by Paraclete Press | Sep 7, 2015 | Terms of Heart
The beauty of the psalms, like most great poetry, resides in its independent meaning. That is, the poems can and do speak to us whether or not we know the context in which they were written or anything about the poet who composed them. Now I suspect that some of you,...
by Paraclete Press | Aug 30, 2015 | Terms of Heart
The title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s marvelous monograph declares the Psalms “The Prayer Book of the Bible.” He is not the first, nor the last, to characterize the psalter that way. Many of us find the psalms to be an enduring prayer guide because these words of man...
by Paraclete Press | Aug 9, 2015 | Covenant, Terms of Heart, Voice
Yesterday I chuckled when I heard myself say to my dog the same thing I would have to a disobedient child. In response to my growing exasperation that my usually compliant pup had ignored me after I had used the “come” command several times with varying levels of...
by Paraclete Press | Jul 26, 2015 | Covenant, Law, Terms of Heart
In past posts we have talked extensively about David in the way that God Himself described him, namely as the man after His own heart. And we have looked recently at the psalmist’s love not only for his Lord, but also for his devotion to and respect for the law, as he...
by Paraclete Press | Jul 19, 2015 | Covenant, Law, Terms of Heart, Voice
If you were asked to define your faith, where would you begin? More particularly, if you were required to explain the basis of your belief in God, as well as your understanding of the character of who or what God is, what words would you use? Suppose describing your...
by Paraclete Press | Jul 4, 2015 | Law, Terms of Heart, Vision
Yesterday I awoke with the opening line of Randall Thompson’s great choral work The Testament of Freedom playing in my head. It begins “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” The words of that hymn were not Thompson’s. He lifted them from A...
