Fire, Water, and Wind explores the forming of a healthy sense of personal identity. The impetus for Fire, Water, and Wind was the observation that people are searching for meaning and identity, are dissatisfied with their current situations, and many are actively seeking escape from their current life experiences. This is evidenced by the number of people involved in high-risk activities, be it drug or alcohol abuse, gambling, prostitution, mult ...
Immigration has in recent years become a hotly contested subject in public political and social discussions. Both in Europe and America, there is increased polarization, confusion, and anxiety about how to handle this challenging phenomenon. What has not been adequately discussed during these debates, however, is the influence of immigration on religion in the host countries. The increase in the number of Moslem immigrants in the West has been r ...
Christian faith is continually challenged by the tension between certainty and mystery. A historic faith can seem threatened by the uncomfortable x that God continues to work in a rapidly changing culture. The Bartender is a fable about the messiness and unpredictability of lives being opened up to God through relationships characterized by deep listening and looking for the ongoing work of God in the world. The parallel and sometimes intersecti ...
In an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount, the heritage of evangelical Reformed theology is in increasing danger of betrayal. Old established understandings of «the faith once delivered to the saints» are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Against the pressures of newer fashions in thought, Douglas Vickers here returns to the seventeenth-century confessions of fa ...
The concept of the «divine sabotage» is the starting point for this expositional journey through Ecclesiastes. Dan Lioy notes that on the one hand, God has «set eternity in the human heart» (Eccl 3:11a). Yet on the other hand, «no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end» (Eccl 3:11b). God has imposed limitations on the human race that undermine human efforts to look beyond the present-especially to understand the past or probe int ...
God's word begins with the tree of life and the tree of knowledge watered by a river nourishing Eden. As it ends with the image of a tree by a river appearing in heaven, the redeemed who have stood as «a tree planted by streams of water, bringing the fruits of the spirit, and birds and animals of every kind find shelter» are healed by its leaves. In the ecology of trees, we find the believer, rooted in living water, lifting to the heavens, ...
Joseph of Nazareth, often «the forgotten man» in early Christian history, comes to life in the compelling historical novel, The Joseph Dialogues. At a time when Caesar Augustus has a firm grip on the Roman Empire, Alexios, a prominent tree farmer in a southern Syria Province, befriends Joseph, a young carpenter from Galilee. For forty years their friendship deepens and the purchase of lumber becomes secondary to their far-reachin ...
FRAMEWORKS is a series dedicated to interdisciplinary studies on the integration of faith and learning. Given Jesus' command to «love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength,» the time is ripe for confessional scholarship and education across the disciplines. We implore God's Spirit to change us through the great works of history and literature alongside developments in science, psychology, and economics–and all of this–through intens ...
How does the future look to us? Well, clearly we realize we now live in a world of screens, from the microcosmic universe of to smartphone . . . to the imposing vigil of the multiplex giants, looming over us in Imax and 3-D–more «real» than real–and to all the screens in between, from computers to iPads, to muted, high definition flat-screens pouring out images in homes, restaurants, banks, businesses, schools, doctors' offices, and hospita ...
