In Genesis 17, God did something new in Abram’s life. He changed his name. Abram had 99 problems, but a name wasn’t one.

Of all opportunities for special occasion sermons, I have found Christmas to be a uniquely powerful cultural opportunity. In our nation there are almost universally recognized sights, sounds, scenes, and foods associated with the time each year when we celebrate Christmas. What a pastoral gift.

What are we to make of the fact that a little child, versus some Nietzschean “Superman” (Ubermensch), is the one who will come to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found?

And even our flaws and frailties and the acknowledgment thereof is a grace, a sign of God’s kingdom at work in us. As Leonard Cohen has said, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that the “faithful wounds” God sometimes calls us to inflict on one another as mutual “surgeons of the soul”—always as with a healing scalpel and never as with an injurious sword—can sometimes create further relational strain.

Revelation unveils with more clarity and greater specificity the glorious triumph of the Lamb, our Lord, Savior, and King—Jesus Christ. 

In the interpretive process, the stage considering Systematic Theology is asking more specifically, “How does our passage theologically cohere with the whole Bible?” Or, “How does our passage contribute to our understanding of certain doctrines?”