PREPARE THE WAY

"And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them." This story from the book of Luke gives us some dark insight into the workings of demons and possession. For one, they know who Jesus is immediately,...

You know what I wish someone would have told me when I was younger? The Lord will protect you from the punishment for sin, but not the consequence of it. You probably remember the story of a pastor who after taking a single beautiful rose and holding it up in front of his congregation for all to see, handed it to someone in the front row to pass it around. By the end of the sermon, the rose came back to him all weather and ruined; a metaphor for the beauty of a virgin ruined. "Who wants this...

"And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want." I noticed something in the story of the prodigal son that hadn't caught my attention before. After the father gives his son his share of the inheritance (an extremely disrespectful request to be made when the father was still alive, as it indicates a want of the father's possessions and not the father himself) the prodigal son wanders off to spend the fortune on wild living and sensual...