One cannot make it very far in the New Testament – perhaps especially in Paul’s letters – without being confronted by the centrality of prayer in Paul’s spiritual life, especially as regards the churches he loved so dear.

I wonder if the same could be said of us. Of me.

I was recently talking with a friend about Wildwood, about things we both wished were different, and reflected that I don’t pray enough. I’ve seen this reality all the more clearly in the last three months because God has answered my prayers for our church in several areas. In the last three months, I have seen distinct, recognizable answers to specific prayers I have offered over the last two to three years. Read on, intrepid explorer →

In Family Vocation, Gene Veith and his daughter Mary Moerbe apply Luther’s views on vocation to family. (Shocking, I know.)

Sometime in the last two or three years, I stumbled on Gene Veith’s blog, Cranach: The Blog of Veith. Though I didn’t initially add his blog to my reading list, I kept finding myself back there. Links from a variety of other sources I read regularly kept drawing me back, and though in general I tend to skip over blogs with cultural or political emphases – it’s just not my main focus – I found his thought and writing unusually compelling. His blog is now among my most regular reads.

One of Veith’s major projects has been reintroducing evangelicals to Lutheran thought on vocation. I’ve heard nothing but good about his previous book on vocation, so when I saw that he’d released a book on relating vocation to family, it immediately went on my reading list. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Barnabas Mam knows the love of God. That’s it, plain and simple.

Of course, there is more to it: the story of the Cambodian church in the years of the Killing Fields and the refugee era that followed is complex and sometimes horrifying. Nonetheless, that single theme comes through: Barnabas Mam knew the love of God in the most frightening, dangerous situations imaginable. That love in turn empowered him to pour out his life for his fellow Cambodians, that they, too, might know the power of the gospel. Read on, intrepid explorer →