituals. This post builds on the reflection on one of the best known Spirituals, “We…