Scriptureriver

The grief of a mother who has lost a child is a category of pain that Scripture acknowledges specifically. It is not the same as other grief. A parent who buries a child experiences something that reverses what feels like the natural order. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. The relationship is supposed to … Read more

Selflessness is one of the most countercultural things a person can practice in any generation. The default orientation of the human heart is inward. What do I get? What do I lose? How does this affect me? This is not a character flaw unique to particularly selfish people. It is the baseline condition of the … Read more

Stepping out on faith is the moment when what you believe becomes visible. Before that moment, faith is a private conviction. It is held safely in the interior, untested, undemonstrated, and unchallenged. It can claim to be as large as it wants because it has not yet been asked to prove itself by moving. The … Read more

God’s omniscience is either the most comforting truth in Scripture or the most unsettling one. Which it is depends entirely on what you have been doing when you thought no one was watching. For the person who has been suffering in silence, whose faithfulness has gone unrecognized, whose pain has felt invisible to the people … Read more

Hard work is not a guarantee of instant results. Scripture is honest about that. But Scripture is also consistent about something else: the harvest follows the sowing. Not always on the timeline you chose, not always in the form you expected, but the diligent hand, the early rising, the sustained effort applied faithfully over time, … Read more

Liars and manipulators are not a modern problem. They appear in the first chapters of Scripture and in the final pages of Revelation. The serpent in the garden was the first manipulator on record. He did not threaten. He reframed. He planted doubt through questions, twisted what God had said, and appealed to Eve’s desire … Read more

The value of a woman in Scripture is not assigned by culture, relationship status, productivity, or appearance. It is established by God before any of those categories exist. This is the first and most important thing to say. The conversations that surround women’s worth tend to anchor it in external measures: what she contributes, what … Read more

The Bible does not use the word karma. But it has a great deal to say about the principle behind it. Karma, as a concept borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism, describes a cosmic law of cause and effect: what you put into the universe returns to you. The good deed returns as good fortune. The … Read more

The first thing the Bible tells us about God is that he created. In the beginning, God created. Before any other attribute is demonstrated, before any commandment is given, before any covenant is established, God makes something. He speaks light into darkness. He separates waters. He forms the land and fills it with living things. … Read more